For what to dip stroganina in, the possibilities are endless. Nellya Motysheva, who also lives on the peninsula, plans to collect her recipes in a book. What she calls “mom’s sauce” is vegetable oil, mustard powder and reindeer blood.

The Russian Arctic looks remote on the map, but more than a million people live here — far more than in the polar regions of Western Europe and North America. From the Bolsheviks’ forced collective farming and the gulag labor camps to the chaotic collapse of Communism, outside forces beyond local control have shaped the lives of its residents.

Now, places like the peninsula are synonymous with Russia’s rapid development of the oil-and-gas reserves in its northern reaches. Global warming is threatening traditional ways of life. The receding sea ice is turning the region into a theater of increased trade and intensifying geopolitical competition.

“Nevertheless, we’ve kept our passion for our traditional food,” said Zoya Safarbekova, the director of the Yamal District Museum in the town of Yar-Sale near the Gulf of Ob, after ticking off the external shocks that have befallen her Indigenous Nenets people over the last century. “In November, the freezing cold begins, and that’s it — you know you must eat stroganina.”

The name of the dish comes from the Russian word “strogat,” meaning “to whittle,” as a carpenter would. It is distinct from the less refined rubanina — from the word for “to chop” — which is a frozen fish pounded to bits with an ax.

The best stroganina, Yamal residents said, is produced when it is chilly outside — no warmer than 20 below Fahrenheit. That temperature flash-freezes the fish or reindeer meat and locks in the flavor.