A Salad By Any Other Name

What dishes do visitors to Russia normally associate with Russian cuisine? Chicken Kiev, borsch, solyanka and, last but definitely not least, stolichny salad.

"Of all Russian salads, stolichny is the most popular among our guests," explained Yuri Otdelentsev, chef at Moscow's Club Royal restaurant. "And for those who came to Moscow before perestroika it arouses feelings of nostalgia."

Many Russian gourmets feel the same way ¾ nowadays stolichny salad is rarely a feature of top class restaurants in this country. Their 'New Russian' clients tend to prefer ridiculously expensive exotic foreign dishes. Still, the cooks at these restaurants know the recipe for stolichny by heart, confident that one day the fad for things foreign will pass and Russian dishes will become popular again.

Stolichny salad was once hugely popular. In Soviet times it was declared an official dish, obligatory fare at any government function. In fact, General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev was very fond of it, and recommended that it be included in the menus of all public eating places throughout the country.

Needless to say, until not that long ago, stolichny salad was in every Russian restaurant (provided, of course, that none of the ingredients were in short supply). What's more, it is universally loved. Delicious, filling and easy to prepare, it is still a must for most Russian homes on festive occasions.

Stolichny originates from a salad invented by and named after a French chef called Olivier in the 19th century. However, the olivier salad made today in Russia has little in common with the complex original, which was made with hazel-grouse, crawfish tails and exotic seasoning.

It was in this form that it arrived in Russia 150 years ago, where it immediately took the fancy of the local nobles. The merchants, however, who constituted the overwhelming majority of restaurant-goers, insisted on something simpler and more filling. It was then that  beef, chicken, potato and cucumber became the basic ingredients, while simple herbs and mayonnaise were added for extra flavor.

After the 1917 revolution, when the dictatorship of the proletariat began rooting out anything with a hint of the aristocratic about it, refined-sounding French words like Olivier became unusable. Names in those days were a real minefield ¾ in that era of industrialization and selfless toil you could be arrested for writing things like 'Lazy Shchi' (quick-to-prepare cabbage soup) in a menu.

So for some time olivier salad in Russia went by the modest name of 'meat and vegetable salad'. Then an epidemic of renaming began, which affected towns, factories, steam engines and even food. It was very fashionable to call things after the Soviet capital city (stolitsa in Russian), and this was how stolichniye shchi, Stolichnaya vodka and Stolichniye cigarettes got their names.

Thus also was the problem of a name for Russian olivier solved. Ever since then, Soviet leaders, foreign heads of state, cosmonauts, great scientists and many other famous people have been able to taste the ideologically sound 'stolichny' at ceremonial dinners. You too can try.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

1/4 chicken

4 boiled potatoes

1 fresh, 1 pickled cucumber

3.5 oz lettuce

2 hard boiled eggs ( one for decoration)

1/2 beaker of mayonnaise

1 tbsp. lemon juice

Herbs and tomato sauce to taste

Remove the chicken meat from the bones, and, leaving the white meat for decoration, chop the rest finely. Slice the potatoes, eggs and cucumbers, and mix well. Add coarsely cut lettuce leaves, mayonnaise (with a little tomato sauce and lemon juice if required) and salt, and place in a compact heap in the salad bowl. For decoration, cut the white meat to whatever shape takes your fancy: slices, long strips etc. Sprinkle finely chopped egg on top and add fresh herbs.