Merry Christmas Eastern Style

For many Christians, today is the Epiphany - the revelation of God the son as a human being. But for Eastern Christians, today is considered their Christmas and celebrated.



Not having access to traditional menus and recipes for such a celebration, I hit the Eastern European stores in the neighbourhood (list of stores at the bottom) and bought anything that looked interesting.

The first platter included home-made Russian salad. I love this salad and still remember eating it out of cans when I was a kid.

Since moving to Canada, I have never seen the cans. Once, a dear friend made it for me from scratch and it was delicious. This one was up there too.

The salad accompanied Pirogies - yes, Pi, not Pe; or at least that is how it is written in the store. Those were really stuffed buns.

The options were cabbage (I loved), potatoes (a bit bland) and liver (stayed at the store).

In one of the stores, I found this cheese  simply called "Polish Cheese".

I thought I will try it. It is a sharp version of a German-style butter cheese. Tasty but now I have to think of some recipe to use it in given the amount left.

Some of the best home made Perogies were found.

Those were stuffed with potatoes and sour cream, served with beet horseradish and Ukrainian sausages.

The most interesting find was a smoked herring. 

I just love pickled herring, but always ignored the smoked ones. However, this fish looked perfect, it was all alone in the store and thought it needed a warm mouth for Christmas.

I really liked it. Salty, so not something you can eat a lot of in one sitting.

Lots of leftover fish remains in the fridge (I am dreaming of having it for breakfast over some goat cheese - yum). But anyone interested in trying it, pop over to somerville kitchen.

Now I was looking for something to accompany it and, in one store, I found a container of something that looked like cabbage salad or a version of coleslaw. 

It was the only disappointment of tonight's adventure. Somewhere between a salad, pickles and cold sauerkraut, it just did not fly. But it did not prevent cats from reaching for the fish either.

Dessert platter (below) was the most fun to put together and try. It had...

- my favourite holiday dessert - stollen. This was a Butter Christstollen that melted in the mouth.

- poppy seed cake (not roll). This was a cake roll with layers of poppy seed and some jam or syrup to hold it together and sprinkled with icing sugar. Excellent.

- something called marshmallows that look like meringue balls, but has a slightly thicker than marshmallows texture and a way more interesting flavour. I will buy the chocolate version next.

- the cutest Matryoshka Russian dolls chocolates

List of stores for your next Fraser Street Finds Adventure are:

- European Breads Bakery - 4324 Fraser Street, Vancouver, BC
- Polonia Sausage House - 4286 Fraser Street, Vancouver, BC
- Niche Market Foods - 3902 Fraser Street, Vancouver, BC
- Alenka European Foods - 701 Kingsway (corner Fraser), Vancouver, BC
 (the last is my favourite, more on Alenka one day soon)