What and how to eat in Russia? Peculiarities of the Russian national cuisine


'Brainless think the Russian language tup:
Soup whether vkusnyay, or a tasty soup.
AP Sumarokov.

In comments to the article Mark Blau on the traditions of Russian chaevnichaniya I was of the subversive idea that is not so innocent and had been properly enforced the introduction of Russian national cuisine of custom heavy drinking tea, which turned into a "pochaevnichat" instead of nourishing "meal." To continually fasting Russian people question the usefulness of tea for me, it is highly doubtful. But it's my opinion. Edge of the wing, I touched the issue of transformation of a healthy Russian food and the issue of greater benefit for people to eat what grows in its climatic zone. Donated food from me, and reforms of Peter I. In my opinion Russian meal more lost than found on its innovations and from subsequent borrowings from Western cuisine. This opinion may be controversial. Therefore, I invite to the barrier. The truth may not be born, but I hope to draw at least a short time the eyes of readers to the lost values of our food culture, on which he erected the present Russia.

"As far as, say, a meal, then vyatichi, Drevlyane, Radimichians, Northerners and all other nationalities prarusskie, ... ate about what we're eating now, - meat, poultry and fish, vegetables, fruits and berries, eggs, cheese and cereal, sdabrivaya oil, anise, dill, vinegar and bridou bread in the form of loaves, rolls, cakes, pies . Tea and vodka do not know, but were able to hop honey, beer, kvas ...». This writer wrote Chivilihin. My father confessor to Valeria at them ...

Yes, sir Chivilihin. Med drinking, and his mustache dripping, but with the approval of the Christian church, with its almost annual stringent and polustrogimi posts I poobkarnayu your little list is almost naked. Moreover, the first recordings of Russian cuisine came just with the 11 th century. And later various sources: chronicles, lives, slovopoucheniya already present to us a very different picture of the Russian peasant food. On the Russian food traditions, as the prevailing notion, we can say from the start of the band's fifteenth century.

Vpolsyta Eat, drink half drunk, yes - live full century before. Sti da mess - our food ... None of the Russian peasant whip in the Dnieper was not driving - he climbed into the font. Religious doctrines, therefore, did not go counter to the Russian stomach. Otherwise, it would still like to see. Since the dawn of Russia was grain, fish, mushroom, berry ...

Porridge - our mother. From the cradle to the grave kutya Russian peasant lived on porridge. Porridge - grandmother of bread: "Porridge - our mother, rye bread - tyatka home!" Grain - breadwinner. The dough rye, fresh and sour, Helm Russia: Fresh - Christmas carols, juicy, noodles, sour - bread. And with the tenth century, appeared a delicacy, like wheat flour - and here's cakes, pancakes, cakes, loaves, pancakes ...

Grains are not only eating, drinking and even 1000 years ago in the form of rye, oats and wheat then kiseley. Nestor the chronicler of "The Tale of Bygone Years" describes how tsezh (jelly) and fed (stewed fruit with honey), rescued from Belgorod Pechenegs. (Who cares, I will tell in the comments.) Who will drink oat kiselek? Or mead? No, the spoon of honey in the tea - it is, my friends, not mead, and hot water with honey.

Fed man and vegetables of all sorts. Repa, say. She even crude, though the guy though liver. Also peas. Carrot not know, but redechku respected black, cabbage and live spruce, and booze, and steamed in the oven, and stew crumble. (This is a turnip, I buy on the couch. There all our Shope in the vegetable. The scene at the fountain - our Jewish baushka: "Lady, but you sho of it Delatite, Sho?" - "Hrumchu, grandmother, hrumchu ...». On Jeans wiped her and bit off, because hrumko ...)

A stew or gruel was originally fish, and then he went broth, zatirushki, mash, Calla, soup, borscht, botvinya. And only in the 19 th century, all this became known as soups. (Sumarokov outraged!) And to eat, Thank God, it was then, and people appreciated a good consumer: consumer good - a good worker. Reading Domostroy: "... at home and flour and all sorts of cakes, pancakes and all sorts of makes and sotsni and trubitsy and all sorts of porridge and noodles with peas and pea tsyzheny and zobonets and kundumtsy and boiled and the juice ETS: pies pancakes and mushrooms, and mushrooms, and milk mushrooms, and poppy seeds, and porridge, and turnips, and cabbage, and what God has sent, or nuts in juice, and korovaytsy ... A Brusnichnaya water and cherry syrup, and raspberry juice and all sorts of candy, and apples, and pears in kvass and molasses, and bed and levashniki, myself and about the guests ... "Wow! Hail to you, the consumers! (On one day be in a trapezushku, yes?)

And who always seems tasteless and inedible, I discovered the secret of edible and delicious. Russian stove! Pots and planters! No boiling-hot-kipyatezhka, and the degree of languor broth or gruel, if anything, even heating of the pots and pots from all directions, maintaining the taste, aroma and nutritional properties due to the narrow neck. Similarly, the loaves were placed in the oven - evenly, with equal propekaniem, with good lift test. And now, those mammoths survived, do not let me enter the public misleading: whether to call the bread that is sold in bakeries, a man who has ever eaten real bread from a Russian stove?

(I do not sing Gogol Russian troika - I sing a Russian stove "and conceiving her, and gave birth to her, and slept on her and treated her. And eats what God has sent from her, and almost died on it. And it is kutyu memorial to obvyvane languish. It revolves around the hut in the Russian oven. It is worthy of another article.)

Now Let's face it: food was scarce man in Russia, never laborer did not eat his fill, had amassed his own diet, but not on the paucity of traditional Russian cuisine, and as a consequence of economic phenomena. Never did enough for the peasant was not - to save on food Russian man, poorly fed not out of greed, and on poverty. But if all was in excess of a granary, then at me, so there's nothing like the real Russian food - simple, healthy, tasty, nutritious ....

P.S. (No, I can not keep his hands are itching to give a good recipe from the Nestor-chronicle for the kids, checked on her - faces were in!). Mommy, buy a cup of oats ordinary horse, with wild oats, real. Washed, bust, huh? In a pot, preferably in a clay pot. Fill so that the oats was one-third of the volume. At night in the oven at medium temperature. In the morning get unsympathetic gray sticky paste. So this is Kiselniy basis, and when you dilute the case boiled water until the desired consistency, you get just what Nestor the chronicler called "tsezh. Sweeten as you want, and in the bottle. If the first time a child does not take a pacifier, Slip in a dream - work, and awake the next day. Eat, eat, small, it is useful and tasty ..