The food speaks

The modern Russian salad

My stepfather loves food. Although we were a humble family, food was always abundant even if that meant not paying the telephone bill our borrowing money from a friend. My mother was definitively the best cook at home, but I always thought my stepfather’s Russian salad was unmatched by any of my mom’s salads. It would only be prepared for especial occasions, proudly announced by stepfather “I will make a Russian salad for our nephew’s baptism”.

In Venezuela, things are often named after nationalities, but most likely that doesn’t mean that they are actually related to that place. For example “Russian hide and seek” involves kicking the first person to be found and “Chinese chop suei” is completely unknown to my Chinese friends in Australia.

Inside the Hermitage restaurant, 1864

I was surprised to find out that “Russian salad” is actually a Russian salad. Originally created by Lucien Olivier, the Salat Olivye was the signature dish of the Hermitage, a famous Moscow restaurant during the 1860s. However, in the post-revolutionary Russia and subsequent times, many of the original fancy ingredients were substituted by cheaper versions: grouse was replaced with chicken and crayfish by eggs, for example. The modern Olivier Salad only somewhat resembles the original recipe, but it is the version commonly known as Russian salad around the world.

Russian winter

For me, eating what people would normally eat is a crucial ritual to begin to understand a place one is visiting. I find it fascinating how the dishes whisper a story of my surroundings. They speak of geography, the potatoes and pickled vegetables in the Olivye tell a story about the harsh Russian winter. Their evolution in time, from fine ingredients to cheaper ones, telling the story of the fallen Russian empire. Sometimes they whisper their history far away and they end up on a table, thousands of kilometres away from its place of birth, served on a special occasion on a modest Venezuelan table.