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Kotlety

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Clarissa

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For the foreign languages holiday celebration, I was planning on bringing these:

I don’t know what to call them in English but they are made of a mix of ground chicken and turkey meat, some cous cous boiled in milk, an egg, some garlic, etc. We call them “kotlety.” A colleague warned me, however, that people at these parties eschew anything that is not very familiar to them.

I wonder what the purpose of conducting a foreign languages party is if all people want to have is pizza. Of course, I will be happy to eat my own kotlety if they are not wanted by others.

14 responses to “Kotlety”

  1. Michael Blekhman Avatar
    Michael Blekhman

    I would be happy to join in and eat all of them! I adore kotlety, and I pity those who prefers pizza and burgers to this delicious food!

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  2. David Bellamy Avatar
    David Bellamy

    The cognate would seem to be ‘cutlet’ which is not a perfect translation, but not bad. I remember them from Poland I think.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      This is a false cognate because these are very different from cutlets. I didn’t know this when I moved to Canada and suffered a huge disappointment when I ordered a cutlet and was brought a North American type of cutlet. 🙂

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  3. Evelina Anville Avatar
    Evelina Anville

    I grew up eating these. Except for ours would normally be made from beef. My family also added green onions. (And my grandmother also made a version from white fish.) I loved them. I think they are a familiar enough flavor that most people will like them. They are sort of like meatballs…which everyone loves.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      How cool is this? 🙂

      I make them from a mixture of beef, pork and veal, and those are really great, too.

      And I make the fish ones, which are sensational.

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  4. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    How would that be in Russian or Ukrainian? котлеты ? котлети ?

    In Poland they’re called kotlety mielone (ground cutlets) though usually made out of pork or beef and pork together and bread soaked in milk rather than couscous.

    I’m pretty sure they’re ultimately related to Turkish köfte (Bulgarian кюфте, Romanian chifte) but adapted to more northern ingredients just as cabbage roles are mostly likely a northern version of dolma.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Yes, котлеты.

      I love Turkish food with a profound passion precisely because it feels somehow very familiar.

      You are right that one is supposed to soak bread in milk for the original recipe but the bread we get here (and which seems made of rubber) doesn’t work for that purpose. So I came up with the idea to use cous cous.

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    2. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
      Stille (@aperfectbalance)

      These definitely look far more delicious than chiftele. Possibly because they don’t seem fried to burnination, as the most popular chiftele-cooking method around here requires (the regionalism used for chiftele in my area, parjoale, is related to the world you’d use for burning a field to the ground, for example). Clarissa, if I may ask, how’d you cook these? Are they fried, baked or something else?

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        These are fried but I don’t like them very dark so I take them off the fire when I know they are cooked inside. They remain big and plump when done this way.

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  5. good enough cook Avatar
    good enough cook

    Never encountered (or heard of) these before, but I’d eat them! Are they baked or fried?

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    1. good enough cook Avatar
      good enough cook

      …just found the “recipe” section of the blog. I’d love to have a recipe for these–and the Ho Chi Minh cake you mentioned in an earlier post.

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        Done! 🙂

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      2. good enough cook Avatar
        good enough cook

        Thanks! And the cake?

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          The problem with the cake is that it requires a very specific brand of Russian cookies and tvorog. Maybe I should post a recipe of how to make tvorog because it is delicious, very healthy, and can be used for many great recipes.

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