Review: Fish Under Hairy Blanket!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 21, 2013
An acquaintance of mine lives in Ukraine; I asked her to look at this book and tell me if it seemed legitimate. She said it sure did look like a lot of the salads they eat there, so I bought the book.I have to admit that the appearance of a lot of them are a little bit ... grandma-ish? Layered salads held together with mayonnaise and inverted on a plate are sort of Marion Cunningham to the American eye.And there's quite a bit of mayonnaise going on in here; of course that's what mayonnaise IS, is salad dressing, really. But I just looked up a very promising homemade egg-white-and-olive-oil mayo that may make these recipes doable for me!I'm fascinated by the ones with beets; I've never cooked a fresh beet, before. One of the recipes kind of made me laugh. You slice a cucumber into ...well, into pickle wedge... shape, then sprinkle vinegar & dill over it. Like INSTA-PICKLE! Sort of. But I appreciate the thinking behind this. "I have cucumbers. We will eat these. They just need sprucing up!"Also the Cucumber/Tomato/Cheese salad. That's right. Cut up a cuke. Cut up a 'mato. Cut up a *cheese stick* (a staple in my fridge!). Toss with some vinegar & herbs. There's your salad. The author points out that a lot of these salads weren't even actual "recipes"; women just tossed what they had together in a bowl and seasoned it. LUNCH! I like that.Like any recipe book, some of the recipes won't appeal to you. But the "fish under a hairy blanket", is not to be missed!I will definitely try a few of these, a few of them I would NOT, but I enjoyed reading each one, getting a little "flavor" of Ukraine.