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Festive table
Leshiy salad

Leshy Salad (Forest Spirit Salad)

An unusual, hearty salad to surprise your guests! Delicious and very filling, "Leshy" salad is perfect for a festive table and very easy to make. It most likely got its quirky name from the colors of its ingredients — brown, yellow, green — which together look like a tree stump in the woods, while the garnish resembles a forest glade. (Leshy is the forest spirit of Slavic folklore.) Maybe there's another explanation, but either way, let's make Leshy salad.

Faith

Recipe author

Composition / ingredients

Servings:

Chicken breast (cooked ahead)

200

Button mushrooms (fresh or canned)

200

Onion

Hard cheese

100

Eggs (boiled)

Walnuts

Mayonnaise

Black olives

Fresh herbs (parsley or dill)

Vegetable oil (for frying)

Translation table of volumetric measures

Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe

By weight of the composition:

Proteins 31 % 10 g

Fats 59 % 19 g

Carbohydrates 9 % 3 g

222 kcal

GI: 100 / 0 / 0

Cooking method

Cooking time: 50 min

Step 1:

The ingredients. Cook the chicken breast and the eggs ahead of time.
Step 2:

Roughly chop the mushrooms and onion.
Step 3:

Pour vegetable oil into a skillet and heat it over high heat, then lower it to medium and fry the mushrooms.
Step 4:

Add the onion and fry until done. Then set the skillet in cold water to cool it down faster.
Step 5:

Grate the hard cheese and the eggs on the coarse side of a grater. Set some of the cheese aside for the garnish.
Step 6:

Cut the chicken breast into small pieces.
Step 7:

Shell the walnuts, remove the membranes, and chop them with a knife. Combine all the prepared ingredients in a large mixing bowl — chicken, eggs, cheese, and walnuts.
Step 8:

Finely chop the herbs — parsley, dill, or green onion (whatever you have) — and add them to the bowl.
Step 9:

Dress the salad with mayonnaise and mix. Taste for salt and add some if needed, then stir again.
Step 10:

Take your serving dish. Set a glass in the center and mound the salad in a ring around it, packing it down with a spoon.
Step 11:

Then gently twist the glass and lift it out.
Step 12:

Now decorate the salad. First, cover the whole surface with the cheese you set aside.
Step 13:

Halve the olives lengthwise. Picture the salad divided into 5 sections and arrange the olive halves into flowers, gently pressing them into the surface. It helps to place the 5 top "petals" first to space the flowers evenly, then fill in the rest.
Step 14:

Fill the gaps between the flowers with greens — parsley leaves or dill sprigs if you have them. I used green onion, cut into roughly 2-inch (5 cm) lengths and placed in little clusters.
Step 15:

For the centers of the flowers I used finely chopped tomato; you could use red bell pepper, or sweet corn for a yellow center. I didn't list those in the ingredients.
Step 16:

The Leshy salad is ready to serve. After the photo shoot, it occurred to me that you could build a flower in the center on the bottom of the dish too — but it was all already done! Enjoy.