Kotleta (Russian/Ukrainian Cutlet)
In Russian and Ukrainian cuisine a kotleta is a pan-fried patty of minced or bound ingredients — closer to a croquette than to the Western "cutlet" (a thin slice of meat) — typically bound with bread soaked in milk and served with starchy sides.
A kotleta (Russian: котлета; Ukrainian: котлета) is, in modern Russian usage, almost exclusively a pan-fried minced-meat patty or croquette shaped like a small oval. This differs fundamentally from the Western cutlet, which traditionally means a thin slice of meat (often breaded and fried). The word reached Russian from the French côtelette ("little rib") but its meaning drifted toward the minced-patty form. A typical kotleta mixture binds ground meat with bread soaked in milk, plus onion, garlic, and herbs; the patties are pan-fried and served with mashed potatoes, other potatoes, or pasta. Notable variants include the Pozharsky cutlet, an elaborate minced-poultry version coated in breadcrumbs or small croutons and enriched with butter for juiciness, and the otbivnaya kotleta, which keeps the older sense of a beaten, breaded slice of meat. In the Soviet era, mass-produced semi-processed patties — colloquially "Mikoyan cutlets" after politician Anastas Mikoyan — made the cheap pork-or-beef patty a fixture of everyday eating. In Ukrainian cuisine the term covers both single meat servings and minced dishes, with the related sichenyk being minced meat or fish and vegetables coated in breadcrumbs. The category readily extends to grain- and vegetable-based patties, including buckwheat grechaniki.