To paraphrase the great Russian classic, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, I want to say: “What Russian does not like herring under a fur coat!” Indeed, not a single feast, our traditional one, can do without classical olivier and herring under a fur coat. And the holiday does not seem festive if there is no luxurious dish on the table, decorated with a flower of onions or apples, invitingly inviting you to certainly taste it, melting in its depths a delicate taste and an original combination of vegetables and herring.
I don’t know who invented this dish, but it was a great man! A substitute salad, the recipe of which, as it were, is most naturally passed on from generation to generation, is one of the main holiday dishes. Why festive? Yes, because the preparation of this culinary masterpiece requires a lot of time. After all, there will not always be a couple of extra hours on a weekday so you can spend it on removing large and small bones from herring, which, in fact, requires a recipe. Herring under a fur coat perfectly combines the mild taste of boiled vegetables and the sharpness and piquancy of herring. Perhaps this is the mystery of the popularity of this dish: the combination of different tastes in one dish makes a surprisingly harmonious impression.
The salad recipe “Herring under a fur coat” may slightly differ in different versions of different hostesses. But its base always remains salted herring, boiled potatoes, beets, carrots. Well, then it’s a flight of fancy and a matter of taste, because everyone has their own view on this universal recipe. Herring under a fur coat is sometimes cooked with the addition of onions. But, before putting onions in this salad, it must be blanched (scalded with boiling water) in order to leave the bitterness, and then sprinkled with lemon juice. After all, salted fish goes well with lemon, therefore, marinate the onion before adding it to the salad.
Experiment with ingredients if the recipe allows. Herring under a fur coat just has to conduct creative research, therefore, once again going to create a masterpiece, prepare for this a sour apple. It will give the dish piquancy and a subtle shade of taste, you will be surprised how harmoniously an ordinary apple can fit into this salad.
Some housewives believe that a herring under a fur coat necessarily requires finely chopped pickles. And, if during the tasting process, a small piece of a crisp cucumber gets on the tooth, it makes a splash! So, also stock up on high-quality pickled (not pickled) cucumbers, since this requires a recipe. Herring under a fur coat is especially good for those who know how to finely chop, because large pieces of vegetables or herring spoil the impression of a salad.
If you want, you can use a coarse grater, and then, starting to lay out the ingredients for the salad layer by layer, you simply rub the cooked vegetables over the dish in which you are going to serve herring under a fur coat. The exception, of course, is onions and herring: they need to be finely chopped into cubes.
So, all the preparatory work has been completed, the herring is finely chopped, the vegetables are boiled and peeled, we begin the assembly.
Grate boiled potatoes to the bottom of the salad bowl, then lay onions, followed by a layer of herring, then grate the apple, then the beets, and finally the carrots. If you still have all the ingredients for the salad, put them again, in the same order, into the salad bowl. Do not forget to coat each layer with mayonnaise, this is an indispensable condition for the juiciness of the dish. Do not overdo it with mayonnaise, so that its pronounced taste does not clog the taste of the main dish. And if you accomplish a feat and prepare homemade mayonnaise instead of store mayonnaise, or make a delicious dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, egg yolks and spices, then the price will not be for your golden handles that work wonders!