Nettle Menu at the Beluga Restaurant | Рестораны Раппопорта

Nettle Menu at the Beluga RestaurantAt the end of May, the restaurant is launching a special menu featuring young nettle. The peak season for nettle is May and June, when the leaves and shoots are still tender, and the flavor has nothing but herbaceous delicacy — no bitterness at all.Roman Chistov, chef of the Beluga restaurant, continues to prove that even the most ordinary product can become a true delicacy if picked and prepared at the peak of its season. At the end of May, the restaurant is launching a special menu featuring young nettle. The peak season for nettle is May and June, when the leaves and shoots are still tender, and the flavor has nothing but herbaceous delicacy — no bitterness at all. All the combinations in the special menu, as is traditional at Beluga, are unconventional and refined, yet the flavors remain recognizable. The menu opens with a vibrant appetizer of thin kohlrabi slices with pickled honey mushrooms, a nettle adjika that the chef prepares with tomatoes and horseradish, pistachios, young sorrel, and wood sorrel. The chilled crab dish consists of hemispheres made of Kamchatka crab fibers with a rich fish broth, complemented by a nettle jelly with tomato water, a green homemade mayonnaise made with freshly squeezed nettle juice, and young carrot greens. The  polevitsa  soup will remind many of a familiar taste from childhood. It is a traditional spring soup made with young greens in a vegetable broth. It is served with baked potatoes and a poached egg, accompanied by a fluffy yeast-leavened nettle pie. Beluga’s pastry chef, Nikita Gavrilenko, has prepared a Russian version of cheesecake — a  tvorozhnik  — for the nettle menu, with feijoa as the dominant flavor. In winter, during the peak season, the restaurant’s team preserved over 100 kg of this berry in a light syrup to allow guests to experience its familiar taste even in summer. The  tvorozhnik  is complemented by a nettle sauce, preserved feijoa cores, feijoa chips, and young sorrel leaves. Rounding out the menu is a three-day-fermented nettle kvass with a small amount of honey. The beverage is refreshing, sweet and sour, and slightly carbonated. The menu is now available at the restaurant and will be offered as long as nettle sea…