World Culture Tour: Russia part 1 - Chicken Kiev, Borscht, and Blintzes

Mickey Farmer
Apr 3, 2019
2 min read

Updated: Sep 25, 2020

We've been eagerly anticipating our stop in Russia. I have been hoping to teach my boys what the Cold War was, but also we get to see James Bond at his best. And, then there's Drago! My boys are fans of the Rocky movies, so we have all been anxious to get to Rocky 4, which I've put a stop to until we were officially in the Russia stop of our World Tour.

For our first foray into the land of gulags, Siberia, and Kafka, we decided to make some Russian dishes!

OK, so we cheated a bit with these menu items. No recipe to be found here! I hit Harris Teeter up for some food. Harris Teeter isn't the closest grocery store to us, but they typically have things our local store doesn't.

Case in point, they had Golden's cheese blintzes, Manischewitz' borscht, and Barber Foods' chicken Kiev.

I had resorted to Google to see if there were any Russian restaurants near us (there weren't) and found Harris Teeter carried some of the things I wanted to make (or buy) while "in Russia". Go Google the recipe for chicken Kiev, and you will see why I was hoping to avoid making it! The recipe looked difficult.

Now, we have made some difficult recipes along the way during the world culture tour, but not on a Wednesday!

Either way, our night was tasty!

Chicken Kiev is a chicken fillet rolled around butter and herbs and covered in a bread crumb and egg mixture.

A blintze is a crepe or pancake rolled around an ingredient of your choice like fruits or cheeses. It was kind of like a dessert burrito.

Borscht. This one did not go over well in our house. Essentially, it is a beet based stew. Normally, you also toss in some meat, potatoes, and carrots. However, my wife is 90% vegetarian (she allows for chicken, but she's very specific on what and when she'll eat even that), so we went with vegetarian borscht. What's that mean? A beet stew of course!

The rest of our Russian itinerary:

Movies:

Anastasia
Rocky 4
Red Heat
Enemy at the Gates
Spies Like Us
Russian Revolution (Doc) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV9G1QUIm7w
History https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBEjRV4anrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMF7mgycg9M
Stalin
The Experts
Born American
James Bond: GoldenEye
James Bond: From Russia with Love
Dr. Zhivago
A Good Day to Die Hard
Hunt for Red October
Night Watch
Red dawn
Chernobyl diaries
Nomads – Kazakhstan
Bitter harvest
Russian Nature Doc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgthPoKu-j8