The Hirshon Latvian Potato Salad – Rasols

July 4, 2018 by The Generalissimo Leave a Comment

Rasols Image Used Under Creative Commons License From mammamuntetiem.lv

My Citizens, I wish all of you who reside in America a Happy Independence Day – a day which has inspired your glorious Leader to provide a recipe for that most beloved recipe at any 4th of July BBQ – potato salad!

Ah, but not just any potato salad – this one is from Latvia and is both tart and refreshing! I have deliberately chosen a “foreign” recipe as opposed to the excellent American-style as a reminder that we are indeed a country of immigrants and that we are stronger with their unique culinary legacies and perspectives than we are without them!

As noted on latvianeats.com:

When food is involved, every Latvian will have their own recipe for everything and anything. Most heated discussions, however, revolve around the best pīrāgi dough and what is the correct way to make rasols. You see, I grew up in 80-ies with rasols made from potatoes, green peas, salted cucumber, “doctor’s sausage” and eggs. I know other families added boiled carrot and/or grated apple (but that’s just wrong as far as I’m concerned). But ask any Latvian that left the country pre-WW2 and they will tell you that rasols must have boiled beetroot and herring in it.

Rasols was inspired by Russian or Olivier salad, invented in 1860s by Lucien Olivier, then the chef of famous restaurant Hermitage in Moscow. His recipe was a closely guarded secret, but the salad did contain rare and expensive ingredients – grouse, crayfish, caviar, smoked duck, capers – which would explain the richness of pre-war rasols. During and after the war many ingredients were not available and were replaced by simpler and cheaper substitutes – sausage for grouse, eggs for crayfish and pickles for capers – resulting in the version most Latvians will recognise as theirs.

So what is real, undiluted rasols?

According to Household Almanac (“Mājturības kalendārs”, photo above) published in 1937 in Riga, recipe is as follows:

Take 1 herring, 3 lampreys, 2 eggs, 200g veal roast, 200g potatoes, 300g apples, 2 salted cucumbers. Debone soaked herring and cut in pieces. Boil potatoes with skin on, then peel and cut. Peel apples and cut. Roast, lamprey, cucumbers and hard boiled eggs also need to be chopped in fine pieces. Mix everything with 400g of sour cream with added pinch (“naža gals”) of mustard. Boiled beets also suit rasols, but it is better to cut them nicely and use as a garnish on the top of salad. Herbs can also be used as garnish.

My version of this recipe omits the usual sausage and goes for an ovo-lacto vegetarian version. I have played with the recipe to make it my own – I omit the green peas, add in pickled carrot instead of pickled beet (to avoid staining the salad purple), added in a touch of Latvian herbs and garlic and uniquely, a drop of the world-famous Latvian herb bitters!

You can buy this – FINALLY – in the United States – get it here.

I hope you enjoy my version of this wonderful dish, my Citizens – please also enjoy this wonderful dialogue about American liberty and justice!

Battle on – The Generalissimo

The Hirshon Latvian Potato Salad – Rasols

Ingredients

6 Yukon Gold potatoes
4 eggs
2 pickled eggs (optional - if unavailable, use regular eggs)
4 Polish-style pickles
1 Asian cucumber or 2 small fresh cukes, seeds removed
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and cored and kept in acidulated water (water with a bit of lemon juice or vinegar in it to prevent browning)
***
Approximately ½ cup pickled carrots - made from:
1 pound carrots, cut into 3 ½- by ⅓-inch sticks
1 ¼ cups water
1 cup cider vinegar
¼ cup sugar
2 garlic cloves, lightly crushed
1 ½ tablespoons dill seeds
1 ½ tablespoons salt
***
Salad dressing ingredients:
3 large dollops mayonaise (Russian-style preferred, or use Duke's or Best Foods/Hellman's, if possible)
2 large dollops Smetana (sour cream if unavailable)
2 teaspoons Russian mustard (Mother-in-Law style, VERY sharp)
2 teaspoons Cider vinegar
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons white horseradish from the bottle
1 tiny dash Riga Black Balsam-brand bitters (VERY optional)
1 teaspoon minced fresh dill (optional)
1 teaspoon minced scallion (optional)
1 teaspoon minced garlic (optional)
minced Dill and minced celery leaves for garnish

Instructions

For the pickled carrots:
Blanch peeled carrots in a 4-quart nonreactive saucepan of boiling salted water 1 minute, then drain in a colander and rinse under cold water to stop cooking. Transfer carrots to a heatproof bowl.
Bring remaining ingredients to a boil in saucepan, then reduce heat and simmer 2 minutes. Pour pickling liquid over carrots and cool, uncovered. Chill carrots, covered, at least 1 day for flavors to develop.
Carrots keep, chilled in an airtight container, 1 month.
Boil potatoes until fairly soft (but not until they are falling apart). Hard boil eggs. Remove skins from potatoes, and shells from eggs. Dice into fairly large chunks (about ½ inch (1 - 1.5 cm) in diameter). Dice other ingredients into smaller pieces. Put all diced ingredients into a very large bowl.
Make salad dressing. Start with smaller amounts, and keep adding sour cream, vinegar, mustard, etc. until it tastes good to you. The salad dressing should taste somewhat salty and tart.
Add salad dressing to diced ingredients. Stir well. Cover. Refrigerate at least overnight.

https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-latvian-potato-salad-rasols/

The Hirshon Chinese Black Vinegar Pork Trotter Post-Partum Stew – 猪脚醋

May 3, 2018 by The Generalissimo Leave a Comment

Chinese Black Vinegar Pork Trotter Post-Partum Stew Image Used Under Creative Commons License From Pinterest.com

Citizens – this recipe is specifically for the half of TFD Nation that brings the miracle of life into this world – yes, ladies, this recipe is for you!

Pork Knuckles and Ginger Stew (pinyin: zhū jiǎo jiāng) is not an everyday Chinese meal. It is a traditional postnatal therapeutic food in the Guangzhou region of China, eaten to aid the recovery of new mothers after giving birth. It helps in the recovery of maternal health from the fatigue of pregnancy in the first forty days of post-partum confinement known in Cantonese as choe yuet (坐月).

The ingredients used in making pork knuckles and ginger stew are very nutritious, which help the new mother to recover.

Calcium in the bones of the pork knuckles will be dissolved by the vinegar during the cooking process – a major nutritional value of the dish is to replenish the loss of calcium in pregnancy. Moreover, not only is ginger rich in Vitamin C, which helps to strengthen the mother’s immune system, it also has the function of removing the “wind”, which is known as “fong” in Cantonese, that is generated during childbirth and when the body is at its weakest; ginger also helps lactation. Eggs provide the new mother with large amounts of protein, which is especially good for repairing muscles and the shells also dissolve calcium into the stew. A bowl of pork knuckles and ginger stew has nearly 600 kcal.

The main ingredients of Pork Knuckles and Ginger Stews are: pig trotters, ginger, sweet vinegar, eggs, salt, and oil.

The tradition is to cook this dish in a tall earthenware pot with a glazed interior. The acidic vinegar and cooking method will leach metals from iron or aluminum pots into the stew, more so than with water-based stews, so please do use the traditional earthenware pot or an equivalent.

According to legend in the early Ming Dynasty there lived a butcher who had the good fortune to marry a very pretty, kind and gumptious girl. However, their happiness was broken by the fact that even after several years of marriage, the wife was still without child. Now in traditional Chinese feudalism, there are three unfilial sins, and of these failure to bear a descendant to carry the family name is by far the most unforgivable. Therefore, the butcher’s mother forced the two to divorce.

The wife was heartbroken, leaving the family home she moved to a hut on a hill. However to her own surprise she found that she was now pregnant.

The butcher still loved his wife and visited her. When he received the news of her pregnancy, he was afraid that his wife and the newborn would be malnourished, so he brought her some unsold pork knuckles and stewed them in sweet black vinegar in a big pot together with ginger and eggs.

After several years, the child finally grew up. The wife forgave the butcher’s mother and returned with her son to the marital home and asked her son to take with him a pot of sweet vinegar stew as a gift for his grandmother. His grandmother was elated to receive him and the stew.

Thereafter, whenever a baby is born, the family will make a pot of sweet vinegar stew and share it with friends and neighbors.

According to Cantonese custom, Pork Knuckles and Ginger Stew is used to celebrate the birth of a child. The new parents will distribute this dish to their relatives and friends to herald the arrival of the newborn twelve days after the baby’s birth.

As a traditional ritual, families usually make the stew themselves, sometimes according to their own secret family recipes. In modern times people are less able to spend the time for the time-consuming preparation of the stew. In Hong Kong, Chinese herbal franchises such as Hung Fook Tong and vinegar maker Pat Chun have started selling ready-to-eat Pork Knuckle Stew.

Citizens, here is my secret and totally authentic version of this classic recipe. My version calls for the traditional black sugar of the region, called 黑糖 (hei tang in Mandarin), as well as the finest in aged, top-quality Chinese Zhenjiang vinegar. My secret addition used to be a few spoonfuls of the Chinese female tonic Dong Quai Jin, but that is now very difficult to find. My new recipe uses a surprise ingredient from France – Chartreuse élixir végétal! This alcohol-based tonic uses more than 130 different roots, flowers and herbs of which angelica (the primary ingredient in Dong Quai Jin) is a primary recipe component. This recipe is more than 400 years old and was created specifically as a health tonic – read all about it here. If you decide to use it, you can purchase it here.

Citizens – this is not a difficult recipe to make and I hope you decide to give it a try at your next happy occasion! 😀

Battle on – The Generalissimo

The Hirshon Chinese Black Vinegar Pork Trotter Post-Partum Stew – 猪脚醋

Ingredients

1 pig's trotter - between 2 ½ and 2 ¾ pounds
Between 2 ½ and 2 ¾ pounds old ginger (yes, you read that amount right), skinned, cut into pieces and smashed lightly (TFD note - old ginger is exactly that, the typical stuff you get in the supermarket, do NOT use actual OLD ginger, this is just a Chinese term to differentiate it from 'young' ginger, which is harvested early)
4 tbsp sesame oil (TFD note - I prefer Kadoya brand)
Slightly more than 3 ⅓ cups Aged Chinese black vinegar (TFD note - do NOT use Sweetened Black Vinegar in this recipe!)
6 ⅓ cups bottled water
Slightly more than 1 ¼ -1 ⅔ cups brown sugar (adjust sweetness to your liking) (TFD note - if you can find it, use Chinese black sugar (actually closer to brown than black)
hardboiled eggs in shell, to taste
1 tbsp. or more to taste of Chartreuse élixir végétal - optional, TFD addition

Instructions

Clean and pluck hair of trotters (if there are any). Cut into big chunks. Blanch trotters in boiling hot water, drain.
Heat sesame oil and fry ginger till fragrant.
Add ginger and oil and put into a clay pot. Add vinegar, water and brown sugar.
Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 - 30 mins or until ginger is soft.
Add pig's trotter pieces and continue to simmer till meat is tender, about 2 hours.
Add hardboiled eggs and élixir végétal half an hour before serving - crack the shells all over lightly but completely to enable a marbled effect when peeled (note - this is a TFD affectation, and not in the original recipe).
This should be served to the new mother for at least 1 month or preferably 40 days - repeat the recipe as needed and add to the leftovers (important - there should always be some leftover added to the new batch of stew) and reheat, as it gets more and more nutritious over the 30 days (as well as delicious).

https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-chinese-black-vinegar-pork-trotter-post-partum-stew-%e7%8c%aa%e8%84%9a%e9%86%8b/

The Hirshon Azerbaijani Mountain Jew Omelette – Khoyagusht

February 2, 2018 by The Generalissimo Leave a Comment

The Hirshon Azeri Mountain Jew Omelette - Khoyagusht

Khoyagusht Image Used Under Creative Commons License From foodandtravel.com

Citizens, today it is my privilege to educate you on one of the least-known ethnic groups in the World – the so-called “mountain Jews” of Azerbaijan!

Mountain Jews or Caucasus Jews (Azerbaijani: Dağ Yəhudiləri, Hebrew: יהודי קווקז‬ Yehudey Kavkaz or יהודי ההרים‬ Yehudey he-Harim, Russian: Горские евреи, translit. Gorskie Yevrey) are Jews of the eastern and northern Caucasus, mainly Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. They are the descendants of Persian Jews from Iran.

The Mountain Jews community became established in Ancient Persia, from the 5th century AD onwards; their language, called Judeo-Tat, is an ancient Southwest Iranian language which integrates many elements of Ancient Hebrew.

It is believed that they had reached Persia from Ancient Israel as early as the 8th century BCE. They continued to migrate east, settling in mountainous areas of the Caucasus. The Mountain Jews survived numerous historical vicissitudes by settling in extremely remote and mountainous areas. They were known to be accomplished warriors and horseback riders.

The main Mountain Jew settlement in Azerbaijan is Qırmızı Qəsəbə, also called Jerusalem of the Caucasus. In Russian, Qırmızı Qəsəbə was once called Еврейская Слобода (translit. Yevreyskaya Sloboda), “Jewish Village”; but during Soviet times it was renamed Красная Слобода (translit. Krasnaya Sloboda), “Red Village.”

Mountain Jews are distinct from Georgian Jews of the Caucasus Mountains. The two groups are culturally different, speaking different languages and having many differences in customs and culture.

The Mountain Jews, or Jews of the Caucasus, have inhabited the Caucasus since the fifth century CE. Being the descendents of the Persian Jews of Iran, their migration from Persia proper to the Caucasus took place in the Sasanian era (224-651). It is believed that they had arrived in Persia, from Ancient Israel, as early as the 8th century BCE.

Other source, attest that mountain Jews were present in the region of Azerbaijan, at least since 457 B.C. The Bible tells about priests who had been brought from there. According to the Bible, prophet Ezra, sent delegates to Casiphia (located in Azerbaijan), asking for priests to serve in the Temple of God.

Mountain Jews have an oral tradition, passed down generation after generation, that they are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes which were exiled by the king of Assyria (Ashur), who ruled over northern Iraq from Mosul (across the Tigris River from the ancient city of Nineveh). The reference, most likely is to Shalmaneser, the King of Assyria who is mentioned in II Kings 18:9-12. According to local Jewish tradition, some 19,000 Jews departed Jerusalem (used here as a generic term for the Land of Israel) and passed through Syria, Babylonia, and Persia and then, heading north, entered into Media.

In Chechnya, Mountain Jews partially assimilated into Chechen society by forming a Jewish teip, the Zhugtii while three other teips, the Shuonoi, Ziloi and Chartoi have also been theorized to have Jewish relations.

In Chechen society, ethnic minorities residing in areas demographically dominated by Chechens have the option of forming a teip in order to properly participate in the developments of Chechen society such as making alliances and gaining representation in the Mekhk Khell, a supreme ethnonational council that is occasionally compared to a parliament.

Mountain Jews maintain a strong military tradition. For this reason, some historians believe they may be descended from Jewish military colonists, settled by Parthian and Sassanid rulers in the Caucasus as frontier guards against nomadic incursions from the Pontic steppe.

And we, the Tats We, Samson warriors, Bar Kochba’s heirs… we went into battles and bitterly, heroically struggled for our freedom – From “The Song of the Mountain Jews”

Mountain Jews are known for their military tradition and have been historically viewed as fierce warriors. Some historians suggest that the group traces its beginnings to Persian-Jewish soldiers who were stationed in the Caucasus by the Sasanian kings in the fifth or sixth century to protect the area from the onslaughts of the Huns and other nomadic invaders from the east. Men were typically heavily armed and some slept without removing their weapons.

Over time, the Mountain Jews adopted the dress of their Muslim neighbors. Men typically wore chokhas and covered their head with papakhas, many variations of which could symbolize the men’s social status. Wealthier men’s dress was adorned with many pieces of jewelry, including silver and gold-decorated weaponry, pins, chains, belts, or kisets (small purse used to hold tobacco or coins).

Women’s dress was typically of simpler design in dark tones, made from silk, brocade, velvet, satin and later wool. They decorated the fabric with beads, gold pins or buttons, and silver gold-plated belts. Outside the house, both single and married women covered their hair with headscarves.

Mountain Jewish cuisine absorbed typical dishes from various peoples of the Caucasus, Azerbaijani and Persian cuisine, adjusting some recipes to conform to the laws of kashrut. Typical Mountain Jewish dishes include chudu (a type of meat pie), shashlik, dolma, kurze or dushpare, yarpagi, khinkali, tara (herb stew with pieces of meat), nermov (chicken or other meat stew with wheat and beans), plov (pilaf), buglame (curry like stew of fish or chicken eaten with rice (osh)), etc. Jewish holidays-themed dishes include Eshkene, a Persian soup, prepared for Passover, and a variety of hoshalevo (honey-based treats made with sunflower seeds or walnuts) typically prepared for Purim.

Citizens, this recipe I am sharing with you is simple, delicious and a classic meal of the Mountain Jews. For a true feast of Azerbaijan, try this recipe of an amazing saffron beef soup with tiny dushbara (tortellini) recipe here.

Battle on – The Generalissimo

The Hirshon Azerbaijani Mountain Jew Omelette – Khoyagusht

Ingredients

For the chicken:
2 chicken legs
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1 celery stick, roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp black peppercorns
For the khoyagusht (omelette):
2 tbsp butter
2 onions, sliced
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp smoked paprika (TFD change, original used regular paprika)
200g chestnuts, halved, cooked and peeled
6 eggs

Instructions

Place both chicken legs in a pan and add the onion, carrot, celery, bay leaves, salt and pepper before covering with water.
Bring to a boil, then put the lid on the pan and turn the heat down to a simmer for 25-30 minutes, until cooked through. Drain the chicken and reserve the broth.
Remove the skin and bones from the legs and shred the meat.
For the khoyagusht, heat a frying pan and add the butter and any fat from the top of the broth. Cook the onions until softened, then add a ladleful of the broth from the chicken.
Continue cooking until all of the liquid has evaporated and the onions are light golden in color.
Season with salt and pepper and add the turmeric and paprika. Add the shredded chicken and the chestnuts to the pan and stir everything together. Moisten with half a ladleful of the chicken broth.
Cover with a lid and let it simmer for 10 minutes to allow all the flavours to combine.
Preheat the grill. Lightly beat the eggs and season with salt and pepper. Pour over the top of the meat and use a spoon to make holes in the meat, encouraging the egg into the gaps. Place under the hot grill until the eggs are just set and slightly brown on top.
Leave the khoyagusht to sit in the pan for 5 minutes before turning out on to a plate and cutting into thick wedges to serve.
Recipes and Photographs taken from Samarkand: Recipes and Stories from Central Asia and The Caucasus By Caroline Eden and Eleanor Ford, Photography by Laura Edwards (Kyle Books, £25)

https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-azerbaijani-mountain-jew-omelette-khoyagusht/