Jellied fish and dumplings: what to cook for Maslenitsa besides pancakes

The Bible of old Moscow life is considered to be the “Summer of the Lord” by Ivan Shmelev. There you can also find a colorful description of the Maslenitsa feast:

“Behind the ear and pies – again and again pancakes. Pancakes with baking. Behind them is aspic, again pancakes, already with double baking. Behind them are steam sturgeon, pancakes with baked bread. A bream of unusual size, with fungi, with porridge … seven-corner navy, with Belozersky smelt in breadcrumbs, poured with mushroom sour cream … milk pancakes, light, pancakes with testicles … still boiled fish with zander caviar, fried … orange jelly, almond-vanilla ice cream…”.

What immediately catches your eye when reading this menu? Firstly, not a single meat dish, secondly, a wide variety of fish dishes, and thirdly, a variety of dairy products. Everything is easy to explain here: Pancake Week is the last week before Lent, and it was also called “meatless” (that is, without meat), as well as Cheese Week. The essence of the name is that people are starting to prepare for Lent, they are already refusing meat, but they are still eating fish, eggs and dairy products in large quantities. Therefore, the feasts of the Maslenitsa week were built mainly on fish dishes.

“Pancakes with red and white fish, with caviar, with herring, with sour cream. But they never ate pancakes with jam, honey or something sweet. This is how my grandmother cooked, and she was a real Muscovite, she was born in Moscow in 1882, ”one of the interlocutors of MK shared his memories.

Interestingly, almost verbatim confirmation of the same thesis can be found in the “Memoirs” of Anastasia Tsvetaeva, another Muscovite of the century before last, who was born in 1894 and described the Maslenitsa of her childhood: “Pancakes were baked, and then with bridges, from the kitchen to the house, throwing a shawl, the maid hurried with a mountain of pancakes, airy and oily coming off each other on the table. We counted how many pieces we would eat, who had more. Melted butter in a bowl, sour cream, herring, caviar. They poured some wine into the water for us.”

Well, those who want to try something new (or just don’t intend to stand at the stove for hours, turning thin pancakes one after another) can cook something else. Anything that looks like pancakes, but is not pancakes, is suitable – cheesecakes, pancakes, American or Japanese plump pancakes, Belarusian potato pancakes. All of them are round, and they do not require extra expenses, so traditions will be observed.

Ivan Shmelev colorfully describes fish dishes – here are bream, and saffron cod, and sturgeon, and fish soup, and pies (pies with fish filling), and aspic fish. If you adapt these traditions in a modern way, then a dish that is perfect for Maslenitsa is snack rolls of pancakes stuffed with salted red fish, cream cheese, cucumber and avocado. All the basic requirements are met: there are pancakes, and dairy products, and fish, and no meat – everything is in the tradition of Cheese Week.

For most modern people, jellied fish is associated mainly with the New Year’s feast – the traditions of the Soviet era and especially the film “Irony of Fate” should be thanked for this. However, Maslenitsa is a good reason to look deeper into the history of everyday life. Sea fish is a traditional dish that perfectly matches the Cheese Week. Here is a simple recipe for fish aspic:

1. Choose the fish you like. Almost any will do: aspic can be prepared from both pike perch and trout, salmon, or even inexpensive cod. If you are using whole fish, be sure to gut it. You can buy fillets.

2. Dip the fish in water, add salt and bring to a boil. Be sure to remove the foam! Otherwise, the broth will turn cloudy. After boiling, reduce the heat and leave the fish broth under the lid for 20-30 minutes. Do not cook too long, otherwise the pieces of fish will fall apart.

3. Remove the fish from the broth and carefully divide into even pieces, freeing them from bones and scales. The pieces should be large enough.

4. Put the pieces of fish in the form in which you will prepare the aspic. You can decorate it with circles of boiled carrots, canned green peas, circles of boiled eggs.

5. Dissolve the gelatin in the broth according to the instructions on the package (it may differ for gelatin from different manufacturers). You can also add special seasoning for fish.

6. Gently pour the broth over the fish. It is best to use a ladle, and not pour over the edge, otherwise the ingredients beautifully laid out in the dish will “float”.

7. Leave the aspic on the balcony or in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours.

In addition, among the traditional Shrovetide dishes, one can name those that include cheese and cottage cheese – for example, cheesecakes or dumplings with cottage cheese. Another original solution is to bake a bannitsa pie stuffed with salted cheese and cottage cheese. This is a dish of Balkan cuisine, reminiscent of khachapuri. For its preparation, store-bought puff pastry is quite suitable, the main thing is to roll it out as thin as possible. The filling can be prepared from several varieties of cheese mixed with cottage cheese – suluguni, feta cheese, Adyghe cheese and classic Russian are suitable. You can also add greens. The filling is evenly distributed over the dough layer, and then twisted into a roll, coated with an egg and baked in the oven for 30-40 minutes.