Petersburg Cuisine
Menu of the Lunch Held at the Yalta Conference in the Vorontsov Palace for the Leaders of the Three Powers on February 10, 1945
The dinner took place on February 10, 1945. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin left their autographs on the blank menu.
Images are provided by the Committee for External Relations of St. Petersburg
Dinner Party Menu:
Snacks
Caviar, pies, marinated salmon and cured fillets of white salmon, spicy salted herring, sturgeon aspic, Swiss cheese.
Hot appetizers
Game, sausages, roast pig with horseradish, venison vol-au-vents.
Soups
Game broth, chicken cream soup.
Hot dishes
White salmon with champagne sauce, baked mullet, lamb skewers, wild steppe goat, lamb pilaf, roast turkey, roasted quails, roasted partridges, green peas.
Dessert
Ice cream, fruit, petit fours, roasted almonds, coffee.
Dish Recipes
Novgorod-style White Salmon
Cooking rules
Clean the white salmon, make an incision in the belly of the fish and remove its innards, rinse the inside of the fish until the blood is removed, and put it in a pan of the suitable size with preheated oil, place it in a hot oven until browned. Then add cucumber pickle, kvass, marinades to the fish, cover with a lid and simmer until tender. Then remove to a platter, cut across the fibers a little obliquely, like sturgeon, so that the pieces have a beautiful appearance, garnish with the same marinades and pour strained, somewhat reduced, fish juices.
Fatty white salmon. n the same way, you can cook a more fatty dish by replacing vegetable oil with butter.
Vol-au-Vent a la Financiere
Ingredients and their proportion for 5 persons:
For puff pastry
French flour — ¾ Russian pound
Oil — ¾ Russian pound
Water — ¾ cup
For filling
Cockscombs — ¼ Russian pound
Sweet meat — ¼ Russian pound
Chicken — 1 pc. or hazel grous — 2 pcs. for quenelles
Thick cream — 1 cup, thin cream — ¼ cup
Truffles — 1/8 Russian pound
Mushrooms — ¼Russian pound
Suprême sauce — for 2½ for 2½ cups of broth
Cooking rules
Make good puff pastry, roll it out 1½ - 2 fingers thick, mark a round with a plate, cut it out and put it on a mold wetted with cold water. In the middle of the round, at a distance of 2-3 fingers from the edge, then mark the second round and cut it out to half the thickness of the pastry. (You can’t cut through the pastry to the end, because then the bottom will fall out and you will get a ring, not a case, as it should be.) This second round should be used as a lid, which, after baking the vol-au-vent, is removed away. Having marked a circle, make incisions on it with a hot knife in the shape of a star, squares or some other figure. Then brush it with an egg (only the top, do not grease the edge) and first put it in a very hot oven, and when it is browned and rises, reduce the heat to medium temperature and keep the vol-au-vent in the oven until it is well baked inside and becomes lightweight. Then, taking it out of the oven, remove the lid, cut out the raw pastry in the center in order to form a case and carefully scrape it with a knife so that the bottom crust and walls are almost transparent. Then cook the financière filling, add thick suprème sauce to it; before serving load the middle of the vol-au-vent with the filling and cover with cover with a lid; serve the rest of the sauce separately in a gravy boat.The financière filling consists of cockscombs, sweet meat, mushrooms, truffles and game quenelles formed by a spoon. Cockscombs and sweet meat are boiled in beef broth and cut into cubes; champignons are cut into rounds and stewed; canned truffles are cut into cubes. Quenelles are boiled separately.
Note. You need to fill vol-au-vents with the garnish just before serving, otherwise it will get soggy, fall apart and lose its shape and taste, because soggy puff pastry is not at all tasty. How to cook quenelles, cockscombs, sweet meat and supreme sauce - see the table of contents. The vol-au-vent should be kept in the oven until it is well baked; if removed underbaked, it will fall (become flat).
A note about fish vol-au-vents. In the same way, you can cook fish vol-au-vents. Then, for the filling, you need to make quenelles from the flesh of pike perch, instead of sweet meat and cockscombs, put braised burbot livers and necks from boiled crayfish. Leave the champignons and truffles, and replace the supreme sauce with crayfish sauce.