Why does a herring need a fur coat? or

 
Russian New Year Tablescapes

My dear friends,
In this post I am going to tell you what are the most typical dishes Russians have on their New Year tables. Of course, nowadays there are people who would have some sushi (or whatever is sold here under this name) and some Japanese wine and maybe a box of Raffaello for dessert to remind them they are not in Japan. However, New Year dinner traditions tend to be observed by the majority of population and there are quite a number of dishes which are going to be on most of the holiday tables in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus when the clock strikes twelve on the December 31 st , 2016 to welcome the year 2017.

So what are the most popular foods and beverages? Vodka? Very likely. But it is not an alcohol must, so to say. A must is a bottle of champagne which is to be opened with a loud sound, a cork hitting into somebody's eye, foam all over the room and hooray cries, while the president is delivering his 5 minute New Year speech; because when Mr.President finishes his congrats and says 'Happy New Year', the Kremlin chiming clock starts striking. By this time all the glasses must be filled with champagne and be hissing with bubbles so that everybody could clink them when the moment comes. Also there is a belief that if you make a wish while the clock is striking twelve on New Year's Eve, it will come true during the year. So there is much to do during this magic few seconds of New Year arrival.

As for vodka, it can often be replaced by cognac. And in many situations there can be quite a lot of alcohol including several bottles of wine, cognac, liqueur and vodka. But no New Year magic is possible without the sparkles, foam, bubbles and the cheerful clink of champagne flutes.

Another must is mineral water, sometimes still, sometimes sparkling. To wash down all the alcohol.
Do Russian drink soft drinks on New Year? Only if they are kids, of course :-) Juice and kompot for the little ones until it is time for dessert. Tea and coffee for everybody then.

Another very popular and much associated with New Year foods are chocolate candies and mandarins. The smell of a real fir-tree and mandarins are considered to be the smell of the New Year. And the chocolate candies are for both kids and their sweet-tooth parents :-) Last New Year we had so many chocolates! Around 12 kilograms! All eaten during New Year vacations by our big family. Ah, and the sound the tinfoil makes when you unwrap the sweets along with the hissing of champagne bubbles are like the beat of shaman's drum when it comes to evoking the New Year spirits. Both candies and mandarins are often hanged on новогóдняя ёлка. 

Most famous chocolate producers in Russia are Крáсный октя́брь, Бабáевский, in Belarus – Спартáк and Коммунáрка, in Ukraine – Корóна and Roshen (the later is the presidential chocolate). People, who don't like the President of Ukraine, don't buy his candies :-) An interesting way to express political views, isn't it? 

Both candies and mandarins can be considered a sweet course only to a certain extent. It is very much expected that they would be stolen from the table, kidnapped from the branches of the Christmas tree and from underneath it, burgled from the cupboard in the kitchen and the secret place in your mother's bedroom throughout the two weeks of New Year holidays, and consumed sometimes secretly, sometimes openly with pathetic complaints about your expected weight gain.

But let's come back to our holiday table in the living room. What is our main course? It is quite surprising but the meat course can be of absolutely any kind. There is no such thing as a thanksgiving turkey. It can be any bird or any meat, which in most cases is roasted, grilled ot stewed. A chicken, a turkey, a duck or a goose, a hair or a rabbit, a beef steak, barbecues, pork or lamb or even deer or moose. What you choose to cook depends on your cooking skills, the region where you live, your budget and imagination.

Speaking about the meat course, this Year is going to be a year of rooster or hen or whatever chicken, so I don't even know if it is a good idea to have one on the table as the main course. Do you think that would bring you luck? I doubt it. Maybe next year will be unlucky for me as I eat lots of chicken :-) I think it would be better to put a rooster statuette on the table as many people do here for the symbol of the year to bring you luck. BTW, need to buy one.

Russians are more devoted to the garnish, I guess, tending to serve the meat course with potatoes, mostly mashed, but often also roasted / baked or boiled.

What are the most popular appetizers and side dishes then?

First of all I should mention the two most traditional New Year salads. Olivier and Shuba / Шýба or the Fur Coat salad. Generally speaking, Olivier is meat or sausages, boiled potatoes, green peas, pickled cucumbers finely chopped and dressed with mayonnaise.

So what about the fur coat salad? Its full name is Herring Under the Fur Coat. It is a multilayer salad made of diced pickled herring covered with layers of grated boiled potatoes, carrots, beet roots, chopped onions, eggs and  mayonnaise. The upper layer is usually beet roots covered with mayonnaise so the salad has a very purple look :-)

Yes, the herring needs a purple fur coat of grated boiled vegetables. We even have a joke: Wife: - Darling, I want a fur coat. Husband: - Ok, I'll go out and buy some herring and beet roots : -) Dear gentlemen, if your wife asks for a fur coat, it has more to do with the mink than with the herring :-)

Speaking about fish, we also like canned sprats or шпро́ты. Baltic states must be profiting from this like hell :-) We often put a couple of tiny sprat fishes out of a can on a slice of bread with butter and a cucumber slice and then we put a twig of dill or parsley on top.

What else can be on a white bread and butter sandwich instead of the sprats? Of course, red caviar. Indeed, being a Russian, I wouldn't like my bread and butter unless it has some red caviar on it :-) Maybe as it is a bit more expensive, maybe for some other reason, but somehow black caviar is less popular and I don't really associate it with new year. I guess the loic is as follows: there must be some caviar on New Year's table, red cavier is cheaper so that's what we'll have.

There is one more sandwich thing on the table. And it is a a plate with cold meat cuts i.e. lots of slices of various cheeses, sausages, hams and бужени́на / buzhenina which is our traditional oven roasted pork. You can choose the slices you prefer and either put them on your plate and eat independently or make a sandwich according to your taste right during the meal. Often there is plate with vegetable cuts or slices so that you could put a slice of a tomato or a cucumber on top of you ham-sausage-cheese sandwich.

A very plain and very common dish is hard boiled eggs cut into halves and topped with some mayonnaise and a twig of parsley. And also we like to have a big vase of pickled vegetables.

The last side dish is we are going to look at in this post is an aspic or холоде́ц / kholodets as we call it here, which is pieces of meat in a broth-turned-jelly. Quite challenging and time consuming to cook , I should say :-) But long to cook, fast to eat and absolutely delicious!

And of course I must tell you about the dessert before you rush to the kitchen to put some food in your already watering mouth. The most typical dessert, beside a wagon and a little trolley of candies and mandarins and perhaps a pine-apple, apples and some other fruits, I believe, is a either a cake or a fruit / sweet pie. There are so many cakes and sweet pies you can cook for New Year that I will really need to devote a whole new lengthy post to this subject. So if you are a sweet tooth, please, leave a comment below, to keep me motivated. And as I have already mentioned, the cake / pie is usually eaten with hot tea or coffee, if you still have the room for that, of course.

So these are the most typical New Year dishes. Our holiday tables can be much more diverse, however, especially if the whole extended family gather to celebrate. I remember my grandmas with my mum and my aunts cook at least 12 big vases of salads not to mention the other things. And there were more than 40 people at the holiday table. Last New Year there wasn't enough room in the dish washer for all the dishes so we had to make it run twice and also wash some bigger pans and casseroles in the sink. 

At the same time many people prefer to celebrate New Year in privacy of the couple or core family and in this case there wouldn't be as many foods on the table as in the my case. 
Anyway, if you got interested in the Russian dishes and would like to cook any for your own table, please, write a comment below, I will come up with a recipe in no time!  A relevant pod-cast and a special vocabulary post coming soon:-)

Thank you for being with me and bon appétit!