Growing up in Kiev, Ukraine, in the 80s, I ate a lot of dairy. Milk, eggs, kefir -- other kinds of cultured milk -- were cheap and widely available. Sometimes we’d have to stand in line for butter but I remember it being at least accessible. Same story with the mayonnaise. It was usually available to the unwashed masses, but if you stumbled upon it in the store you stood in line no matter how long it took, and bought more than one jar. The main reason for hoarding the mayo, at least in my family, was that, come any holiday, we’d make no less than a barrel of salat Olivier. A gigantic bowl of this salad would then grace the holiday spread, to be cheerfully consumed throughout the hours-long dinner by all. If we were lucky, there would be enough left over for a few days.
I imagine that to a many sophisticated American palate a salad containing boiled potatoes, carrots and canned peas would appear pedestrian at best. Also, if you don’t like mayonnaise you probably stopped reading already. I do admit that I am biased, and perhaps my misty-eyed devotion to this salad is due more to my personal nostalgic notions than to its culinary merit. Still, even after being exposed to many cultures and cuisines all over the U.S. and abroad, I love, love, love salat Olivier.
In fact, I made a barrel to call my own the day after Thanksgiving using the leftover turkey (and setting aside a meatless batch for my vegetarian boyfriend). I ate it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late at night while watching the “Law & Order” reruns. When it was gone (too soon) I have lamented yet again the lack of the Russian-food delis where I live. For instance, in the Northeast Philadelphia, where my parents live, you can get Olivier in any Russian-speaking deli, made that very morning in the ambitiously sized batches. Here in New Orleans, if I want some, I better start chopping.
Salat Olivier’s posh beginnings date back to the 19th century. Like any story of a deserving subject, this one is full of intrigue and ideally deserves more space. Before the revolution of 1917, salat Olivier, the legend goes, contained a more refined list of ingredients. Concocted by a Frenchman named Lucien Olivier, who owned a popular restaurant called Hermitage in Moscow, the salad’s recipe was a secret but was said to have boasted crawfish tails, truffles, caviar, pheasant, veal tongue, capers, aspic, and other expensive and difficult to obtain ingredients that varied seasonally. The recipe for the salad’s Provençal-type dressing was also jealously guarded by its author.
The salad’s secret recipe was eventually stolen by a devious Russian chef who had worked for Olivier, Ivan Ivanov. Eventually Mr. Ivanov had branched out and started serving his own version at another restaurant, Moskva (Moscow), presenting the salad as Stolichnyj (“The Capital”). Later, popularized versions of the salad had surfaced all over, sometimes called Kupecheskij (“The Merchant”), or, simply, salat a la Russe (“The Russian salad”). In the all-encompassing cookbook, Kulinariya (published in 1955), that I have inherited from my grandmother, the salad still goes by Stolichnyj, and calls for bird meat.
In Soviet times, such delights as capers, pheasant and truffles became unattainable by the common citizens, and salat Olivier was down(graded) but certainly not out. Peasanted-up by potatoes, canned peas, cucumbers, carrots, mayo, whatever meat was at hand (kolbasa, or “sausage” that closely resembled bologna, was the cheapest option, I remember), the salad had enjoyed a long life of a respected holiday staple. I do not remember a single New Year’s Eve without it.
Nowadays, if you search the Web you’ll find many varied versions of salat Olivier. Some claim to be more traditional -- closer to Lucien Olivier’s original; some call for Dijon mustard, apples and other crazy stuff; yet other recipes stick to the devolved, “classic Soviet” version. In better restaurants in Russia, some adventurous chefs update the salad with such high-end ingredients as marinated gourmet mushrooms, truffle mayo, champignons, crab, and, inexplicably, pineapple. The Eastern European cookbook I have at home, penned by a bunch of non-Eastern Europeans, offers a version that calls for juniper berries, “two young grouse or partridges,” and yes, Dijon mustard. The effort, lavishly photographed on a bed of lettuce, looks, though appetizing, like nothing I grew up with.
I’ll leave you with my mom’s recipe, which does not contain onions or dill, but other than that sticks to the Sovetskij variant (the “Soviet version”) pretty closely:
Ingredients
5 potatoes
4 eggs
3 carrots
1 pickle
3 cucumbers
1 can of green peas
1 pound of boiled meat (chicken, turkey, bologna)
Mayo to taste
Pepper to taste
Salt to taste (optional)
Preparation
Boil the unpeeled potatoes, peeled carrots, and eggs. Cool.
Peel the potatoes. Finely chop potatoes, carrots, eggs, cucumbers, pickle, and meat. Mix the ingredients in a bowl.
Add the drained peas.
Dress with the amount of mayonnaise that seems reasonable to you.
Add pepper to taste.
Refrigerate for 1/2 hour before serving.
Mom Tips:
1. To prevent the salad from becoming runny gently wipe excess moisture from the ingredients (peas and cucumbers in particular) with a paper towel.
2. It’s OK to vary the number or pickles and cucumbers, just keep the pickle-to-cucumber ratio 1:3.
3. Don’t overboil the carrots and the potatoes -- they should be hard, not mushy.
4. Mom swears pepper alone would suffice (I do add salt in mine).
Related Links:
Salat Olivier is important enough to get its own Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_salad
