New Year's Recipes

In a previous post, Barb Wieser shared the preparations for a New Year's Eve dinner in Crimea.  Her friend Lenura is a marvelous cook, who is so instinctive that she usually works without recipes.  But Barb took careful notes on the feast's preparation,  so we're happy to share the delicious recipes with our readers.  Thanks again, Barb and Lenura, for all your efforts!

New Year’s Dinner Menu

Stuffed Fish

Dolmades (stuffed peppers)

Oven baked beef the “French way”

Olivie Salad

Shuba Salad

Pomegranate Bracelet Salad

Side plates: Sliced bread with butter and red caviar; black olives; orange and kiwi slices

Recipes
 

Stuffed Fish:

1. Gut a large fish and peel off the skin, leaving it intact. Cut off head and save.

2. Chop up the fish meat and add a few chunks of beef and salo. Run through a grinder along with two heads of garlic cloves.

3. Mix the ground meat and garlic with 2 eggs, mayonnaise, flour, salt and pepper.

4. Stuff mixture into the fish skin and sew up. Arrange fish on a cooking platter with head.

5. Bake for about one hour at medium heat. Slice and serve.
 
Dolmades (stuffed peppers):

1.     Grind up 1 kg. of meat (mutton or beef) to make farsh (ground meat). Mix with ½ kg. chopped onions and 1 cup rice, rinsed.

2.     When tomatoes are in season, chop up tomatoes and add to mixture.

3.     Stuff mixture into peppers which have been deseeded and tops cut off. We used peppers Lenura had frozen from earlier in the year. Worked well except our fingers froze stuffing the peppers.

4.     Pack tightly upright in a large soup pot. Cover with salted water and cook until done. Serve with sour cream.
 
Oven baked beef the “French way”

1.     Thinly slice beef, salt and put in covered bowl in refrigerator for several hours.

2.     Slice 4 large onions and layer on large baking pan.

3.     Layer meat on top on the onions. Sprinkle with a package of spices for meat (not sure what they were, but you could use anything that works for beef).

4.     Peel and thinly slice two potatoes and layer on top of the meat.

5.     Layer 400 g. mushrooms on top—use very small mushrooms so they can be left whole, or slice if needed.

6.     Add a layer of cheese and bake until done.

Olivie Salad

Chop finely cooked carrots and potatoes. Mix with chopped hard boiled eggs, some kind of meat—usually ham or sausage, but we used chicken--, chopped pickles, a can of peas, and mayonnaise and salt and pepper.

 Shuba Salad: (also called Fish under a Fur coat)

1.     Boil 2 beets, 2 potatoes, 1 carrot; cool and peel.

2.     Gut and chop up one salted raw fish (herring)

3.     Layer to make salad—Grated potatoes, mayonnaise, fish, mayonnaise, grated carrots, mayonnaise, grated beets, and top with layer of mayonnaise. Decorate with mustard.

Pomegranate Bracelet Salad:

1.     Finely chop up 2 onions and ½ kg. mushrooms. Saute in butter.

2.     Boil 2 skinless chicken breasts and cool and shred meat.

3.     Grate and peel 4-6 beets. Mix with 6 minced garlic cloves, a handful of finely chopped black prunes, mayonnaise.

4.     To make the salad, put an overturned glass into the center of a large plate to create the ring. Layer shredded chicken, mushrooms and onion mixture, mayonnaise, the beet mixture.

5.     Cover the ring with 2 cups finely chopped walnuts and pomegranate seeds (one whole pomegranate).