---
title: 'Feeding the Last Tsar of Russia - Pelmeni for Nicholas II'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Se7A2p8QcLo'
video_id: 'Se7A2p8QcLo'
date: 2026-07-10
channel: 'Tasting History with Max Miller'
---

# Feeding the Last Tsar of Russia - Pelmeni for Nicholas II

> Source: [Feeding the Last Tsar of Russia - Pelmeni for Nicholas II](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Se7A2p8QcLo)

## Summary

This video explores the culinary preferences of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, contrasting his simple tastes with the opulent French cuisine of the imperial court. The host prepares Siberian pelmeni from a 1861 cookbook and discusses the historical context of the Romanov family's eating habits.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Nicholas II's Simple Tastes** [0:00] — Nicholas II, despite his power, preferred traditional Russian dishes like Siberian pelmeni over the opulent French cuisine of the imperial court.
- **Imperial Court Cuisine vs. Family Meals** [0:57] — While the imperial court favored French cuisine, the royal family enjoyed simpler Russian dishes like pirozhki and pelmeni during private meals.
- **Recipe Source: Elena Molokhovets** [1:41] — The pelmeni recipe comes from the 1861 cookbook 'A Gift to Young Housewives' by Elena Molokhovets, which includes exact measurements for the dough.
- **Making the Dough** [2:44] — Mix 1 pound flour, 1 tsp salt, 2 eggs, and about 1/2 cup water. Knead for 10 minutes until smooth, then rest for 20 minutes.
- **Preparing the Filling** [4:51] — Use 1.5 pounds of fatty ground beef (20-30% fat), 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp black pepper, and 1 cup diced onion. Mix well.
- **Forming the Pelmeni** [5:52] — Roll dough into logs, cut into 10 pieces per log, roll into 3-inch circles, fill with 1 tbsp meat, fold and pinch to seal, then wrap ends to form ear shape.
- **Cooking the Pelmeni** [7:29] — Boil in salted water or clear bouillon for 3-5 minutes until they float, then another 3 minutes until meat is cooked. Fry in butter for extra crispness.
- **Historical Context: Nicholas II's Character** [8:18] — Nicholas II was out of touch and unwilling to modernize, leading to revolution. He preferred simple foods like rye bread, boiled eggs, and cabbage soup.
- **Tsarina Alexandra's Simple Tastes** [10:48] — Alexandra was nearly vegetarian and loved baked goods. She complained about the lack of variety in Russian afternoon tea compared to English customs.
- **Tea as a Metaphor for Political Stagnation** [12:45] — The unchanging tea routine symbolizes the Romanovs' inability to adapt, which ultimately led to their downfall.
- **Formal Dinners and French Cuisine** [13:37] — State dinners featured elaborate French dishes, but Nicholas often filled up on hors d'oeuvres beforehand and disliked caviar.
- **Cold Food and Footmen** [17:22] — Food often arrived cold due to the distant kitchen. Footmen, chosen for their height and handsomeness, were known to gossip.
- **Toast Ceremony and Service** [19:34] — Champagne toasts involved a complex ritual with footmen and pages. The tsar drank moderately, usually port.
- **Final Days and Simple Rations** [23:54] — Under house arrest, the family ate simple soldier's rations. The tsar noted his daughters learning to cook and bake bread.
- **Tasting the Pelmeni** [26:07] — The host fries the boiled pelmeni in butter and serves with sour cream and dill, praising their simplicity and flavor.

### Conclusion

Nicholas II's preference for simple dishes like pelmeni highlights the contrast between his personal tastes and the opulence of the imperial court. The video successfully combines a historical cooking demonstration with insights into the Romanovs' daily life and eventual downfall.

## Transcript

Today I'm going to be eating like 
Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia,
a man of vast power, rather 
incompetent leadership skills,  
and a surprisingly simple taste 
in food. Rather than the opulent  
French cuisine of the imperial court, 
he preferred traditional Russian dishes
like these Siberian pelmeni or beef dumplings.
So, thank you to Wildgrain for sponsoring this 
video as we dine like the last of the Romanovs
this time on Tasting History.
Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov, 
known in English as Nicholas II,
was the last Russian ruler 
before the Russian Revolution.
He took the throne in 1894 and 
oversaw the empire's participation  
in both the Russo-Japanese War and World War I,
neither of which went well for Russia.
This in conjunction with 
his insistence on remaining  
an absolute autocrat led to civil unrest,
his abdication and eventually the murder 
of him and his entire family in 1918.
Now when Nicholas came to power, the cuisine at  
the Imperial Russian court was 
less Russian and more French.
Many of the menus were printed in French. Most of  
the cuisine was French. Most of 
the cooks were trained in France.
And the head chef was a 
Frenchman named Pierre Cubat.
But while the big feasts may have mostly been 
French food, even during the reign of Nicholas II,
when they were having smaller dinners 
at home, just him and the family
they actually preferred to 
have simpler traditional  
Russian cuisine, things like pirozhki and pilmeni.
And since I already made pirozhki for the 
first Tsar of Russia, Ivan the Terrible,
I figured I would bookend Tsarist rule by making  
a recipe for Siberian Pelmeni from 
the 1861 cookbook by Elena Molokhovets
'Podarok molodym khozyaykam' or 'A Gift 
to Young Housewives'. "Using a knife,  
scrape 1 and 1/2 pounds first 
quality beef from the short loin.
Add one finely chopped and squeezed out 
raw onion, sieved black pepper, and salt.
Use this filling to make pelmeni... If the beef is  
lean, use 1 pound beef and half 
pound finely chopped kidney suet.
Boil the pelmeni in salted water or 
in bullion in a separate saucepan...
These pelmeni are best made the size 
of kolduny or shaped like small ears...
Siberians prepare pelmeni 
for several occasions at once,  
sprinkling them lightly with flour 
so they do not stick together.
They are frozen and boiled in 
salted boiling water as needed."
Molokhovets gives this recipe for pelmeni 
and right before it she gives an exact recipe
on how to make the dough with exact 
measurements. Very rare for this time  
period. So that's pretty cool. What 
she says is you need 1 pounds or 450  
grams of flour, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 
eggs, and 1/2 cup or 120 ml of water.
She actually says that you'll probably need 
a little bit less than that 1/2 cup.
So we'll just keep that in mind as we make them.
So start by mixing the salt into 
the flour and then add the two eggs.
Start to mix those into the dough as if you were 
making pasta because well, you are making pasta.
But this really isn't enough egg to fully  
incorporate all the flour. So add 
about half of the water or 1/4 cup
to start to make it come together 
as a dough. And once that's added,  
you can go ahead and add more water as 
you need. You may not need all of it.
What you're looking for is a relatively 
dry dough. You want it to just have enough  
moisture that it comes together. Then 
once it does, you can turn it out onto  
the counter and begin to knead. And you 
need to knead it for about 10 minutes  
or until it's nice and smooth. It'll be about 
half this time if you do it in a stand mixer.
After about 10 minutes of kneading it by hand,  
you should have a nice smooth ball of 
dough which you can wrap in plastic
to let it rest for at least 20 minutes.
Also, you can make it a day ahead 
and put it in the fridge if you want  
to. Or if you make a big batch, you 
can actually freeze it and then you  
can just take some out so you'll always 
have some fresh pasta dough to work with.
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And now it is back to our pasta which 
you have had to make from scratch.
So once it's rested for 20 minutes,  
you can make the filling. And the filling 
obviously starts with meat which she says
you can scrape right off the bone and then mince.  
It is really hard to get it as small 
as it really needs to be by hand.
So I'm going to go with ground beef. You 
need 1 and a 1/2 pounds or 680 grams of it.
Now she does say that this needs to be fatty or 
else you need to add suet. So, I would go with the
20% or even 30% fat content because if you get 
it too lean, it just doesn't hold together.
Then 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of 
black pepper, and 1 cup of diced onion.
So, just add the salt and the pepper to the meat 
and work it in. And then start adding the onions.
Also, make sure that they're actually 
onions. See, halfway through,
I realized that I also had some 
chopped onions and celery that  
I'm using for something else, and I grabbed that.
So, halfway through, here I am having 
to pick out celery from the meat.
And I felt like Cinderella when 
she was picking out the lentils  
from the fireplace. Not great. Just onions.
Once it's all mixed together, you can go  
ahead and form the pelmeni. And 
there are several ways to do it.
You can actually roll the dough out and then 
cut out the pelmeni, about 3 inch wide circles.
Or another way that she explains, 
that I think is kind of easier,  
is to divide the dough into four pieces
and then take one piece and 
roll it into a little log.
And make sure you cover the other pieces 
in plastic wrap so they don't dry out.
Once you have a uniform log of dough, you 
want to divide that up into 10 pieces.  
And she is very specific about 
how many pelmeni many this recipe  
will make. She says it will make 40. So 
that dictates the size of our pelmeni.
Then kind of squeeze the dough into circles 
with the cut side up and with a rolling pin,
roll one of the pieces of dough out 
into a circle about 3 inches across.
Now you don't want the dough 
to be too thin or they might  
bust when cooking. Several of mine 
actually did that and it's not great.
Then set about a tablespoon of the filling into  
the center and fold the dough over 
and pinch it all around to seal it.
You don't need any water to make 
this seal. It will do it on its own.
Then take the two ends and wrap them over 
each other and pinch them together.
This is the traditional shape which 
the author says looks like an ear.
Also, if your ear looks 
like this, go see a doctor.
Then continue the process 
until all 40 pelmeni are made.
Also, I do think these pelmeni end up 
being a little bigger than I would want.
They're kind of two bite pelmeni, and I 
would rather have them just single bite.
So if you wanted to make 60 
smaller ones, you can do that.
Very often when you buy them like 
frozen from the store, they're really,  
really small, and you could probably 
get like a hundred out of this order.
Whatever size you do make them,  
it says to boil them in either 
clear bouillon or some salted water.
So you can either get some clear 
chicken stock or something like that or
just boil some salted water and then 
add the pelmeni about 6 to 8 at a time,
and give them a stir so they don't stick to the  
bottom and then let them boil 
until they rise to the top.
This takes 3 to 5 minutes. Then 
continue to boil for another 3  
minutes or until the meat is cooked inside.
Obviously you're going to have to take one 
out and test it to see if it's cooked inside.
But if you end up doing it for like 6 or 7 minutes 
at least total, there it's going to be cooked.
Then remove them from the pot and 
let them dry out just a little bit  
while you boil the rest of your 
pelmeni. And while I tell you a  
bit more about what it was like to 
dine with the last tsar of Russia.
Tsar Nicholas II is one of those characters 
from history that is really kind of hard to  
figure out because he was caricatured and so it's 
hard to know exactly what's true and what's not.
I mean it's definite that he was 
not a great military commander  
and he was completely out of step with his people,
but exactly what degree he should be 
demonized or lionized is a question.
And I say lionize because many of his friends 
tried to rehabilitate his character after he  
died. And maybe it's all true, but maybe 
it's not. It's hard to know because they  
were his friends. What is clear is that 
Nicholas II came to power at a particularly  
difficult moment. Russia was already ripe for 
revolution before he even sat on the throne,
and his poor military decisions and  
refusal to relinquish absolute 
power just hastened things along.
It was only after the revolution of 1905, which 
was a wave of worker strikes, peasant uprisings,  
and military mutinies, that he was 
forced to establish the state Duma,  
a legislative assembly, and granted 
limited rights to his people,
which he then went on to pretty much 
ignore completely and undermine.
So yeah, basically at the heart 
of the issue was that he was
just unwilling to give up the tradition of 
complete autocratic rule that Russia had had for  
the last 300 years. Most of Europe was beginning 
to modernize and he just was not interested.
And to say he was out of touch would 
be a massive understatement.
But by many accounts, it wasn't that he was 
being malicious. It was more that he was just  
completely oblivious to what was going on 
outside of his palace most of the time.
And it's interesting because he did try to 
make an effort to kind of be one of the people.
And one of the ways he did that was in how he ate.
When he would visit his soldiers during World 
War I, he would eat the same porridge, rye bread,
and shchi or cabbage soup that his soldiers did.
Even at home, his daily breakfast was simply 
rye bread with butter, some boiled eggs and ham.
Lunch was often boiled beets and potatoes 
with slices of roast pork and horseradish.
And one of his wife's ladies in waiting 
recalled "The sovereign preferred simple dishes,
simple roasts and chicken."
In general, he either liked to eat alone or 
with his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna,
and she too had simple 
tastes when it came to food.
For most of her adult life, she was all but 
vegetarian, rarely eating any meat or fish,
and instead preferred 
vegetables, eggs, cheese, and butter.
But like me, she had a weakness 
for all things sweet and baked.
In fact the head baker at the palace once 
recalled that they prepared plenty of
"Superb cookies, small - the 
size of a little kopeck coin -
kalaches, milky kaiser rolls, amazing 
puff-pastry buns and twisted salty loaves."
It was probably her love of baked goods 
that led her to occasionally complain  
about how they did afternoon tea 
at the Russian court. Because
even though she was the tsarina or empress 
of Russia, she was not born in Russia, 
but rather in Darmstadt, Germany. Then  
she spent much of her formative 
years actually living in England
with her grandmother, Queen Victoria. 
So she was used to the grand afternoon  
tea, which had become popular there in 
the latter half of the 19th century.
Russia, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have 
got the memo about the fancy afternoon tea.
And so, according to her friend, 
Alexandra would often complain  
that "Tea was a meal in which there 
was never the slightest variation.
Always appeared the same little white-draped  
table with its silver service, the 
glasses in their silver standards,
and for the rest simply plates of hot bread 
and butter and a few English biscuits.
Never anything new, never any surprises in 
the way of cakes or sweetmeats...
The Empress often used gently to complain, saying 
that other people had much more interesting teas,
but she who was supposed to have almost unlimited 
power, was in reality quite unable to change a  
single detail of the routine of the Russian 
Court..." And she says this actually kind  
of went for everything. They used the same 
incense that they had for hundreds of years,
the same furniture was there 
for the last two centuries,
the same outfits for the messengers that they 
had been wearing since the early 18th century.
"For all I know the same plates for hot 
bread and butter on the same tea table,
were traditions going back to Catherine the 
Great, or Peter or farther still perhaps."
And I love this little anecdote 
because on the face of it, it's  
all about how the imperial family used to 
have tea and would never change anything.
Haha, simple enough. But it is a 
bit of a microcosm, a metaphor for
how they also lived all of their life and 
the political situation in Russia.
A complete inability to change tradition. 
Even if better alternatives came along,
even if everyone around them wanted to 
change, they refused to change at all
And when it came to tea, this simply 
ended in the tsarina being rather irked.
When it came to politics, this led 
to the entire family being killed.
Now, while tea and breakfast and 
lunch and really any meal where it  
was just the family remained 
relatively simple affairs,
many meals had to have invited guests. 
And so, tradition came along with that.
Menus from those lunches and dinners, which 
often had a dozen or even a hundred guests,
shows a cuisine that you would 
expect when visiting a palace.
"Lunch [at the Livadia Summer Palace in Crimea] 
began with a soup with small vol-au-vents,
savory pastries, and small 
cheese toasts. Importantly,  
vol-au-vents were served together with the soup
rather than as a separate dish as they are abroad.
The soup was followed by fish, a (chicken) 
casserole, vegetables, sweets, fruit...
To drink, there were madeira, white and red 
wines for breakfast (or beer as an option)
and different wines served at lunch, as is the 
custom everywhere else in the civilized world.
And liqueurs with coffee..."
Lunch on the Standart, the imperial yacht, were 
similar affairs if a little less elaborate.
Menus from these meals include cream 
soups, small hand pies or pirozhki,
salmon mayonnaise, filet of beef, 
lobster, wild goat or venison,  
pears and cherry, peaches 
glacé, and lingonberry pie.
But again, many of these meals would have guests 
who would also feast on copious amounts of caviar. 
Something that actually Nicholas 
himself did not care for.
One of the officers on the 
royal yacht recalled that
"The sovereign really liked appetizers apart from 
caviar, Atlantic salmon, and salted fish overall."
Supposedly, he actually liked those things when he  
was younger. But on a trip that he 
took from the east through Siberia,  
he took a train. And at every single station, 
he would be greeted with fanfare and gifts
of salted fish and caviar,  
which he ate and got sick of and just 
after that trip never wanted it again.
Now, when they weren't at their summer home 
in Crimea or gallivanting on their yacht,
Nicholas and his family preferred 
the Alexander Palace outside of  
St. Petersburg over any of their other 
palaces. What's interesting is that while  
it is a smaller palace in comparison with 
something like the Grand Catherine Palace,
it's still a palace. And so, you would expect 
there to be at least one room dedicated as a  
dining room. But there wasn't. There 
was no single room meant to eat in.
So just depending on the meal, 
they would eat all over the place.
If the couple were dining alone, they would 
usually eat in the empress's reception room.
For family dinners, it was the 
rosewood paneled Pallisander drawing room.
Then if they were having a larger affair,  
say 30 to 100 people, they would 
open up the semic-ircular hall.
Though if they had a bigger group, anything 
over a 100, they would actually have to  
go to a different palace just ;cus 
there wasn't any space in the small 
petite Alexander Palace to host that many people.  
But when they were having dinner, 
big dinner at the semi-circular hall
of the Alexander Palace, they had 
two ways of setting up the tables.
One was to have round tables that could hold 10 
or 11 people. This allowed for more conversation
and it was how they would set it up if the 
tsar actually liked the people that were eating 
because he would go from table 
to table with each course so  
that he could talk to everyone 
and so that everyone could say
that they had had dinner with the tsar.
If he didn't really like the people that were 
there, or if it was a more formal affair,  
then they would set up a massive U-shaped table
that he would sit at one end of and only then 
have to talk to the people on either side of him.
These dinners were the kinds of dinners with 
a lot of the fancy French food that Nicky,  
which is what they called him, 
didn't really care for.
So, he would actually fill up usually on the hors 
d’oeuvres, which were kept in a separate room.
The hors d’oeuvres were brought out and 
put on a banquet table or a buffet and  
then everybody would eat standing up 
while they would drink some vodka.
Only after a couple shots of vodka would 
they go into the main hall for dinner.
That is when the hot food would come out. 
And I say "hot food" with air quotes
because it was notorious for always kind of 
being cold because the kitchens were rather  
far away from the palace. When they were made back 
in the 1790s, they were made far away. One so that  
the noise and the odors wouldn't make it into the 
palace and also to protect the palace from fire.
So, the food though would 
have to go on a trolley for  
over 500 ft outside before it got to the palace
no matter what time of year. And St. Petersburg 
can get pretty cold, and so so did the food.
It wasn't until 1902 that they 
finally built an underground tunnel.
It was still a long way to go, but at least now 
the food would arrive lukewarm. Those serving  
this lukewarm food were the footmen, and they 
were chosen from the ranks of the Imperial Army,
and they were chosen because of their 
height and their bearing and their handsomeness.
So you had a bunch of tall, good-looking, 
kind of overbearing waiters behind you,
and you never knew if they were there because  
while they dressed in white 
tie and wore white gloves,
they also wore these soft black shoes that 
basically let them sneak around unheard,
which made it so that they knew all of the gossip  
because people would just talk 
like they weren't even there.
One guest recalled that "Every time we were 
at the Palace, we had lunch or dinner there,
and the footmen would whisper to us bits of 
news from the scandalous chronicle of the place,
whether we cared for it or 
not. They knew everything."
Being one of those footmen was 
a bit of a place of honor. So,  
people held on to the position 
as long as they could.
And basically the more senior you 
were, the better position you got.
So, the tsar's footman was 
also the oldest one there.
He had actually been his father's footman 
and he was so old that he was going blind  
and had trouble holding things. So 
the tsar would often have to hold  
his arm while he poured the wine.
The footmen were also involved in  
the ceremony of toasts that would 
take place at every large banquet.
"At all the great banquets, a Court official stood  
behind the chair of every royal guest 
to hand the champagne for the toasts.
This was a matter of solemn ritual. The 
wine was first poured out by a footman,
then it had to be passed to a page 
who, in turn passed it to the hander."
These handers also were a prestigious position and  
also were held by the oldest 
people who were working there.
And so some of them had trouble 
actually doing their job.
Prince Christopher of Greece once recalled that 
"I can still remember my sister's distress when  
her favorite pale blue velvet Court dress turned 
a vivid green in patches after her hander had  
spilled six glasses of champagne over it." But 
provided you didn't get champagne all over you,  
it was time to eat. And the meal 
usually started out with a consommé.
This is after the order, a consommé at the 
table and then very often another soup,  
something heavier like a cream soup 
that would be served with pirozhki.
Then came the Yaroslavl style grouse 
or the famed steamed Gatchina trout  
which came from the Partitsa stream that ran 
through the imperial estates south of Saint 
Petersburg.
Then a saddle of wild goat, chicken fillet with 
truffles or cold lobster, roast duck, a salad,  
artichokes with mushrooms, asparagus. 
And then there were sweets like souffles,  
baked apples, fritters, puddings, and pancakes.
Then a course of ice cream followed by 
another course simply titled dessert,
which was usually an assortment of 
fresh fruit, berries, and light cakes.
The ice cream course was actually a particular  
specialty of the Russian court. 
Nicholas ate a lot of ice cream.
Alexandria, his wife, also did.
And Maria, who was the daughter of Grigori 
Rasputin, even called it out in her memoir.
"I remember ice cream the like of which 
I have never eaten anywhere else."
And what was interesting to many people was that  
the courses were served à la 
russe or in the Russian manner
as opposed to a la Française 
which had been the traditional  
way of serving food in most of 
Europe for several centuries.
A la Française is where all of the dishes are 
laid out on a table and people serve themselves
while à la russe is where dishes are portioned 
in the kitchen then brought out sequentially.
This is how pretty much 
every restaurant today serves food.
Also, it made it so that the tsar actually 
had to eat rather slowly on purpose
because he would be served 
first and he would start eating
and then it would go down the line by order of 
importance and everyone else would be served.
But the moment that he stopped eating and put down 
his silverware, the plates would be taken away.
Not just his, but everyone's. So, if you were at 
the end of the line, you better eat really quick
or else you're just going to get a couple 
bites and then onto the next course.
As for the wines, red and whites 
were served with every course. But
by most accounts, the tsar himself was 
not a big drinker, which is in contrast
with how the Bolshevik propaganda portrayed him, 
which often portrayed him as a degenerate drunk.
By most accounts, he actually didn't 
drink that much. And when he did,  
it was usually port or sometimes madeira and 
then later on in life it would be a wine that  
was from the Crimea. His personal security 
chief wrote that "He only drank port at table.
Since he was Japanese war, 
the Tsar had given up spirits;  
it was only when he traveled by sea that 
he would take (and very rarely at that)
one or two small glasses 
[of vodka] before dinner."
And even when he did drink something 
like port, he did so in moderation.
"The Emperor was seated in the 
place of honor. Before him was a  
bottle of a special Port, the 
gift of the King of England,
and a small, golden goblet. He never drank more  
than one goblet of this wine, 
and never tasted any other."
Again, this is coming from 
someone who was a friend of his,  
so it's unclear exactly how 
little or how much he drank.
It's just kind of something that we 
have to take with a grain of salt.
Now after the meal, it was time 
for coffee and a cigarette.
And he would make a point to announce that the 
tsarina had said that it was okay for him to have  
a cigarette and then once he did then everybody 
else would also light up and have a smoke.
Now these kinds of meals would in 1917 come to an  
end after the tsar abdicated his 
throne, was forced to abdicate,
but culinary standards were maintained 
even if the guest count went down because  
they were essentially under house arrest at 
the Alexander Palace. One menu from October  
of that year after they had been moved to 
Tubosk shows the family dining on borsht,  
pirozhki, roast grouse, salad and fruit compote.
Then in June of 1918, just one month 
before the family's death in Yaketarinberg,  
that Tsar actually wrote in his diary,
"Since yesterday, Kharitonov 
has been preparing our food,  
the provisions are delivered every two days.
The daughters are learning how to cook from him,
they prepare the flour and knead in the evening  
and bake the bread in the morning. Not bad at all!"
In the Romanov's last days, their diet 
switched to that of a basic solders's ration.
But it was said that they never 
complained. Basic cabbage soup and  
bread or potatoes is what they 
ate until the entire family,
Nicholas, Alexandra, and their 
five children were murdered by  
Bolshevik revolutionaries on July 17th, 1918.
It was the end of the Romanov dynasty and the  
end of Imperial Russia. And they were demonized. 
Now, exactly to what level is is really hard to  
know, and it's- you know, not the point of 
this channel for me to to dive into that.
But what I do really appreciate 
is that in the years after,  
friends and people who worked for them
did write to try to give a bit of a glimpse at 
the behind the scenes family life of the Romanovs.
And as someone who, you know, studies food 
history, I really, really appreciate that  
because we learn things like the tsar of Russia who 
was one of the most powerful people in the world  
and did you know enjoy his opulent wealth and lifestyle
also preferred the very simple dishes on his table.
Things like these pilmeni which I am about to eat right now.
Except before I do,  
I need to address something because the recipe 
that I'm using says to boil them and then it actually says to
serve them as a soup, which is common. But
it was known that the tsar when he was on the royal yacht actually preferred to eat them boiled and then fried in a pan
and he would eat them straight from the pan. So I'm going to pan fry these.
So melt some butter or ghee in a pan and then toss a few of the boiled pelmeni in, and let them cook for about a minute on each side.  
Just making sure that they don't stick.
And then they are ready to be served with smetana or sour cream and a bit of dill.
And here we are, Siberian pilmeni fit for the last tsar of Russia.
So like I said, they are a little bit bigger than I think I 
would like.
This is how big she says to make them, but it's going to be hard to eat this in one bite.
One bite is the ideal size. Anyway, uh a little sour cream or smetana on there
and we'll take a bite.
[chomp]
Hmmm.
Oh, that's really good.
Hm!
Oh my gosh, that's good.
So, as you may have noticed, a little bit of the meat fell out, and that's because they are too big to do in one bite,
or at least one decent bite. Maybe if I was alone in a dark room just scarfing these.
But on camera, or in polite society, these are two bite, pilmeni.
But you can see the meat in there.
The dough kind of puffs up a little bit around it. So agh, it's so good though.
One second. One second!
Hmm.
I mean, I don't think I've ever met a dumpling I didn't like, but these are really, really good.
Especially because they are so simple. It's just really the meat and  
onions with a little salt and pepper. That's it. 
That's the filling.
A little dill on the outside, but that's not a dominant flavor.
They are so good.
The texture is wonderful,  
and I think they do benefit from being fried. They 
would work in a soup when they're just boiled, of course, but
the frying kind of gives a little bit of a crispness just along the edges  
while then the rest of the dough is nice and soft. 
The pasta is very soft.
Yeah, no. They are fantastic. Make them. Just absolutely make them. You can actually buy them if there's a Russian store near you.
You can buy them pre-made. And they haven't really changed that much. Usually now they'll have beef and pork,
but there are also ones that have mushrooms in them or lobster, which I really want to try.
But just try them. I can see why the tsar enjoyed these.  
They're absolutely fantastic. I don't care how powerful 
you are. This is a really good food.
So make some pilmeni. Eat like a last tsar of Russia.
And I will see you next time on Tasting History.