Herring in a Fur Coat
Italians grew up with ai frutti di mare ; the French with boeuf bourguignon . My Iron Curtain childhood is personified by Herring in a Fur Coat — a pickled herring dressed in seven layers of pungent veggie swagger. Nothing captures the kitsch of Soviet life — the outrageously tacky, overdone aesthetic — better than this playful dish. Its taste and colour stood in stark contradiction to the drabness of daily life. Naively optimistic, desperate to inject brightness into the shadeless Soviet grey, people served this magenta salad as the centrepiece of any gathering or celebration. The Empire may be gone, but this souvenir from the Motherland endures. From communal flats in Kyiv and Moscow to New York, Melbourne, and Monte Carlo — where the people go, Herring in a Fur Coat goes too. It doesn't sound promising. Pickled herring layered with onion and dill beneath grated beetroot, potato, carrot, egg, and homemade mayonnaise shouldn't work. Yet somehow it does. It's earthy, salty,...