Few years ago my friends served me
salad which they officially call Ivanovs' salad (Ivanovs being our
mutual friends). Upon gazing at the ingredients I was compelled to
ask why they dubbed this particular dish thusly, and they explained
that they were never served this salad before they came to Ivanovs
for a meal. This little story made me laugh, because everyone in
Moscow (from whence both Ivanovs and yours truly originally hail)
made this salad (providing, of course, that the ingredients were
available); my friends, on the other hand, came from Leningrad and
Kiev, where, I guess, this culinary offering was not in vogue.
That, as Sir Percy would say, was just
the title. Fast-forward to today; I decided to make myself a salad
to break my fast, and for whatever reasons, decided to make
“Ivanonvs'” salad – or, as we called it, radish salad, the
ingredients for which are radishes, cucumbers, scallions, hard-boiled
eggs, and mayo. And that's how fun started.
First, I realized that I was too lazy
to go back for scallions when I was in the story, so I had to
substitute it with an onion. Second, I saw a beautiful package of
mushrooms in my shopping bag – well, it's winter, and we need extra
vitamin D, so mushrooms followed. Steps 3 and 4 were uneventful: a
bunch of radishes and 4 cucumbers. Then I realized that I was very
low on eggs, and only had 3 instead of 5 I usually put. In order to
compensate for the lack of protein, I decided to add 3 little cans of
tuna which were hanging around since summer and munchkins' visit.
And as I was opening tuna, making sure that Sniffles does not get
into it (for his own protection), I remembered that a few kosher
establishments served something vaguely similar (minus the radishes)
and called it nicoise salad. Of course, kosher establishments
usually use loose interpretations of the original recipe, but who
cares. So, I topped my creation with a jar of black olives, and on
top of the generous helping of the mayonnaise added the horse radish
sauce.
The results, my friends, were
surprisingly good, and I decided to share with you the recipe of this
particular cooking experiment.
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