Som s beloy fasolyu: Catfish as served in Russia

My family has hosted exchange students for as long as I can remember.  It was great, because we weren't really able to travel ourselves, but we were able to, through hosting, bring the world to our home.  A couple years ago (gosh, it's already been about 3 years since she left!), we hosted a student from Russia.  We got along pretty well, even before she arrived.  We exchanged emails and talked about what we enjoyed.  And she apparently took notes, because she arrived with a tea set and a cookbook--Culinaria Russia--for me, both of which were a bit of a trick.  I'm not sure how to pack a set of porcelain so that it can survive baggage handlers at 4 or 5 airports.  And the cookbook was the envy of all the other exchange students; they'd sought such an item in vain.  Something about Russians don't need recipes for local food in a foreign language.  Go figure.

But anyway, the cookbook is great.  It's divided into regions (some of which are only historically part of Russia), and then within each of those regions, there is discussion of the local food and the customs associated with it.  It's partly a cookbook, but also a scholarly exploration of the people and places behind the cooking.  Fan-tastic!

The following is a slight alteration of recipe from the Russia portion of the book, for catfish with white beans.

Som s beloy fasolyu
1 C dried white beans
salt
2 catfish fillets
1 onion
1 celery stalk
1 carrot
1 garlic clove
1/2 Tbsp butter
1/2 Tbsp oil
pepper
crusty bread

Soak the beans overnight, drain, then cook in salted, boiling water until tender.  (This will take some time, plan on it taking all afternoon; if they are cooked too soon, it's Ok, just drain them and set them aside until you need them.)

Cut the onion in half, and place one half in a pan with the catfish.  Roughly chop or break into pieces the celery and carrot, and add those to the pan.  Cover everything with water, add a bit of salt to taste, and bring to a gentle boil.  Simmer until the veggies have softened and the fish has fully cooked.  Remove the fish from the resultant broth, cut into pieces and set it aside.

Dice the other half of the onion and mince the garlic.  Over medium-high heat, melt the butter with the oil, and sauté the onion and garlic.  Take a small handful of the beans (about 3 Tbsp), smash them, and add them to the onion and garlic.  (Really, you can add the beans and then smash them.)  Gently fold in the fish pieces and remaining beans.  Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve over toasted slices of good bread.

I've omitted from the original recipe some fresh parsley and parsley root, because I wasn't able to find those at the grocery store (I've never seen parsley root, and they were out of parsley sprigs.)  I've also heavily scaled down on everything but the beans.  This recipe fed myself and my husband with enough left over that I got two more lunches out of it.  Depending on the appetites of who you're serving, then, the recipe above serves 3 or 4 people.

I've always eaten catfish battered and fried and paired with something zingy or tangy to balance that muddy flavor they have.  This recipe (clearly) is different.   I really liked it.  Yes, you can still taste where the catfish was living, but the other flavors balance it out nicely rather than covering it up.  I was surprised how delicious I found it, especially given how few ingredients I seemed to have used.  Ultimately, I was only eating beans, fish, onion, and garlic, but it was rich and tasty, like comfort food without the guilt.

So thanks, Nan!  I have always loved the cookbook, and I think this recipe is fabulous.  I bet you'd just about die laughing at me trying to pronounce the Russian name.  

In a (strawberry) jam

Spring is coming upon us, and it's got me all excited about gardening, farmers' markets, and canning.  In keeping with that spirit, I'm looking back at last summer and the canning I wound up doing.  My mother-in-law, at that time, was working at Edible Arrangements, and they had a glut of super-ripe strawberries.  The problem for them, though, is that super-ripe is actually too ripe.  They need fruit that will keep for a couple days while they prep it, and a couple more after that while the customer snacks on the arrangement.  These strawberries were so ripe they had little more than a day before they spoiled.  Their store had a thing set up where they donated over-ripe fruit to the zoo (fruit bats gotta eat!), but they had so many strawberries the zoo couldn't even take them all.  And so my mother-in-law brought them home, we froze them temporarily, and then we canned them.  We canned A TON of strawberry jam/preserves using the following recipe, from Canning for a New Generation, a delightful book that I had found at my local library.  I loved it so much I bought myself a copy, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in canning-- it's good for novices, but full of recipes with unique twists, so even someone with more experience might find something new to try.

Strawberry Preserves (by Liana Krissoff)

3 lbs Strawberries

1 1/2 C Sugar
3 Tbsp lemon juice

Combine the strawberries and sugar overnight in a bowl to pull juice out of the berries.  If you've frozen the strawberries temporarily, you can skip this step, because the freezing will have lysed the cells and released the juices anyway.

Place the strawberries in a pan or stock pot, and bring to a simmer for about five minutes.  Pour everything into a colander to separate berries from juice.  Boil the juice  over high heat for about 15 minutes.  Return the berries to the juice, and add the lemon juice.  Simmer and stir for about 20 minutes.  Skim off foam, and place the resultant preserves in prepared half-pint jars*, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.  Process in boiling water for 5 minutes.

*Prepare jars by boiling while you're making the preserves.  Be sure to dip the lids in boiling water and clean the jar rims before processing as well. For the record, the jars in the photo at left are not half-pints.  They're 4-oz jars that make great gifts.



Now, preserves like this are frequently made with large bits of strawberries.  We used smaller bits of strawberries, thinking to make it more jam-like.  It worked to a point, but I reckon next time I'll partially puree some of the preserves as a further step toward the texture I'm looking for.  Want to kick the flavor up a notch?  Try adding a vanilla bean!  You can do this without throwing off the ratios necessary for proper preserving.  And if you have more jam than fits in your jars, pour it off into a bowl, let it set, and enjoy it right away.