Candidate for the Best Russian Food: Russian Korean Carrot Salad

December 3, 2009

Ok so this competition for the best Russian food has been pretty pathetic. Probably that is 50% my fault, 50% the fault of Russian food for not providing many good candidates (other than pirog, blini, tvorog, shchi, mushroom-flavored potato chips…I guess I’ll post about those later). I feel, as of this moment, that I should close this competition after this post, because it is hard to imagine I could like anything more than I like Russian Korean Carrot Salad–even Shtolle Pirog which is like, my favorite food.

You are probably wondering what could I possibly mean by Russian Korean Carrot Salad?

Rorean Salad

Russian Korean Carrot Salad is a sweet, spicy, tangy, juicy marinaded carrot salad. In Rusian it’s just called Korean-style salad. It is sooo good! How great to have a salad that doesn’t involve any mayonnaise or potatoes? Or canned peas? Or tongue or similar product? (Nothing–or not much–against Domashniy Salat, which has all four plus pickles!) So refreshing. I feel like I cannot get enough of this stuff.

Why Korean? Apparently the name is a relic of Stalinism, when all the Korean Russians were moved from the far East to the far West of the nation. Stalin really loved moving ethnic populations around. He did it with the Jews, the Buddhists, like a million other kinds of people. And all we got out of it was this delicious carrot salad.

Here is a recipe (that I scalped from this website that I’m going to start reading immediately):

Make this salad a day before you plan to eat it. It needs to marinade overnight.
You will need about 1 pound of carrots, cleaned and peeled, the longer the better. Use a mandolin to slice them into thin, spaghetti-like strands. Place in a large bowl. Mince 2 garlic cloves; add to the carrots.
Sauté a small, diced onion in about ¼ cup of sunflower oil until the onion is soft and translucent. Add 2 tbs. of whole coriander seeds and cayenne pepper to taste (I used about ¼ tsp.) toward the end of the cooking time. When the onion is done, immediately add it and any leftover oil to the carrots; toss.
In a bowl, mix 3 tbs. of white vinegar, 2 tsp. of sugar, and 1 tsp. of salt. Add dressing to the salad, and mix well. You can also another handful of whole coriander seeds. Refrigerate 4-5 hours; preferably overnight.