Ashy's vegetarian recipes ©2003 all rights reserved
I put the word 'caviar' in inverted commas in the title because, of course, this isn't really caviar. We don't deal in fishes' abortions around here and it would be nice if other people didn't either. I read that the governments of the states surrounding the Caspian Sea were trying to set limits on the numbers of sturgeon being caught to provide caviar. I also read later that fifty tons of caviar had been stolen somewhere. That's still a lot of dead or distressed fish. I say 'distressed' because I watched a programme on TV which showed how fishermen can now catch the fish and surgically remove the caviar, returning the fish alive to the water. Fan-bloody-tastic.
Right. Back to the recipe. Or almost. First I'll mention how I came across marrow caviar (We'll dispense with the inverted commas now). Travelling around in Central Asia can be difficult for the vegetarian. In cities it's usually possible to find some restaurants serving dishes without meat, or supermarkets selling tins of beans, but in rural areas it's virtually impossible and you have to carry your own food or live on a diet of bread and tea with raw fruit and vegetables. That's not so bad, but it can get tedious.
Once when I was travelling in the north of Kazakhstan with my wife, we were searching for vegetarian food in a village and came across a small general store which seemed stocked with bits and pieces of everything. Of course, most of the food products contained meat but Sveta spotted some jars of orange stuff that looked like baby food on the shelves and got fairly excited. I must confess that I would never have considered it in a million years if she hadn't recommended buying it. However, it turned out to be extremely tasty and the next time, somewhere in Kyrgyzstan, when we found ourselves in a similar situation, we immediately went looking for a jar of marrow caviar. It's delicious with bread and butter, and probably quite nutritious. I read the ingredients on the label and recreated it successfully at home. It wasn't difficult and here's how I did it.
Ingredients
1 large marrow
1 carrot
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
3 teaspoons of tomato paste
1 bay leaf
Salt
Oil
Peel the marrow, cut it in half lengthways, and remove the seeds. Chop it roughly into cubes. Chop the onion, carrot and garlic finely. Fry the onion until it softens, then add the other ingredients with a splash of water. Stir and cover the pan tightly. Cook for thirty to forty minutes until the marrow is soft and starting to break up.
You can serve the dish like this, straight from the pan, but if you want to go for the baby food consistency, then transfer everything to a flat-bottomed bowl or saucepan and mash it. A finer consistency, more like the stuff in the jars, can be achieved by pushing everything through a sieve, or strainer, rather than mashing it.
Marrow caviar is good hot or cold, served with bread and butter or margarine. When I was trying this recipe for the first time, I also made drianiki (potato cakes) and the marrow caviar went very well with them. Stored in a jar with a tight fitting lid, this would also be an ideal dish to take on picnics.