Russian cuisine

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RUSSIAN CUISINE  

Russian cuisine is rich and varied. There is a big choice of appetizers, soups, hot and dessert dishes. Soup makes an important part of a Russian meal. The traditional Russian soups are shchee (fresh cabbage meat shchee, sauerkraut shchee, shchee Petrovsskie cooked from pike-perch and fresh cabbage), borshch, rassolnik (kidney and salted cucumber soup), meat and fish solyanka, ukha, mushroom soup and soup in season — okroshka and cold beetroot soup.No two recipes are the same for borshch and shchee.

Many ways of cutting and cooking meat came from France, that is why they have French terms: antrekot, eskalop, file. Roast suckling pig is a classic festive dish on the Russian table. The traditional method was to roast the pig on a baking tray in the oven. It was cooked with the head left on, basted frequently with oil or butter and served with buckwheat and sometimes with a hot sauce. Alexander Grigoryevich Stroganoff gave his name at the end of the 19th century to a dish— beef Stroganoff. Stroganoff lived in Odessa and had a very good cook who was either French or French-trained. Beef Stroganoff is a dish made of meat cut into strips and cooked in sour-cream sauce.

Pelmeni is another specialty of Russian cookery, which has its history. Under the Mongol yoke pelmeni became established in Siberia and the Urals and gradually spread on all the territory of Russia. Nowadays there is a great number of recipes and varieties of them. Traditional muxture of beef, pork and elk is used to make minced meat. It is interesting that the whole ceremony of making pelmeni exists in the villages of Siberia. There is a local tradition there that the families gather at the table once or twice a month in winter and spend the whole affemoon to make a vast batch of pelmeni. The women make the dough and chop the meat, the men do the folding. The traditional form is ear-shaped, but they come in all shapes from square to triangles. Then the pelmeni are deep frozen and kept in sacks, bags or buckets in cold pantries.

Russian cooking makes greater and more varied use of mushrooms than any other cuisine in the world. They are eaten raw, dressed with herbs, cooked into soups and pies, baked with cream. A popular winter delicacy is pickled or salted mushrooms, which are eaten as hors d’oeuvres.

The great Russian fish are freshwater fish, headed by the celebrated sterlet from the river Volga. They include several varieties of sturgeon and over a dozen different salmon. Of the extensive salmon family fera(trout) — sig — is still known to some people as “the Tsar’s fish”. They are served hot and cold, smoked, in aspic or stuffed, fried, marinated and the like. And, of course, soft, pressed and red caviar is the hit of every festive table. The English word “porridge” is no good for translating kasha, which covers almost all ways of cooking all grains in water, milk, stock and cream. There is a large variety of consistencies from dry (like rice) to a thick puree. The simplest and traditional way to serve Russian kasha is with plenty of good butter.

As the saying goes: “You can’t spoil kasha with butter”.

There is a large variety of poultry and game dishes in Russian cuisine: roast chicken, roast duck

and goose stuffed with apples and sauerkraut, roast partridge, hazel grouse, woodcock, black cock, pheasant and quail. They are juicy and tender dishes.

A large variety of milk products are used in Russian cooking: a sort of dry, granulated cream cheese called tvorog, thick sour cream called smetana and several types of sour-milk products of the yoghourt type. Smetana can be used with almost anything: we can dress soups, meat dishes, strawberries and apples sliced up with it. It is also used on pancakes and drunk by the glassful with or without sugar. Smetana is also an almost universal flavouring sauce. Smetana is made from cream and contains 2,5% of protein, 20—40% of fat, lactic acid. Kefir is a dietary beverage made from cow’s milk, yeast and lactic acid bacteria. Ryazhenka is a sour milk product made from baked milk.

Russian cuisine is famous for its pies which were baked in Russia in good old times and are very popular nowadays. They are rasstegai (open- topped pirozhki with meat of fish stuffing), kulebiaka (a pie with meat, cabbage or fish filling), vatrushki (yeast dough rolls with hollows filled with curds or jam), krendeli (knot-shaped bread), boubliki (thick ring- shaped rolls), baranki (ringshaped rolls), sooshki (small ring-shaped crackers), koolich (Russian Easter cake).

As for drinks, Russian cuisine offers you its orignal beverages: kvas and zbiten, and a lot of different fruit and berry beverages. Kvas is a beverage made from rye bread and water fermented by yeast. There is a lot of sorts of kvas: mushroom kvas, kvas with mint, beetroot kvas, kvas with horseradish and a lot of others. Zbiten is an old Russian beverage made from kvas, cognac or vodka, honey, tea and spices.

Russian people are very hospitable and generous at the table. They invite everyone who enters their house to eat with them. Bread and salt are the symbolic offering at welcome and also a sign of respect from host to guest. The guest is welcome to share the food even if the house has no more to offer than bread and salt. Hospitality is a typical trait of character of a Russian.

1.      Find Russian equivalents :

many ways of cutting, with the head left on, was either French or French-trained, cut into strips, to make minced meat, in aspic, thick sour cream, yeast dough rolls, filled with curds, knot-shaped bread, water fermented by yeast, a sign of respect, a typical trait of character.

2.      Answer the questions

1.      What is the name of the popular Russian dish made of meat cut into strips and cooked in sour-cream sauce?

2.      What is the name of the highly seasoned soup made of beetroot and cabbage and served with sour cream?

3.      What is the name of the Russian fermented beverage made of rye?

4.      What are the names of the most popular Russian yoghourt-type beverages of fermented cow’s milk?

5.      What is the name of the Russian national dish made of cooked grain?

6.      What is the name of the classic chicken dish invented in Russia in the Soviet period?

7.      What is the name of a many-layed Russian pie?

8.      What is the name of the Russian Easter cake?

9.      What is the Russian counterpart (двойник) of Italian ravioli?

10.  What is the name of the urn the Russians use to boil water for tea and which literally means “selfboiler”?

11.  What is the name of the Russian cottage cheese?

12.  What Caucasian name do the Russians use m reference to what the Americans know as “shish kebab”?

13.  What are the French terms for some Russian meat dishes?

14.  What is the name of open-topped pies with curd stuffing?

15.  What is the most typical trait of the Russian character?