Layered Herring Salad--Not Only for a Snowy Day

It was supposed to be a different post and a different recipe, but a snow blizzard came and my plan had to change.

Let's say that you do not have the best of days and in fact it is one of those when nothing works or makes sense. And then comes the snow and makes everything even worse. It falls fast and freezes everything, including the electricity lines, which in my quaint neighborhood are not buried under the ground. So, obviously, after a couple of warnings with lights going on and off, just before midnight, you have a complete power outage.

You wake up in the morning in a cold room. No cup of freshly brewed coffee, which is a highlight of every morning. No warm pancakes for kids. Your internet connection is dead, which means no access to the blog, and soon enough your phone also dies. And no one knows how long this is going to last.

Having not much to do, I took a package of sad-looking herring fillets out of my rapidly defrosting refrigerator, laid them on the snow and started shooting photos. Herring salad was on my weekend menu, but I was forced to use them sooner.

But, suddenly, after "just" 10 hours power is back and the sun is up in the sky. What a beautiful day! All the problems dissolve in a cup of hot coffee. It turns out we do not need that much to be happy, and we discover that when the obvious, small things that we take for granted are taken away from us.

It was already too late to start making fresh bread for lunch. Instead I made a cold herring salad and took a slice of bread from the freezer. It is a simple salad, made of ingredients that are easily available all year around. One extra thing you really need is a glass dish for attractive presentation.

Layered Herring Salad

Ingredients:
1 pack (12 oz) Matjes herring fillets in oil--about 6-8 fillets,
1 large onion,
3 beets roasted or cooked (canned can be used as a substitute),
3 medium carrots cooked,
3 hard boiled eggs,
1 cup mayonnaise,
1 cup chopped fresh parsley,
salt and pepper.

Preparation:
1. Drain herrings from oil, cut into small cubes, and lay on the bottom of a glass dish.
2. Chop onion and put on top of herrings.
3. Grate beets on a large hole grater and put on top of onion.
4. Grate carrots the same way as beets and put them on to of beets.
5. Cut eggs into small cubes and cover the beets. Salt and pepper them generously on top.
6. Cover the top (egg) layer with mayonnaise.
7. Make the last layer by covering mayonnaise with chopped parsley.

While serving this salad you must reach to the bottom of the dish, so the ingredients from all layers get scooped.

Mix gently all the layers on the plate and serve it with whole wheat bread, while looking through the windows at the beautiful winter scenery.

Enjoy the snow, electricity, and the herring salad!

Traditional Polish Beef Roulades--Foreign Guests' Favorites

This simple dish is a mainstay of Polish cuisine. Almost every reputable restaurant has it on its menu and every Polish hostess can make it, and often serves it for weekend dinners. Beef roulades are called "zrazy" in Polish and are made of onion, cucumber pickles, and strips of bacon wrapped in slices of beef. They are fried until brown all around and cooked in a sauce that is thickened with flour and cream and often spiced with dried porcini.

Whenever foreigners visiting Poland ask about the "must" of Polish cuisine, beef roulades are probably one of the first items to be named. If they are made properly and served with some of the special noodles, they are almost always very well-remembered by our foreign guests.

I heard that a similar dish is also known in German cuisine, but there is a difference in the preparation of the sauce and in the stuffing. We stuff our roulades with cucumbers pickled in brine rather than cornichons. I would not like to argue who makes better beef roulades but my German cousin-in-law claims that the Polish ones are the best.

Beef roulades can be served with potatoes or rice, but they taste absolutely best when they are accompanied by noodles or dumplings--yogurt dumplings, egg noodles, plain spaetzle, or traditional Polish smooth potato dumplings, which are featured in my previous post. Delicate dumplings and noodles bring out the savory flavor of the fried, almost dark brown, beef roulades.

As many red meats in Poland, they are traditionally served with red cabbage salad or beet salad. The advantage of this dish over many others is that beef roulades can be made at least a day ahead. When they are fully cooked, and stay overnight in their own sauce, they taste even better when you serve them reheated on the next day.

Beef Roulades
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
8 slices round steak, about 1/2 inch thick,
8 strips smoked bacon,
one medium onion cut in 8 half-quarters,
2 cucumbers in brine, or baby dills,
8 pieces of European whole wheat bread (optional),
salt and pepper,
4 tbsp vegetable oil,
1 tsp flour,
1/2 cup sour cream.

Preparation:
1. Pound beef steaks until they are 1/8 inch thick, salt and pepper on both sides.
2. Place bacon, cucumber, and onion (and bread) on each piece of beef.

3. Roll up the beef slices and secure them with wooden toothpicks, or wrap them with threads.
4. Heat the oil in a deep frying pan and fry the beef roulades until brown on each side.
5. Cover with water and cook for 30-40 minutes, until the meat becomes soft.
6. Mix flour with sour cream, add a little bit of sauce from the pot and pour the whole mixture over the roulades. Let it all cook for another 20 minutes.

Serve with yogurt dumplings, smooth potato dumplings, or any kind of noodles.

Smooth Potato Dumplings--My Potato Crush

Two anecdotes come to my mind when I think about this dish. Not so long ago, at a party, I was having a conversation with a nice lady when the subject drifted toward food. "Oh, I love food" she declared at one moment. Since the conversation took a very interesting turn for me and could lead to an exchange of original recipes, I quickly admitted "I love food too". Then the lady looked at me with amusement "You love food? I love food!!!" she said exposing her curvy silhouette. "I have 20 cookbooks, I cook and I eat" she continued. "Well, I also have 20 cookbooks, I cook, and eat" I said "and I write a food blog". My last argument made her curious and she promised to check out my blog. Recently, again at a party, some hugged me and feeling my body asked "I know that you cook, but do you eat?"

These conversations were rather funny and flattering, since I cook and I really eat what I cook. And these potato dumplings are the best proof. I am probably going to sound totally uncivilized confessing that, but I usually eat about ten of them at once. I love their smoothness and a sort of gummy texture and absolutely cannot resist them, especially if they drip with dark and spicy sauces.

They are called Silesian dumplings and the recipe originally comes from Silesia. And since Silesia has been influenced by Czech, German, and Polish culinary traditions, I guess there must be different variations of them all over Central Europe. Beside their taste I also love how easy they are to make: only two ingredients are required.

Potato dumplings taste best with meat (veal or beef) sauces, and taste particularly well with beef roulades--this recipe will appear in the next post--and accompanied by side dishes made of beets or red cabbage.

Smooth Potato Dumplings
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
2 lbs potatoes,
about a cup of potato starch (corn starch can be a substitute).

Preparation:
1. Cook peeled potatoes with salt, drain them, and cool completely.
2. Smash them into a puree using potato presser.
3. Transfer the puree onto a large cutting board or plate and form a flat disk.
4. Divide the disk into quarters, and remove one of them. Fill up the remaining empty quarter with potato starch--see picture.

5. Put all potatoes in a bowl together with starch and quickly make a dough.
6. Dust your hands with starch and form smalls balls by rolling the dough--about 2 inches in diameter, finishing each one with a small dot inside.

7. Boil water in a large pot with a tbsp of salt. Throw the dumplings in and cook them for about 3 minutes from the time they rise to the top.
8. Drain them on a colander and transfer to a serving platter.

Always serve with meat sauces.