Petersburg Cuisine

Golden Lion Awards Ceremony of the Committee for the External Relations of Saint-Petersburg of St. Petersburg on February 18, 2021

Images are provided by the Committee for External Relations of St. Petersburg

Dish Recipes

Olivier Salad

Ingredients and their proportions for 5 persons:
Hazel Grouses — 3 pieces
Potatoes — 5 pieces
Cucumbers — 5 pieces
Lettuce — 2 heads
Provence mayonnaise — for 1/2 bottle of oil
Crayfish necks — 15 pieces
Aspic — 1 glass
Olives, gherkins — total ¼ Russian pound
Truffles — 3 pcs.

Cooking rules

Singe large shot hazel grouses, remove the giblets from them, season and fry, cool, and separate all the flesh from the bones. Cut the fillets into cubes, and chop the rest of the flesh a little. Cook a good broth from the bones of the game, from which then cook an aspic. Boil the potatoes in the skin, then peel and remove into a recess the size of a 3-kopeck coin, and cut the trimmings. Peel fresh cucumbers and cut into thin rounds. Cut truffles into rounds. Boil crayfish and take necks from them. Make thick mayonnaise, add cabul sauce for spiciness and some heavy cream for a better taste and color. Deseed large olives with a screw. When everything is ready, then take a glass vase or a deep serving bowl and layer all ingredients into it. First, spread the game and potato trimmings in the bottom, lightly seasoning them with the mayonnaise, make the next layer of game on top, then add potatoes, cucumbers, truffles, olives and crayfish necks, pour over all this with a part of the sauce so that it is juicy, put a layer of game on top again, etc. Part of the crayfish necks and truffles should be left for decorating the top of the salad. When all the ingredients are layered in the bowl, then coat them with mayonnaise so that the ingredients are not visible. Put a bunch of greens into the middle of the bowl, and beautifully arrange the crayfish necks, claws of boiled crayfish and truffles around it. Chop the frozen aspic, put it in a pastry bag, make a thin elegant net on top and chill everything well.

Note.

In exactly the same way, you can make a salad from the remaining roast: beef, veal, black grouse, chicken, etc., as well as from any non-bony fish. Sometimes in these salads, if desired, you can add fresh tomatoes, cut into rounds. But a real Olivier salad is always prepared from hazel grouses.

Blancmange

Cooking rules

Take ½ pounds of sweet and 10 pieces of bitter almonds, scald it with boiling water, cover with a plate and let it sit on the table for a while. Then peel them from the skin and grind in a mortar, adding a little milk from the amount that is listed in the recipe. When the almonds are well crushed, dilute it with all the milk, strain through a napkin, squeezing the almonds well. Add fine sugar to the resulting almond milk and heat the milk up on the stove, stirring with a spatula, but not letting it boil. As soon as the sugar dissolves and the milk almost reaches the boiling point, then remove it from the heat to the edge of the stove and begin to add gelatin sheets (which have been pre-soaked in cold water and squeezed out) one by one into it. When adding gelatin, blancmange should be stirred constantly with a spatula until the gelatin are completely dissolved. Then remove the blancmange from the stove and strain through a muslin or napkin into a porcelain or stone cup, then cool, pour into a mold moistened with cold water, take out to the cold and chill.