Rachael Ray

I was originally drawn to the Russian meat-pies called kotlety because of their name. Their name is Russian for “cutlets” and of course my old pen-name was “Mr. Cutlets.” Not that they are actually cutlets, of course. Pounded-out planes of fatless meat, floured and breaded and fried up in a pan are what we tend to think of as cutlets; and for my part, I’m always disappointed with them. They’re always crispy but tasteless, a fact that Italians implicitly admit to when the plop salad on top of them. Who would put salad on top of something crispy that actually tasted good? But I’m getting off the track. Russian kotlety are in fact closer to meat loaves than to cutlets — cakes of ground chicken or veal meat emulsifed with some salt or a little parsley and garlic. They sound like they ought to be bland indeed, but for some reason I can’t quite fathom they are always intensely

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Or at least some varieties are. I took a walk down to my two favorite Russian appetizing stores yesterday: the M&I Market and A Taste of Russia, in Brighton Beach. I had one thing in mind: meat cakes! There are six different kinds, all vaguely obolong, and all made from chicken or veal. The white meal kotlety from A Taste of Russia were by far the best of the lot, springy and juicy and light as a feather. They also had some kind of magical umami flavor I couldn’t put my finger on. Which is about what you’d expect from a mysterious Russian meat cake you had to point at to get. The dark meat ones from the same shop were the worst of the samples; they tasted like Ikea meatballs that had been defrosted for a week. (And believe me, I know what that tastes like.) At the M&I Market a block or so down Brighton Beach Avenue, I found a chicken loaf about the size of a Nerf football, which came wrapped up in wax paper and which had precisely the same kind of mealy / gelatinous texture as the Jewish dish called derma kishka. Kishka isn’t something you’d like; it basically consists of meal, beef tallow, and ground carrots. I enjoy it when it’s fried up in butter. Anyway, the Russian chicken-kishka is good fried up, but it’s great cold, with a little coarse salt on it. A fine football food, if you happen to have a sharp enough knife and a cup of hot black coffee present to cut the gelatin. I also bought some hunter sausage, some smoked hunter sausage, various bacons, and a few other treats too evil to boast of here. But maybe I’ll talk about them in my next post.