There are no doubts that Jewish food is absolutely well cooked in families with Jewish roots. Such an example is Alissa Timoshkina, who moved to London with her parents when she was 15. Her father's family comes from the Russian Far East, and her mother's heritage includes Jewish Ukrainians.
Her great grandmother, Rosalia, was a Holocaust survivor in Ukraine, and an evacuee to Siberia. She was a trained pastry-chef, and spoiled her family with delicious desserts and other dishes from Jewish cuisine. One of them is forshmak, which Alissa still associates with her great-grandma.
Forshmak (the Yiddish word for ‘foretaste’) is a staple of Soviet-Jewish cuisine, and is perfect for a finger-food buffet. While forshmak was initially any cold starter made from finely-chopped salty fish or meat, in Russian tradition it is known as a pâté of salted herring mixed with other ingredients. There are two classic ways to serve it: on a slice of rye bread, or as a filling for devilled eggs.
Alissa, whose passion for cooking led her to launch a cinema-supper club in London, published the recipe for stuffed eggs with forshmak, as well as many others, in her recent book, Salt & Time. Recipes from a modern Russian kitchen. In spite of the title, it has more than an ‘aesthetic take on Russian food’, and includes stories of her childhood, her family and her generation.
Serves 4–6
Read more: QUIZ! Find out if you have the appetite of Ivan the Terrible or Nicholas II
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