Sweet Memories and Russian Salad

Memories.

This coronavirus crisis has given me a lot of time to explore my food (and other) memories. I imagine you have done a lot of that, too.

On a lazy afternoon recently, I asked myself where I would most like to revisit (and dine) if I had unlimited options. I settled upon a world trip that would take me back to Cairo (Egypt), Berenty Lemur Preserve ( Madagascar),  Srinagar (Kashmir, India), Yangon (Myanmar), the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador)  and Istanbul (Turkey). Whew! That would be some wonderful itinerary! And, just think of the food.

Considering that itinerary, one of my fondest food memories is the restaurant in a magical hotel in the heart of Istanbul, the Pera Palas. Built in the 1892, the hotel served as the eastern terminus for travelers on the Orient Express. Luminaries like Ataturk, Agatha Christie and Ernest Hemingway slept there. I wrote about the hotel in 2015 when I posted a baklava recipe. You can find the post here if you would like to read more about the hotel. (The baklava recipe is pretty spectacular, too.) Clearly, I was pining for the Russian salad even then. Now, five years later, I’ve tweaked  a recipe that is pretty spot on for the Pera Palas’ dish-of-my-dreams.

This salad is a traditional New Year’s dish for Russians. It’s origins can be traced back to a Belgian chef, Lucien Olivier, who operated a popular restaurant in Moscow in the 19th Century. That restaurant, The Hermitage, became the place to dine and enjoy the house’s signature salad, aptly named the Olivier salad.  Olivier struggled to keep the salad recipe secret. His salad featured black caviar, capers, game hens and potatoes as key ingredients and was dressed in a creamy “Olivier dressing.” Recreating the recipe for the dressing became an obsession for restaurant patrons. Reportedly, Olivier’s recipe was stolen by his sous chef who was able to analyze Olivier’s mise en place one day when the chef stepped away and left his personal kitchen (and recipe) vulnerable. Olivier’s supporters, however, always claimed that something was missing in the stolen version. Some said it was Kabul sauce in the dressing. Kabul sauce. Hmmm.

Over the years, the recipe has been recreated in restaurants and households across the world. The Turkish version is called Rus salatsi. That is what we enjoyed at the cavernous Pera Palas dinning room those many years ago.

Here’s the recipe adjusted to fit my memories. I have to confess, though, that Instacart let me down. They couldn’t find that Kabul sauce. Damn.

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I looked at a lot of different Russian salad recipes for inspiration. Most recently, I was inspired by this recipe: Ensalada Rusa.