There is a certain irony in what is the luxury food vs thrifty… Back in my childhood in Far East of Russia there was a scarcity of meat but the still the abundance of seafood including the wild salmon so the traditional russian pelmeni (aka dumplings) filling of pork and beef was reinvented with salmon. And wasn’t this rendition great – in fact one of my favorite food memories…
So that was my inspiration for tonight’s dinner – that as well as other traditional russian dumplings, served with crisped pork fat bits, onions browned in the same fat, and sour cream.
i rendered a fat from some pancetta, then browned white onion dice in it, mixed with chopped salmon and filled in wonton skins.
Cooked then into patstickers but tomorrow i’ll steam them – seems like this will be a better idea for a delicate salmon filling.
But other than that – great stuff!
