How do you relate a unique custom like stroganina to a primarily American audience?

I remember first trying it on a trip last year to Siberia and thinking, “Wow, how is this not a super hip dish in Brooklyn?” People all over the world love sushi, and many Times readers love raw fish. Who knew you could take it, freeze it, and it becomes a totally different delicacy? When I first tried it, I immediately thought, “I have to write about this someday.”

Was there anything from your reporting you wanted to include but couldn’t find room for?

In the dispatch I mention that people in that region are frustrated by pollution caused by the oil and gas industry that’s becoming more active in the Russian Arctic. On the other side you have the fact that this oil and gas exploration brings untold sums of money to these regions. That was striking, seeing how high the quality of life was in these towns. That economic aspect is something we typically put in the forefront of stories, but I wanted to put the cultural and personal stories in the forefront here.

When I started this job I asked one of our editors, “What kind of stories do you want?” And the response was: Tell us how people live in Russia. We write about Putin, politics, and will continue to, but we also want to tell stories of people. The food people eat is a core component of the human existence.

Does climate change have greater implications for stroganina?

That’s another theory I had when reporting this that I didn’t end up including. The colder it is, the faster the fish or meat freezes and the better the flavor. At the end of the day, people notice climate change, but no one said it affected stroganina. But there is the thawing of the permafrost that endangers the infrastructure. There are places that have found themselves cut off from the mainland for much longer than usual because the ice isn’t hardening fast enough.