adapted for my russian kitchen: thomas keller’s potato salad with smoked trout

It’s been forever since I posted, I know.  It’s an excuse I’ve given many times before, and I won’t justify it, aside from the obvious: I had an incredibly busy fall quarter with teaching and getting ready for my year-long trip to Russia.  But here I am in Moscow!  As I write this, the sun is going down (5:30 pm, ugh) over the snowy rooftops of my neighborhood in the Basmanny district of central Moscow.  We have a lovely view of the city, which I’ll post another time.

I’ve resolved to rejuvenate my cooking blog by posting how I’m adapting, negotiating and, let’s be honest, sometimes failing to reproduce recipes that are in regular rotation in our kitchen at home, and things I’ve always wanted to try to make.  When D. arrived this weekend, he declared that he wanted to eat smoked fish and caviar as soon as possible, so on Tuesday we made the trek to Ashan at the Gagarinskii mall (around the corner from that enormous statue of Gagarin that makes him look like Superman) to investigate our options, since Ashan is where you can find pretty much everything you are looking for in one place.  As an aside, we also got venison pate (delicious on rye bread!) and extremely inexpensive lamb rump, which is going into spinach and lamb curry… I’ll report back tomorrow about that!

I decided to start out with a recipe that, more or less, called for ingredients that we could easily procure in Russia, smoked fish being one of them.  Technically, this recipe is an adaptation of a Serious Eats adaptation of Thomas Keller’s salad, but who’s keeping score?

The smoked fish aisle at Ashan is downright intimidating.  We didn’t recognize half of the names of the fish… lo and behold skumbriia (скумбрия) is the word for mackerel in Russian.  But I did know the word for trout: forel’ (форель).  We purchased the lovely piece of it you see at right for just over 4 USD.  I’ve only ever had smoked trout in the States when it’s more cooked and flaky in texture.  This smoked trout was more like the texture of smoked salmon and was bright pink-red, as you can see in the middle picture.

Fingerling potatoes are not so easy to find here, but you can get baby potatoes that will do the trick and have almost the same shape and texture as fingerlings.  We didn’t have any endive at our local grocery store, although I have seen it there before.  I meant to throw some ruccola/chard salad greens mix in as a substitute and just forgot.  I didn’t miss it, to be honest.  Instead of chives and tarragon, I got one of those packs of fresh herbs that can be found in every Russian grocery store, including parsley, green onions (nezhnii luk (нежный лук) or literally, “gentle onion”), and dill.  I skipped out on shallots, because I used a fair amount of green onion.  Capers and gherkins should be easy to find in any standard grocery store in the pickle aisle.  There is always a pickle aisle, this is Russia!  I really liked the sweetness of the cornichons amid the saltiness of the capers and the smokiness of the fish.

For the dressing, you should have no difficulty finding eggs, whole grain dijon, canola oil, and lemons.  The recipe makes slightly too much dressing, and I regret dumping it all in, because it soaked through the herbs.  So add the dressing sparingly, to your taste.  I ended up adding maybe 1/4 tsp. of sea salt to the salad, because it was plenty salty enough from cooking the potatoes in salt water, and the capers, which were especially salty.

The verdict?  An interesting mix of flavors and a bright potato salad.  Neither D. nor I are big fans of mayonnaise-based potato salads, and using the egg yolk here was a good way to make the dressing creamy and comforting without it turning the overall salad into mayonnaise-laden mush. I’m not sure I could eat this regularly but it was highly enjoyable.