The Salad They Didn't Like in the Kremlin

The Salad they didn’t like 

in the Kremlin

In addition to traditional Russian cuisine, 70 years of Soviet power in Russia brought a new phenomenon, Soviet cuisine. If the former could boast thousands of years of history, the latter had much less time to develop. For this reason it took on board recipes for dishes both from Europe and from other Soviet nationalities. 

And because Soviet cuisine was meant for the ordinary Soviet man, unpampered by creature comforts, all these recipes were considerably simplified. For instance, if fish salads in some European countries took several hours to make, the most common Russian version could be prepared in just 15 minutes.

This dish has the rather pompous name Kremlyovsky Salat (Kremlin salad), possibly be-cause one of its ingredients is salmon, generally considered, along with its (red) caviar, a sign of luxury in Russia as in the West. The main group of people in the USSR who could afford this kind of luxury were the Party bosses, but in the Kremlin people didn’t like Kremlyovsky. Of course, the country’s leaders ate both salmon and fish salads in large quantities at their banquets, but these dishes were much more elaborate. 

Several leaders were annoyed to learn that such an ordinary salad could be worthy of the highest honor of carrying the name of their headquarters. There’s a story about how the Soviet Politburo’s ideology watchdog, Mikhail Suslov, once decided to try Kremlyovsky in an ordinary Soviet restaurant. He like it so much that he decided to include it in the menus at meetings with foreign delegations, but then, discovering that it was made of tinned fish and rice, he lost his temper and even demanded that the name be changed. However, one of the resourceful staff of the restaurant convinced comrade Suslov that the name of the salad had no political colors but was only so called because of the similarity between the pink color of the salad and the red walls of the Kremlin. The name was kept.

Kremlyovsky was served in middle-ranking restaurants and cheap canteens, and in Soviet homes on holidays, if, of course, there was any tinned salmon available in the shops (it was in very short supply in the last years of the Soviet Union).

Now this is no longer a problem, and Kremlyovsky graces the festive dinner tables of most Russians, though few remember that this salad, made with tinned salmon and rice, has such an important-sounding name. So don’t be surprised if your Russian friends call Kremlyovsky simply fish and rice salad, Far East salad, prazdnichny (festive) or something else. And don’t look for Kremlyovsky in restaurant menus, it’s almost certain to be there under another name and you probably won’t be able to guess which. Also, contemporary chefs try to complicate the recipe by adding delicacies like turtle meat, black caviar or even papaya.

The beauty of  Kremlyovsky is that it can be made by someone with no culinary talent whatsoever. Try it for yourself.

— Yelena Utenkova

Ingredients

15 oz. canned salmon

7 oz. rice

3 medium-sized onions

1 hard-boiled egg

mayonnaise,

 salt to taste

chopped parsley,

 dill, green onions

Boil the rice until soft, cool till luke warm and mix with the fish, mashed with its own juice. Put a saucepan of water on to boil, chop the onions as finely as possible and place in a cullender, then pour on the boiling water. Add the onions to the salad, then mayonnaise and salt and mix thoroughly.

Kremlyovsky is served heaped up in a salad bowl. Add the egg (grated), parsley, dill and green onions for decoration.