Well here I am in Moscow. Dad and I had to come in for a week to do some work and we're staying in his wife's flat in VDNH.
That's pronounced ve-de-en-ha, not V.D.N.H, and stands for Exhibition of the Accomplishments of National Agriculture and is basically a gigantic park built in the 40s to showcase mighty Russia's power and glory, with all of the (now former) republics displaying their best in a glorious pavilion each, with about a hundred other pavilions dotted around the entire area - and I can't overestimate how huge this park is, you can walk around for a couple of hours without seeing all of it, You'll get tired by the Film Exhibition Hall, you'll want to turn back by the spaceship commemoration Gagarin's ascent into orbit, but you'll be too tempted by the Exotic Bird House and carry on. Did I mention that all of these are out of use and in a general state of disrepair? Unfortunately with the fall of communism the state stopped supporting the permanent exhibition and as entry had always been free there was simply no point or fiscal possibility of carrying on. But the buildings themselves are amazing, most of the facades still have their original ornamentation, well worth taking a look at.
Some have been taken over by shitty clothes shops and general toot stores, and some still have authentic products for sale, like the Armenian Pavilion has a huge selection of cognac. If you're in Moscow, even though this is kind of out of the way, you should plan a visit.
Anyway, there's a really great indoor food market near by with old ladies selling their home made cottage cheese (no jokes, seriously, be nice), a Tajik bakery with every kind of lavash freshly made in a huge clay oven and the most gorgeous samosas (lots of cumin, and so light!), butchers with seemingly every cut of meat you can dream up in your most perverted fantasies (I saw a large pile of lamb balls in the window of one, and a packet of chicken necks), a Korean kimchi stand (there are tons of North Korean immigrants in Russia) selling my two favorite things - shaved preserved carrot with chilli, and something called 'sparja' which is actually pickled
yuba and I'm totally making both when I get home. And finally a fish stall. Moscow is landlocked to the point that fresh fish is impossible to obtain, whatever is on the menu in restaurants is alway almost 100% guaranteed to have been frozen, you can sometimes find salmon steaks lying around but the only way to make sure your fish is fresh is to buy it live. The bigger fish counters have tanks of live carp around (packed in like a pile of shit, that's why they always taste so bad),
and sometimes pretty big crayfish, but today was a first for me, and I saw a tank full of sturgeon, bloody expensive compared to everything else, but I doubt I'll ever have the opportunity again.
The lady behind the counter (fish girl?), deftly fished out the liveliest specimen, threw him on the floor and hit him on the head with a hammer before quickly gutting him. Maybe it's a consequence of feeling nostalgic for my homeland, but I thought this was all very romantic. I paid my money, took the bloody bag and strolled on home.
Incidentally I read a whole series a little while ago on the Japanese fish killing technique
Ike Jima, and it pretty much proves that the manner of slaughter affects the taste, but also, interestingly, that fish doesn't always taste best the second it's killed and gains something from 'resting' for a day (much like any other meat, so makes sense.
Obviously I didn't have recourse to any fish anesthesia, but I cut the head and tail off when I got home and bled the fish in ice water for half an hour before putting in the oven. No sharp knives so I didn't even pretend to bother filleting.
Result:
There are many different kinds of sturgeon, from the mighty caviar laden ones up north, to the piddly kind clogging up the waterways. It's a freshwater fish, and a bottom feeder so was expecting the earthy dirty taste, but while this definitely had that it was also sweet and meaty. Very meaty, in fact while I was looking around for a recipe I came across a blog that praised it as a superfish as it's apparently almost impossible to overcook, it's quite fatty so always stays moist. Texturally it was almost like red snapper. Yum!
I kept the sturgeon's head and tail and boiled it up with an onion and a potato for a couple of hours, if you have a bay leaf throw that in too, if you want to. The result is a thin, cloudy broth, but the taste is rich and very satisfying. The amazing thing about sturgeon is that it has no bones, it's all muscle/flesh and cartilage, no scales and the flavour is earthy, meaty and fresh at the same time. Best fish head to make soup out of, but just look at that photo. I'm going to have a new tag to attach to posts that feature something that looks like something else, if you get my drift. I think I've managed to produce the most unappetising food post in the world today.
By the way, no internet in the new place yet, so now I have an excuse for being so slow.
