From Russia With Lunch: Caviar Sandwiches

What is caviar? The most exacting, strict definitions say that caviar is the roe, or unfertilized eggs, of the sturgeon–preferably endangered Beluga sturgeon but there are a few other species that qualify–salt-cured and served as a delicacy. We’re mainly omnivorous here at the Tribunal, but also not interested in furthering the wanton destruction of an already rare species. Also, we are not exactly drowning in ducats. So we won’t be seeking out Beluga caviar.

Caviar sandwiches are a Russian way of serving caviar–not only Sturgeon roe, but also often red salmon roe as well. There are many fancy ways of presenting them but they all boil down to spreading butter or mayonnaise or creme fraiche on some bread–white bread, black rye bread, even the Russian pancakes called blini–and topping it with a layer of roe.

Ukraine in Spokane

If you’ve been following the site at all, you’ll know that we recently went on a road trip to visit Mindy’s parents in Spokane. While we were there, I thought I’d take advantage of the “Russian deli” I’d visited on a previous trip to look for Russian bread and caviar. However, it turns out that the deli in question is not Russian but Ukrainian. Eastern Washington doesn’t show up on the list of the largest Ukrainian population centers in the US, but there was a time in the 1990s when it was the third most common destination for Ukrainian immigrants to arrive in America. By 2002, 2.5% of Spokane’s population were people of Russian or Ukrainian heritage. When I visited, there were in fact at least 3 Ukrainian delis operating in Spokane and Spokane Valley.

We started with Kiev Euro Market, where Mike thought I might have the best chance of finding the supplies I’d need for making caviar sandwiches. Kiev has a very nice selection of baked goods, sausages, dumplings, tea, sweets, produce, and a bewildering variety of canned goods labeled with the Cyrillic alphabet. When it comes to seafood, they carry dried fish and frozen fish, smoked salmon, pickled herring, tinned sprats and herring and sardines and more cod liver pate than I ever thought to see in one place in my life. They did not, however, carry any caviar. I was able to pick up a nice loaf of a crusty white French-style bread and a jar of fish roe pate, similar to Greek taramosalata.

Our second stop was another Ukrainian deli called Mariupol. Mariupol appeared to be in some kind of transitional state and may not have had the whole store open–they did have slightly smaller selections of many of the same products we’d seen at Kiev, and some things we hadn’t seen there. We picked up some bread and sausage for other purposes but nothing for this post and moved on to our third Ukrainian deli of the day, Odessa, out east on Trent in Spokane Valley.

Odessa was a charming little shop, the only one of the three with which my father-in-law Mike hadn’t previously been familiar. I hope Mike will give it a chance in the future. Of course it features many of the same products as Kiev and Mariupol, including tinned fish and pork and shelf-stable pates. We were pleasantly surprised, though, to find two little jars of different roes there, both labeled as caviar. And I do mean two jars only–we cleaned out their inventory of caviar that day.

• 

• 

First there was a 4 ounce jar of “Tsar’s” brand salmon caviar. These were large, bright-orange eggs, beautiful to look at, really.

• 

• 

So I set myself a little table off to the side in mindy’s parents beautiful and lush backyard nursery, borrowed an absoluately stunning plate provided by Linda, Mindy’s mother, then tried (and largely failed) to discreetly make and photograph some caviar sandwiches during what had turned into a kind of miniature family reunion.

I’d bought Russian–or Ukrainian? or Philadelphian I guess, based on the parts of the label I can read–butter at one of our stops, which may have been a silly and superfluous bid for additional authenticity but the butter was good so I was happy.

I’d left it out just long enough to be more easily spreadable, and on the bread it went. I didn’t like the sound of mayonnaise with caviar, and I have never been entirely sure what creme fraiche is, where to get it or what to do with it, so butter it would have to be.

I started with the Capelin roe pate.

This pate is a sort of emulsion of whipped smoked salmon with oil, studded with the occasional tiny fish egg. This type of product is sometimes referred to as caviar cream or caviar dip, and might occasionally be used in this context in a pinch. It’s very light in texture, with the familiar flavor of smoked salmon, but not enough fish egg in it to really offer a caviar-like experience.

The salmon roe seemed a little… deflated. They were not quite the full bursting sacs of brine I expected. They were good but maybe a bit past their prime? Who knows how long these solitary jars had sat forgotten in the small fridge off to the side at that ukrainian deli?

But they were large, and brilliantly orange, and beautiful, and they popped satisfyingly between your teeth when you bit into them, wet and sticky and salty and oily and just a little bitter.

Bowfin isn’t sturgeon either; it’s a bony Jurassic throwback of a fish living in eastern North America, the only surviving species of the Amiidae family. The website of the company selling this caviar helpfully points out that it is “an even more ancient fish than the sturgeon.” Other compannies market this roe as “Cajun Caviar.” The eggs are much smaller than the salmon eggs and black in color.

The flavor is less aggressive than the salmon caviar–less salty, less oily, less bitter. At first I take that as a good thing, perhaps this is a more refined version. I kept returning to the bowfin over the course of the weekend, looking for that elusive flavor I’d been missing. But in the end I don’t think I was missing anything. I think essentially there’s just less flavor here. This jar was half the size of the salmon caviar; it cost 50% more, but delivered less.

As I’d been assembling and photographing these sandwiches, I’d steadily gained a bit of an audience, and I realized I was going to have to share. We made more of each, cut them into bite-sized pieces, and handed them out to anybody who wanted to try them.

It was a fun little ice breaker for a while. A few people preferred the bowfin caviar, a few preferred the capelin roe pate. Some liked the salmon caviar; many didn’t. Mindy’s cousin Kelly later told me she’d been shocked to learn that a particular fussy-eater daughter of hers had even tried some.

“Did she like it?” I asked.

“No! She thought it was awful! But she tried it!” Kelly beamed. The Sandwich Tribunal, once again expanding people’s culinary boundaries.

Ukraine in Chicago

We’re back in the Chicago area now, and I’ve been sitting on this post for a week, thinking that maybe I really ought to try some actual caviar before I published it. This weekend, I drove into town to check some Ukrainian delis in Chicago. Chicago has seen multiple waves of Ukrainian immigration over the past century and a half, as opposed to the relatively recent influx in Spokane, and historically these new arrivals gravitated toward an area of West Town that came to be known as Ukrainian Village.

The Ukrainian population of Chicago may no onger center largely around the near west side, but the Ukrainian Village neighborhood still has a number of Ukrainian delis in close proximity. First up was Rich’s Deli on the corner of Iowa and Western. Rich’s deli was impressive. The variety of confusing, presumably edible things in tins was even more extensive than what I’d seen at Kiev in Spokane. However, I did not find any caviar there. I did buy some delicious borscht and a refreshing elderflower beverage before I went around the corner to Ukraina Deli.

Ukraina Deli is mysterious. It was so dimly lit on the inside that I wondered whether the lit OPEN sign was mistaken. I walked in anyway. Neatly ordered shelves displayed many of the same products I’d seen everywhere else I’d gone, and the owner chatted amiably in a language I couldn’t understand with another customer. I perused the shelves, the coolers, the freezers as they finished their conversation. Soon, the store was empty and quiet. I admired the deli counter, its chaotic tangle of sausages, bolognas, salamis, the prepared foods above, the small shelf in the upper left with some tins of caviar.

It was salmon caviar.

Oh well. It was time to ask a Russian–well, a Ukrainian presumably–how to eat a caviar sandwich. To break the ice, I decided to ask about an item in the deli case. “Can you tell me about this?”

“Meat pie,” he said. Good enough for me. I asked for one.

“What can you tell me about this sausage here?” I asked.

“Blood sausage,” he said. Good, OK, I’ll give it a shot.

I requested a tin of the salmon caviar and asked him how he’d eat it.

“With bread.”

With some prodding, he indicated that the bread should be a very dark rye, buttered. Some people might eat it on white bread, he said, but to him that would be… weird. (I hope he doesn’t see this article. I wouldn’t want him thinking I’m weird.) I grabbed a loaf of dark, almost black rye bread.

What about sturgeon caviar, I asked. “Special order,” he said. No, I didn’t want to order any, I wanted to know, did he ever use it himself? He shook his head. “Too expensive.”

As he was ringing me up, just to confirm I asked “So this is all I need for caviar sandwiches? Bread, butter, caviar?”

He thought for a moment, then replied with typical verbal efficiency, “Vodka.” He brought me a bottle of Ukrainian vodka from behind the counter.

I wondered aloud if the vodka should be served cold and he indicated that yes, he would advise keeping it in the freezer. His actual words: “From freezer.”

So I don’t give you the impression this guy was surly and growling two-word responses to me–I didn’t feel that way at all. He was very helpful and not a bit standoffish. He just had a marvelous knack of conveying the requested information in as few words as possible.

I decided to try one bite of the meat pie–which I believe is probably something called a piroshki–in the car. Suddenly famished, I ended up eating the whole thing before I even drove away. It was delicious, even at room temperature: fatty pork studded with onions contained in a nicely risen yeasted bread roll, browned and slick with a light coat of oil from its time in the fryer. The proprietor of Ukraina told me they’re even better after a few seconds in a microwave but I’d be afraid to destroy that lightly crisp surface texture by microwaving. Maybe next time I’ll try heating one in the oven, if I manage to get one home with me.

• 

• 

At home, after a few hours in the freezer for the vodka, I made another caviar sandwich. No fancy plate or tablecloth, no beautiful nursery setting, just my backyard and a wooden block.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The salmon caviar was in better shape than what we’d had in Spokane, taut bubbles of fishy oily brine that burst in a pleasant way biting into them. The dark rye bread was spectacular, rigid and sour like a Danish Rugbrød but not seeded and less dense. The vodka was not my favorite, if I’m being honest, and left me with a terrific hangover the next day, but overall this caviar sandwich experience was maybe as close as I was going to get to the real thing.

I never did try any actual sturgeon caviar while researching this sandwich. I’m not sure I ever have had it in my life. But I’m also not sure that the people of Russian or Ukrainian descent who regularly eat caviar sandwiches often see actual sturgeon roe either. An actual caviar sandwich would be like one of those stunt sandwiches in videos on Facebook, coated in gold leaf and costing hundreds of dollars. This sandwich is a far more workaday affair. The salmon caviar isn’t dirt cheap, but the other ingredients are humble enough, and a little goes a long way.