A member of our church, an ordained pastor and co-worker with Perry, took a trip to Russia this past winter to visit the Presbyterian churches that have taken root. Today at church he was going to present a PowerPoint presentation of photos he took while he was there and talk about his trip to members of our church who were interested. While Perry spearheaded the organization of this event he brought up our theme nights idea from outings with Sarah. He thought it would be fun to have Russian food while we talked about Russia. Of course, no one in our church is Russian that we know of, and I was clueless as to Russian food, other than borscht, which I have no idea how to make and I don't even think I've ever eaten. The researcher side of Perry kicked in and he found, via Google, not only Russian grocery stores but Bosnian cafes (in case we couldn't figure out the Russian food), in a small suburb of Louisville, called Buechel.
Yesterday in our hot car (no air-conditioning) we drove to this small suburb trying to find the Sarajevo Cafe. We never did find the cafe, but instead we found The Golden Key, a Russian deli/grocery store, where Alex the proprietor helped us figure out what we could reasonably make and present to thirty people (and what we couldn't...the whole herring he deterred us from). He enthusiastically encouraged us to try Russian bologna (yum), Russian cheese (yum, yum) and some Russian hams (one was OK, the other not so much). The salami was definitely a go since I could smell it when we walked in. We also got lots of good bread, pumpernickel, Rhineland, and monastery dark rye. Next, Alex talked us into pelmini, sort of like Russia's version of perogies or ravioli. We got the potato with mushroom, pork, and veal. Alex said you serve these with sour cream, which we bought Russian style there. We also got two cans of smoked sardines and a recipe for Russian style sardine sandwiches. But, what do you do for dessert after all this. Russian cakes of course. We purchased two, drunken cherry and ambassador, both looked good but we weren't able to try them before hand.
After leaving the Golden Key, where Alex had plied us with lots of cold cuts, we snuck around the corner to the Bosna-Mak for baklava and a slice of strawberry cream cake. We also got an Orangina, which I haven't seen in stores for years, and an odd orange drink from Macedonia. The Macedonian drink tasted like liquid orange tic tacs, good but really sweet.
Today I dug out several scarves and a nesting doll that I had received from a Russian pen-pal when I was in high school. You never know when old souvenirs like that will come in handy. I didn't bring my Russian in-laid wood jewelry box, since I use it every day and has earrings over flowing out of it. I also got to retell stories of my dad studying abroad in Georgia, Teblisi in the early 70s. When he came back from Russia I was conceived. Thanks to Russia the world has me!
On to church we went armed with our Russian fare. During the service I set out the cold cuts on nice plates, boiled eggs for the sardine sandwiches, boiled pelmini, cut bread, and got ready for a Russian luncheon. Several people brought more food, potato salad, Hungarian cucumber salad, a leaf lettuce salad, borscht (which I was too much of a wimp to try to make), Hungarian walnut cookies, strawberries with angel food cake and whip cream, chocolate cake, brownies, and so forth. I'm always leery that we'll run out of food at these events (or there won't be enough that people like...especially today with the odd assortment of food). But low and behold everyone seemed to enjoy the food, several exclaiming that the sardines were the best they ever had. I stuck with the cold cuts and salads.
The desserts were wonderful. I'm thinking a Russian birthday cake wouldn't be awful with the really rich cream between layers of cake and icing. The drunken cherry was excellent with the cherries and rum flavoring. The ambassador was covered in a hard shell of chocolate with layers of chocolate cream. I may not be a lover of sardines but cake is another story.
Theme lunch seems to be a success. The presentation and PowerPoint were great with history of Russia and what is going on there now. Alex at the Golden Key did a great job pointing us in the right direction.
To read about Jerry's trip click here: http://wwwpcusaorgpcnewsrussia.blogspot.com/
To read about this block in Buechel, see "Ethnic Buechel" at:
To visit The Golden Key International Food Market
3821 Bardstown Road
Louisville, Kentucky
-- Stephanie
1 comment:
We only had real borcht one time--made by Mark's classmate at UM--a Russian American woman from CA.
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