[Sca-cooks] Russian food

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jul 20, 2006, at 2:55 AM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Aislinn commented:
>   <<< Ok Jadwiega, here is what I served at the Judge's Luncheon.  
> Smoked
> whitefish, smoked salmon, kippered herring, >>>
>
> I think the only kippered herring I know of comes out of the little,
> ovalish cans. Did you get yours already kippered? Or kipper them
> yourself? What exactly is "kippering"? Is it simply pickling them in
> vinegar?

No, no vinegar in kippering, as a rule. It's a smoking process. It  
seems, based on the examples I've seen, and since any hard-and-fast  
rule I can find is rife with exceptions, to be a hot-smoking process,  
i.e. where the product ends up being cooked in the heat of the  
smoking process, except in the case of kippered herring (more or less  
the Ur-kippering process, the one that first bore the name, I  
believe), which are lightly salted and cold-smoked. You can get real,  
freshly-smoked kippered herring in places like the UK and Canada, and  
in the US you sometimes find them vacuum-sealed in plastic packets.  
There's a rather distinctive splitting/butterflying method used for  
kippers to prepare them for smoking (they're split along the back,  
past the spine and into the abdominal cavity, and opened up like a  
book).

Canned kippers are okay for what they are, but they aren't  
necessarily a good way to understand or appreciate the glories of the  
kippering process...

> Blini are the same as blintzes? A thin, firm pancake rolled with a
> filling?

Blini tend to be smallish, slightly spongy-textured, buckwheat-flour  
pancakes, often raised with a combination of yeast and beaten egg  
white (hence the sponginess). Frequently served with melted butter,  
sour cream, and caviar.

Blintzes are more crepelike, although I assume there's an  
etymological link.

Adamantius