Tasty Italy

Passport & Plate - Herring under a fur coat

Russian Federation | Friday, March 14, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients:
For 2-3 persons
1 salted (or Pickled) herring
2 carrots
½ of beet
2 potatoes
Sauce: 1 cup of sour cream and mayonnaise

Sequence of actions:
1. At first you have to boil vegetables (carrot and potato for 20 min., beetroot for 40 min.)
2. While your veggies are boiling clean the fish from the skin, bones and entrails and cut the herring fillet into pieces. Very small, just 0.5 - 1 cm.
3. Veggies have to be small too – cut them into square pieces and put separately one from another.
4. Now you have to put ingredients on the bottom of the flat plate layer be layer.
Grease each layer with a tea spoon of the mayonnaise.
First layer: herring’s pieces
Second: carrot
Third: potatoes
Forth: beet
5-8: again every layers
5. Finish the salad with the layer of the mayonnaise on the top of the beetroot.

The story behind this recipe:
Here in Russia (and in some other countries of the former USSR), every party and especially New Year have two unifying elements on the tables everywhere - the much loved salad, Herring under a fur coat (“Selyodka Pod Shuboy”) and a glass of champagne.
Tradition started from the 1980s. Every year the same - salad and champagne!
I really cann’t imaging family’s holiday without it. My grandmother liked and my mother cooked it.
But… Saying truth, I don’t cook it for my friends coz young people are tired of it… We create modern food with fresh recipes – sometimes vegans or just with fruits, sometimes light snacks for active time or maybe another country's kitchen.
In spite of this I respect USSR's tradition very much and with a very great pleasure cook and eat this old-tradition salad with my family.