1. Red Square. Temples, monuments, people
Alexey Pevnev from Kaliningrad takes an active part in all LJ thematic weeks. For the section #slovoskve he prepared reports from GUM and from Red Square. Walk with the author through the main square of the country. Each building here is a unique historical monument.
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2. How the Moscow Zoo lives
Another constant participant of the LiveJournal thematic weeks is Elena Haro. She talks about one of the oldest zoos in Europe - Moscow. It was opened in 1864 and is still a favorite place for family walks.
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3. Ice cream made from kvass. City Day recipe
The well-known blogger of LiveJournal, a specialist in Russian cuisine, Pavel Syutkin, was directly involved in organizing the Moscow City Day. Pavel and Olga Syutkin acted as consultants in the preparation of the gastronomic part of the holiday. Thanks to them, Muscovites and guests of the capital were treated to ancient dishes recreated according to recipes from different centuries.
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4. Taganka through the eyes of a tourist
Andrey Rumyantsev is a guest of the capital. Having very little time in the city, he visited one of the most ancient and beloved districts of Muscovites - Tagansky. In ancient times, there was a Tatar settlement, artisans lived. Today Taganka is one of the most developed districts of Moscow.
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5. Moscow. View from the water
Each city looks very different when viewed from the water. Sergei Talykov published a report from a walk along the Moscow River. Neat well-groomed facades, bridges, skyscrapers, old and new places in the capital - familiar, but unusual Moscow will open to you in these photos.
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6. Moscow legend. Children's World on Lubyanka
Victoria Kandaurova sometimes comes to Moscow from Barnaul with her family. Her story is about a visit to the Children's World at Lubyanka. The largest children's store in the USSR was opened in 1957. It was the first commercial facility in the country that meets international standards. Today, Children's World contains old and modern toys, an observation deck, a cinema, cafes and restaurants.
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Moscow is always open to guests. Come to the capital, walk along the streets, enjoy the unique atmosphere of the ancient city. And what to see and where to visit, you will be told by the stories of bloggers in the "Word to Moscow" section.
Experts in Russian cuisine (Olga and Pavel have published books about her past and present), TV presenters and authors of the beloved blog on LiveJournal.
Be sure to watch the full video of the meeting, many discoveries and new knowledge await you!
The evening opened with a thematic buffet... The guests were awaited by pies, as well as delicious mead and kvass from the meeting partner - company "Ochakovo"... We will share the impressions of the guest of the meeting, a physician, Ingi arctic-inga.ru :
Useful prevention of colds - mead with cranberries, warming with apple-ginger-cinnamon, and traditional. I loved this sunny amber drink. Pleasant on the palate, sweet, as it should be mead and a little bit with sourness.
Olga and Pavel's story turned out to be large and very interesting. Here we will give only a small part of what was said at the meeting, and we recommend that you watch the full version in the video.
The history of Russian cuisine is full of fairy tales. Experts, including Pavel and Olga, are working with archives to dispel myths. The story about our kitchen began from the very distant past. It is important to understand when cooking is born as a separate part of culture. Pavel said that it arose many thousands of years ago from people's attempts to change the natural natural taste of food.
The listeners learned both about the origin of specific dishes of Russian cuisine and about the full history of its development. Russian cuisine has been known to us since the 9-11th century, but only because then the first written sources appeared. Of course, the development of general cooking began much earlier.
The cuisine, unfortunately, was "not important" for the chroniclers, in contrast to historical events, in order to write about it separately. Therefore, historians are collecting bit by bit mentions of cuisine in historical documents. Interestingly, archeology studies, among other things, the history of cuisine.
Pavel paid special attention to the design of the Russian stove. The first kilns date back to the 6-9 centuries, but these are simple hearths and round earthen structures. Until the 13th and even up to the 17th century, they were not the same as they paint in fairy tales. Ilya Muromets could not lie on such a stove. The ovens took on a familiar look in the times of Peter the Great.
The most important monument to the history of Russian cuisine is Domostroy, published in the 1550s. There is no exact date of its publication, because the first Russian printed books were published without specifying the year. This is a work that gives a more or less complete look at the old Russian cuisine. This is not a cookbook, but a guide on how to invite guests, manage the house, and buy groceries.
It is important to understand that the books show the kitchen of boyars or people with wealth, and we do not know for sure which was the simplest cuisine. In 1610-13 the "Painting of the Tsar's Food" was published. Russian authors showed no interest in cuisine and the book was created for a Polish prince who claims to the Russian throne.
Another significant fact in the history of Russian cuisine. Even the "strong owners" baked bread with quinoa so as not to "relax", since difficult times could always arise.
Similar dishes are found in all cuisines of the world. Associated with this is an important question, to which there is no exact answer - how many centuries a dish must last in the kitchen to be considered national. Pavel Syutkin expressed the opinion that if a product has been included in various dishes of our usual cuisine for centuries and is popular among the population of the country, then it may well be considered "ours".
In the history of cuisine, foreign and Russian, much depended on the rulers. For example, Catherine de Medici brought Italian chefs to Paris, which laid the foundation for French cuisine.
Pavel asked the audience a question: "What is national Russian cuisine?" The answers were sounded: buckwheat, pickled mushrooms, jams and pickles, pancakes, as well as the option "mix everything that is." It is important to understand that the kitchen consists not only of products, but also of the traditions of the feast and many other customs.
Olga Syutkina said that food consumption used to be very reasonable, often leftovers from previous dishes were used. For example, they cooked a "hangover" soup in brine, vinegar in those days was only beer.
Not all dishes can be reproduced correctly today. For example, buckwheat ("red") pancakes were made from green buckwheat before, but now buckwheat is being processed.
Fun fact: the rolls were the first street food, the first fast food in our kitchen. This is where the expression "reach the pen" comes from. Kalachi were baked with a handle, you had to hold on to it while eating and then throw it away. If a person was so hungry that he ate a pen, they said that he had reached the pen. It is also curious that the names of the dishes Levashnik and Lavash are of the same root.
What general conclusion can be drawn? The kitchen is always "edited" for modernity, and that's okay. Throughout its long history, our cuisine has experienced ups, downs, tragedies and achievements. At all times, except for the Soviet period, it was closely connected with the rest of the world, took in food and technology.
After the lecture was over, the audience could ask questions and get comprehensive answers.
The listeners were interested, for example, what to send to foreign friends, like a real Russian? There are many options: caviar, marshmallow, gingerbread, etc. Should dumplings be considered a national Russian dish? Dumplings arose at the same time among many peoples. Russian version of dumplings: kundyums, kundyubki, cabbage or mushrooms in their filling, fish. First, they are cooked like dumplings, then baked, poured with any broth and cooked in a pot. There were many questions and they were all interesting.
Olga and Pavel's book went to the author of the best question - another industry specialist, gastronomy journalist, blogger and culinary critic Anatoly Gendin anatoly_gendin
Some photos of the guests of the meeting - Vlad shchukin-vlad.ru
Darya daryadarya
Maksim novikovski
Traditional general photography at the end of the evening. Of course, these are not all the participants in the meeting - we are grateful to those who stayed until the end.
We hope you spent a pleasant and informative evening with friends and like-minded people. Thank you for being with us! We are waiting for you again!
Thanks for the photos for the final post Ingu
Let me be clear. Many thought that Popados had sold out to the damned turkomans of the basurmans, went for a long kebab and vilified, damn it, our native Russian pancake. Scribbles how good the foreign cuisine is, but from his own, domestic, his nose turns up. And the Crimean cabbage soup for him is liquid, and the chickens are not cooked that way.
But in fact, there are very few food patriots like yours truly. Even yesterday, sitting in the famous Le Train Bleu at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, eating foie gras and reading "Charlie Hebdo", I dreamed not at all about French croissants and onion soup. I wanted, you know, a normal Ukrainian Russian borscht, and more savage, kulebyaki and cold kvass.
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Am I a quilted jacket? In this sense - absolutely, the most terry. Wherever the fate of a rootless Russo-Tatar takes, literally in a couple of weeks he begins to miss not birches, but pancakes with curd, pickled cucumbers and that buckwheat porridge with meat that my wife cooks so well. And also smoked fish ...
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And here's the paradox: in Moscow, in the heart of Holy Russia, eating real Russian food is much more difficult than Euro-American-Japanese and other fast food. A simple question: when was the last time you ordered pizza or sushi? And why can't you find the usual Guryev porridge in a Russian city during the day with fire? I have no answer to these questions, I do not remember kulebyak in Moscow menus and on store shelves.
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In general, there is a strong feeling that Russian catering is such a global conspiracy against our culinary traditions. But they, among other things, constitute national identity, along with language, tales about Ivan the Fool and the strange holiday "Old New Year". You are Russian in spirit if you cannot live without herring and potatoes with dill.
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Thank God there are people who care. The first steps in the popularization of our cuisine are now being made in Moscow, too. Right now in the very center, from Tverskoy Boulevard to Chistye Prudy, there are 6 sites of the "Our Product" festival, where anyone can taste fish smoked right there, in the old Russian way and people dressed according to that era. And behind the cinema "Russia" "the fighters of Alexei Ovcharenko reproduce the whole process of baking Russian bread - from grinding wheat to hot flatbread.
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All products presented here are the simplest ones. Indeed, according to the same Alexei, in the old days it was much more important to preserve the product than to prepare a complex dish.
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But the complexities in Russian cuisine were quite enough. After that, you can turn from the festival grounds to a new and very interesting restaurant "Moskovskaya kuhmisterskaya", on Bolshaya Nikitskaya.
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The enlightened 19th century was the finest hour for our chefs. On Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Mr. Olivier comes up with his legendary "Russian salad". We call it by the author's surname, although on different continents I met it exclusively as a Russian salad. Russian restaurants appear in Europe. From simple pickles to the most complex dishes! Alas, those traditions and recipes are completely forgotten. We do not know what our great-great-grandfathers ate, what the taste of dishes was in Russian taverns and ordinary houses. We can only fantasize and swallow saliva, reading Gogol's description of the dinner of an ordinary district merchant.
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That is why the undertaking of the famous metropolitan restaurateur Kirill Gusev and my LiveJournal friend, the historian of Russian cuisine Pavel Syutkin p_syutkin
so long awaited and cool. You flip through the menu like a real history textbook. You can imagine yourself a nobleman and order duck noodles with roots and a quail egg. Merchant of the 2nd guild and demand a frying pan of pearl barley porridge with goat stew and honey agarics, purely for warm-up. An ordinary collegiate assessor from "The Overcoat" and modestly order himself a spelled.
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Imagine, our common spelled has already become a delicious rare product! This culinary holiday is just the first timid step in the long road of struggle for our stomachs. So that you can eat spelled without excursion to Bolshaya Nikitskaya, but in an ordinary eatery near the metro. And so that in a nearby cafe they did not sell burgers with refried fries and 0.3 cola, but hot delicious pies with dried fruit compote.
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Then, quite possibly, the first Russian restaurant awarded with a Michelin star will appear in Moscow. And Nemikhail and I will gladly go there and publish our incorruptible reviews.
Cyril and Pavel, you are doing a very good and tasty job!
p.s. Read, by the way, Paul's magazine, it is extremely good))
From the editor:
- historians of Russian cuisine, participants in various food festivals and TV shows, authors of books about the past and present of Russian cuisine: “ The unthinkable history of Russian cuisine"(2011)," The unthinkable history of Soviet cuisine"(2013)," The unthinkable history of Russian products from Kievan Rus to the USSR"(2014)," CCCP Cook Book"(2015). In their books, the couple explore Russian cuisine in the context of existing ideas about it, trying to understand what is primordially ours in Russian cuisine and what is borrowed. Also Pavel and Olga are co-authors of the volume “ Russian cuisine: regional and modern", Released specially for the World Expo 2015. Pavel and Olga also run a blog in the LiveJournal "History of Russian Cuisine", which is especially rated among Russian users. We present the first part of the interview with Pavel to the site "Russian Faith". You will learn, for example, why foreign travelers sometimes did not like Russian cuisine, and there are many more interesting things.
As you know, in ancient times, only seasonal gifts of nature were used for food. Overseas or greenhouses were not as common as they are today. Tell us what was mostly on the table of the Russian people of the middle class 100-200 years ago.
Of course, Russian medieval cuisine was quite seriously different from today's. If we consider the period 100-200 years ago, then the differences, perhaps, were not so significant, but if we move away in the days of Domostroi, and this is the middle of the 16th century, then we will understand that a lot has changed.
We often hear arguments about what good Russian cuisine was and how great it would be to revive it. But is everything that was served, for example, at the tsar's table of Ivan the Terrible, would we like today? The fact is that over a historical period of several centuries, our tastes have changed quite seriously. Let's consider, for example, what was at the rich sovereign's table, and understand how it would fit our today's kitchen.
If it was not fasting, then a variety of stews were certainly served: rich ears with fish, meat, fish or mushroom kalah, the main component of which was pickled cucumbers. (By the way, the word "ear" in those days did not mean exactly a fish dish, the ear could also be made from chicken). The main advantage of these dishes was their fat content and richness, and not some kind of sophisticated taste. This is due to the way of life of a person of that era: he had to spend tremendous physical effort, work was mainly in the fresh air. And the food had to replace those calories. There were various fried dishes on the table, but fried in a special way. They were cooked on a grill (skewer), approximately the way they cook a shish kebab or a whole bird today. Fried swans were a special treat.
According to the testimony of a writer-hunter S. T. Aksakova, swan meat " so hard that, despite the preliminary two-day soaking, it was difficult to chew ", and the taste" was like a wild goose, but the goose is much softer, juicier and tastier"(ST Aksakov. Notes of a rifle hunter of the Orenburg province). But at the royal tables, the swan was the main ceremonial dish. “How did they cook it?” Aksakov asked and, finding no answer, assumed that it had been soaked for some time, and then stewed in the oven for a long time. Today this recipe has practically disappeared.
Many foreign travelers who came to us in the 16th-17th centuries, for example, Sigismund Herberstein, Adam Olearius, left very different impressions of Russian medieval cuisine. By the way, they didn't like a lot of it, and there were two main reasons for this: the huge amount of garlic and onions in the dishes and the quality of the oil.
In our cuisine of that time, garlic and onions practically replaced European spices. In the Middle Ages spices after all performed 3 tasks... The first, of course, is to diversify the taste of not too sophisticated dishes. The cooking techniques at that time were simple - boiled, fried and stewed, because no sauces in the current sense existed. The second is food preservation, I would even say, correcting the taste of not very fresh food, that is, masking slightly spoiled foods. And the third - some medical, pharmaceutical purposes. All these tasks in our kitchen were performed by garlic. It was so widespread that it was even given out as a salary to government officials. They put it everywhere and everywhere. Naturally, this persistent powerful smell of garlic was quite unpleasant for those people who did not live in Russia and were not close to its culinary traditions. I think that even today, by the way, this is a very controversial characteristic of Russian cuisine.
The second reason why foreign travelers sometimes did not like Russian cuisine is relevant to us today. Until the middle of the 19th century, ghee was definitely called Russian butter. Butter, of course, was also made in those days, but due to the lack of refrigerators, it deteriorated quickly enough, and it could be eaten literally until the end of the day. And ghee, unfortunately, had a bad trait: it quickly went rancid, and quite high-quality dishes were sometimes saturated with this taste. Therefore, the same Herberstein notes that almost all the dishes that were sent to him from the tsar's table had such a flavor, and he could only eat what was fried directly on the fire.
True, by the 18th - 19th centuries, all these shortcomings of Russian cuisine were smoothed out, so-called "Chukhonskoe butter" appeared in Russia, i.e. Baltic. This was already under Peter I, when Russia reached the Baltic Sea. For the local population, butter differed from ours, firstly, in that it was washed and it was cleaner, and secondly, in that it was salted. This made it possible to store regular butter for much longer. But it is the basis for the further development of haute cuisine: all sauces, all delicious, beautiful dishes were built on the use of butter.
By the end of the 18th century, Russia was fairly well integrated into European life. Chefs began to come from Europe. This process became especially active after the Great French Revolution of 1789, when for many chefs Russia seemed an island of calm in the stormy sea of European revolutions. Our aristocratic gastronomy of the early 19th century is largely French.
In general, medieval cuisine was rich and varied, but it corresponded to its time. Therefore, by a modern person, those dishes will not always be perceived as pleasant and tasty. However, while we talked about the kitchen of a more or less wealthy person.
Let's now take a look at the everyday peasant cuisine. One point needs to be emphasized here. Until the 16th century, the table of an ordinary peasant and, say, a boyar was in many ways similar. All were prepared from the same set of subsistence farming products: vegetables and fruits grown in the garden, meat, poultry. The only difference was in the number of dishes served. If it was good for a peasant when meat appeared on the table 1-2 times a week, then 20-30 dishes at lunch could be served on a noble table every day. However, the food image, the cultural code of food, both the boyar and the peasants were very close.
The discrepancies between ordinary peasant and more refined cuisines begin later. New overseas products, spices, cooking habits became available, and an exchange of culinary experiences appeared. It is clear that all these innovations were becoming more familiar to wealthy people who could afford to travel, support foreign chefs, and buy spices. And the world of simple Russian cuisine to some extent remained the same, continued to exist in its old way.
This, of course, does not mean that our peasant cuisine was somehow poor and miserable. Such an understanding would be completely wrong. A huge part of this diet consisted of various cereals, legumes, vegetables, wild herbs, herbs. On the contrary, at the medieval boyar's table, meat, poultry and other expensive products, from which fatty, rich dishes were prepared, were always an indicator of security. Any kind of turnip, beets, nettles were considered beneath the dignity of the wealthy strata of the population. But here's the paradox. This far-fetched self-restraint deprived the aristocratic cuisine of simple vitamins and nutrients — from vegetables, herbs, plant foods, cereals, legumes — that were essential in nutrition.
An amazing consequence of this was that in the middle of the eighteenth century, during the reign of Elizabeth, Catherine, the Russian nobility was struck by a whole epidemic of apoplectic strokes. This is a stroke, which most often occurs due to improper diet, due to the abundance of fatty, unhealthy foods. Therefore, the transition of our aristocracy to lighter, let's say, French food by the end of the eighteenth century was also a path for this very aristocracy to a healthier lifestyle.
And the peasant cuisine, meanwhile, included a set of dishes amazing in their simplicity and taste: a wide variety of vegetables, herbs, nettles, lynch, wild garlic. Amazingly, this is another forgotten facet of our medieval cuisine, which, upon closer examination, turns out to be not a chip of a primitive pebble, but the surface of an uncut diamond filled with inner light, a collection of the experience of generations. Unfortunately, this experience was lost, it was not in demand in the new time, when southern tender plants, vegetables, salads that did not require long processing and preparation came to us; when everything has become easier and easier; when Russian chefs suddenly discovered new tastes and combinations of products, much more expressive than it was before. But they missed the fact that Europe began with the primitive taste of turnip, radish and sorrel, improving it beyond recognition. And we have not preserved our heritage.
Peeing, salting, pickling. Are these cooking techniques exclusively traditional Russian?
I think that there is no definite answer to this question. Quite frankly, the many dishes and culinary techniques are much older than all of today's nations and peoples. For example, the well-known dispute about whose borscht, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian or Polish, is actually meaningless, because borscht arose much earlier than these very nationalities that are arguing about it.
It's the same with these culinary tricks. They go back several millennia. Some of these methods are typical for the population of Eastern Europe, for the Slavs. For example, they ferment cabbage and wet apples, like we do, even in Belarus and Poland. But if we talk in general about the technologies of urinating, fermenting, etc., then they arose in parallel in completely different civilizations. For example, there is Korean cabbage "kimchi", but the way of pickling it, as you understand, differs from the old Russian one. That is, these things were mastered all over the world, all of humanity gradually grew to them. Just as the wheel was invented, probably in many regions at the same time.
It is no secret that in our climate vegetables and fruits ripen later than European ones, which bathe in the sun, and sometimes are inferior in their taste, so they had to be pre-processed. But as? It is from here that such familiar techniques have appeared in Russia: salt, ferment, soak in kvass - radish with kvass, cucumbers drenched in kvass, sauerkraut. Plus, it's a great way to preserve it for the long winter.
What spices and seasonings were used in ancient Russia?
Of course, the most common ones available to literally everyone are garlic and onions. But in general, at our table has long been pepper, salt, foreign spices - Asian saffron, coriander, which we also called "kishnets", ginger, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg. In the south, they were mined at our place, somewhere they were brought from afar. Another thing is that even salt was still very expensive then. It is no coincidence that the very omen that if you spill salt, then this is a quarrel. It is clear that if the hostess spilled salt, then the family will eat unsalted stew for some time.
There were other ways of serving these spices at the Russian table. At least at the time of "Domostroi", in the 15th-16th centuries, it was not customary to add spices to dishes, except for salt. That is, dishes were served on the table, and spices were simply placed next to them. Maybe because they were expensive, maybe because so everyone could add to their liking. In addition to such European and Asian spices, we also had some of our own additives, ingredients that played the role of improving the taste and its diversity. These were a variety of pickled, pickled vegetables. Usually, for example, the bird was served with soaked plums or salted grapes, which just stood nearby. Pickled cucumbers and pickled apples were served, of course.
It is also necessary to note such a thing as explosions. This is a kind of analogue of gravy or sauce in old Russian cuisine. It was prepared from berries or vegetables, for example, lingonberry broth, cranberry broth, cabbage broth. Onions were put into a vegetable broth, boiled until thickened, and a sauce boiled down to the consistency of cream or sour cream was obtained, which was added to various dishes, adding to meat, poultry, and fish. These are the flavors that existed in that old Russian cuisine.
In what period did soup appear in Russia in its huge variety of variations?
The word "soup" itself appears around the eighteenth century, in the post-Petrine times, when European culinary culture had already begun to penetrate our lives. And before that, dishes similar to soup in Russian cuisine were called differently: soup, ukha, kalya - soup with pickles. Moreover, the ear, as I said, could be very diverse in its composition: from fish, from chicken, from meat, from mushrooms. Of course, our Russian cabbage soup and borscht were cooked. However, borsch in medieval Russian cuisine was cooked without beets. In a number of localities, hogweed leaves were added to it, which gave it a sour taste. Perhaps this is the origin of the name "borscht". But this is not the "Sosnovsky hogweed" that today grows on the side of the roads, but its other variety, which could be eaten.
Obviously, there was a variety of soups in Russian cuisine in pre-Petrine times, before the appearance of the word “soup”. There were dozens of names for these soups.
Excellent cold soups were prepared - okroshka, botvinia. Some of our contemporaries may not have heard of her already. Meanwhile, botvinia is a soup made from good, expensive fish, beet tops, fresh cucumbers, eggs, crayfish necks could be added there (each in his own way approached the preparation of this dish), and all this was poured with kvass. This is such a cold, but quite rich in taste and aroma soup. Of course, there were also simpler versions of botvinya. For example, we recently returned from the Kola Peninsula, where we studied the cuisine of the Pomors. So in their kitchen such a dish has been preserved - fish with kvass. Cod was taken, boiled, disassembled into small fibers, onions were added, and this was poured with bread kvass.
If we talk about the elegant aristocratic cuisine of Russia in the 18th-19th centuries, then the soups in it, of course, have changed. Firstly, they became less fatty, more beautiful and thinner, not its fat content, but its saturation, aroma, and taste, began to be appreciated in the broth. The broth was even specially "transparent", trying to give it an elegant shade. There were various technologies for clarifying the broth, for example, using eggs, minced meat, and even using black caviar. Caviar was put into the broth as a guy, it took on all unnecessary suspensions, and then it was taken out and thrown away.
Soups-mashed potatoes from vegetables and chicken appeared. It is clear that there were no meat grinders at that time, so the ingredients for the soup were chopped, ground in a mortar or rubbed through a sieve. We can say that in addition to the emergence of various new soups, our old dishes were also refined to a new understanding. As a result, for example, the old Russian kalya, which is prepared using pickled cucumbers, has gradually turned into today's pickle. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Moscow pickle was already widespread, which was an elegant dish made from meat, from rather expensive roots.
And already in Soviet times, it turned into the so-called Leningrad pickle. Old cooks told me how, after the revolution in 1917, Narpit specialists came up with a new menu for mass canteens. Of course, then there was a shortage of products, and it was proposed to replace the roots with barley, expensive meat - for offal. So the dish was born, which later in all Soviet canteens began to be called rassolnik in Leningrad.
Whom did we decide to entrust the gastronomic week in LiveJournal and duty on the heading « Food » ? There was no doubt - Pavel and Olga Syutkin, nominees for the Neforum Awards 2017, are not only great experts on the past and present of Russian cuisine. Their almost detective exploration of the refrigerator of a Soviet man is described in the bestseller The Non-Invented History of Soviet Cuisine, and a joint blog fills in the gaps in our knowledge of a brief history of Russian cutlets, the delicacy of turnip dishes, and the technology of growing vegetarian meat. And the question of whether Russian cuisine was forgotten under the USSR still torments us.
Olga and Pavel Syutkin
Before the start of the watch, we asked Pavel and Olga to tell a little about themselves and asked our most burning questions. You can ask your own in the comments to the first duty post of the week.
You are connoisseurs of Russian cuisine, let's start with a question that has been tormenting our compatriots for quite some time: dumplings and borscht - can we consider them our dishes? And what dish, in your opinion, is the hallmark of Russian cuisine?
Of course we can. Both dishes are examples of a successful synthesis of our traditions and borrowed experience. By the way, this is at the same time the answer to the eternal dispute of the Slavs: whose borscht? - General. Borscht is clearly under a thousand years old, or even more.
Not a single nation that claims to be his "birthright" then existed - neither the Russians, nor the Ukrainians, nor the Poles, nor the Balts, nor the Belarusians.
At the same time, each of these nations eventually developed their own wonderful versions of borscht. And Moscow borscht is the same achievement of national culture as Poltava and Lithuanian borscht.
How many years does a dish have to be in the kitchen to become national? Ask the Italians: "Pasta al pomodoro is your specialty?" Although tomatoes appeared in the mass cuisine of the Apennine Peninsula, it is good if 250 years ago. And in our country, the adherents of "leanness" all frown from potatoes - not ours, they say, she.
I would not look for a "visiting card" of Russian cuisine in the Middle Ages. Yes, there are dishes suitable for this - gingerbread, kalach, sauerkraut, botvinia, veal.
But it is no coincidence that today many scientists attribute the phenomenon of "national cuisine" more to the bourgeois culture of the new era.
This is logical. Before that, the cuisine (including ours) is not very rich. And the most important thing is the cuisine is not pleasure, but saturation. But the 19th century already provides a lot of excellent, and most importantly, widely applicable dishes even today - beef stroganoff, Guryev porridge, Pozhansk cutlets, hodgepodge ...
You are an example of a happy family and a successful LJ blog. Tell us a little about your kitchen - how does it feel to blog for two? Who chooses the topics? Who writes? Do you ever criticize each other? What's the hardest part about collaborating?
Joint creativity appeared with us more than 25 years ago - this is our family. But the first joint book was published in 2011. “An invented history of Russian cuisine” - that was how it was called. Now there are eight such books. But from the very beginning, we try to follow this standard - not "invent" a story, but strictly follow the documents and sources. Many people like this, because people see that the history of the kitchen can be treated as a science, and not as tales and anecdotes. Others are outraged that our authentic historical cuisine is not as abundant, spiritual and ancient as they would like to see it.
Working together is both simple and difficult for us. Probably, we got used to each other for a long time.
That is why conversations in raised voices about cabbage soup with a head (it was, it was, and this) is already in the past.
And the separation of duties is simple and logical. As a candidate of historical sciences, I am engaged in work with sources, justification of a particular point of view. Olga, as a culinary practitioner who knows perfectly well our ancient cuisine - the recipe component, the search for lost tastes and their reproduction for today's person.
But the topics are easy to choose. First, we always have a book at work. For example, we recently finished another one about the history of Suzdal cuisine. “A Thousand Years at the Russian Table”, apparently, that is how it will be called. It is clear that many blog posts over the past year reflected our meetings, finds, trips to this city. Later they turned into the corresponding chapters of the book.
In addition, Olga and I actively travel around the country and the world. The Kola Peninsula, Azov, Udmurtia, China, Central Asia, Bulgaria, Italy, France - wherever our culinary travels have gone in recent years. Many of their episodes are also pages of our blog.
In it you can often find just curious "things" from the past. For a couple of years I was leading the “Culinary Mystery” column, where readers were asked to puzzle over forgotten objects, dishes, and customs of our cuisine.
In general, we also consider the blog as a certain kind of way to discuss current problems.
And one more our conclusion regarding the topics. Don't be afraid to go against public opinion. Indeed, most often this opinion was formed at the expense of the laziest and least curious people. Who, having seen some thought somewhere on TV or in a newspaper, are immediately ready to agree with it. Do not be afraid to make posts topics related to criticism of authorities. It's just that this criticism should be objective and well-grounded. Here is an example from our practice. How many "screams" there was a few years ago about the fact that we reproached V. Pokhlebkin for bias and distorting the facts. How many angry words were heard about how insignificant Syutkins can criticize the great Pokhlebkin. Now what? Everything fell into place.
And a couple of years after the release of our works, the opinion that Pokhlebkin is a very controversial author from the point of view of reliability has become generally accepted.
And our works are cited as sources in Wikipedia (including the English language), by the leading Russian and foreign media, introduced into scientific circulation. There is only one conclusion - do not be shy in choosing a topic if you are sure that you are right.
- Why do you think food has become so popular and why chefs have suddenly become almost rock stars?
This is a natural tendency, reflecting attention to the inner world of a person. In Europe and America, the popularity of food magazines, TV shows, and then blogs has been growing since the 1960s. For obvious reasons, under the USSR, this wave passed us. It is surprising to remember that under socialism we did not have a single culinary show on TV.
Today, cooking is one of the most powerful platforms for the exchange of opinions, creativity, and disputes. Sometimes I even sneer, saying "one of the last sites." Its popularity is akin to football. As you know, everyone understands it. So the theme of "tasty food" is close to everyone. Another thing is that the approaches and assessments here can be very different.
As for the chefs ... You just need to know how exhausting and exhausting their work can be. It is very difficult to find a place for creativity behind the daily routine. And if someone succeeds in this, you can only take off your hat to his success. God grant that every rock star works as much as they do.
- Tell us about the loudest gastronomic event in Russia in recent years.
This is not so much a one-off event. Or rather, a process that began with the well-known events of 2014. This is a turn of public opinion towards domestic cuisine. But this process is very ambiguous. On the one hand, we, as people studying the history of Russian cuisine, are very pleased to see how our old words become the "slogan of the moment."
Read how speakers and the media repeat almost word for word passages from our publications three to five years ago. The fact that our cooking is a huge part of the national culture.
On the other hand, the process inevitably generates "empty foam". The chatter of the deputies, the show of officials - the consequence of this is "fakelore". Traditions invented out of the blue, excuses sucked out of the finger for culinary holidays with the distribution of pancakes on a shovel and the preparation of five tons of porridge. The true history of our cuisine - alive, full of victories and tragedies, is being replaced by a soulless splint. But the splint is “highly patriotic” and “spiritual”, which makes it possible to compose a very convenient history of the country. In contrast to what we are doing, this story is “invented” and fabulous.
- Which Russian chefs do you follow? What local restaurants do you like?
Recently, with a smile, we have observed a new trend - a sharp increase in the number of "great Russian chefs". I always smile at the term "great" when applied to a living character. That is, I understand that, say, Pelevin or Sorokin, many can call "great." But I can't imagine any of them taking this seriously. Well, like, "Yes, I'm great, what can you do?"
In culinary matters, things are different.
The "great" chefs and "titans" of Russian cuisine have been proliferating like rabbits lately. And apparently, these characters themselves experience genuine pleasure from these characteristics.
But seriously, I know really great Russian chefs - Belyaev, Filin, Komma, Mukhin, Berezutskikh.
As for our attention, we follow with interest both experienced chefs Maxim Tarusin, Rustam Tangirov, and their young colleagues - Maxim Rybakov, Alexander Volkov-Medvedev. It seems to me that they very subtly capture the main tendency of our cuisine - to use traditional tastes and products, but to make modern bright dishes out of them.
- Will Russia be able to set gastronomic trends at the international level?
We would have to deal with ourselves first. Are we generally striving for international recognition? Or is Russia higher than that, and we don't care about the opinion of some [the usual offensive terms] of Europeans and Americans? Or is it indifferent in politics, but in the sense of cuisine it is very important? - So for a start, let's just not dissemble.
Essentially, the country has been looking for the ideal of its future in the past in recent years. "Domostroevsky" order, "autocracy, Orthodoxy, nationality", reverence for paternal habits ... But why are we surprised that the image of Russia abroad as a result of this becomes a bear with a balalaika, pancakes and vodka? This is exactly what we ourselves "strive for"!
The popularity of our cuisine abroad is a controversial issue. Yes, at festivals of Russian culture there are queues for pancakes and pies. Yes, there are examples of successful concepts working abroad - from Teremka in New York to MariVanna in London. But so far these are happy exceptions.
A typical image of a Russian restaurant abroad is Soviet cuisine of the 1970s with Olivier, jellied meat, Kiev cutlets, hodgepodge and honey cake.
Moreover, often in a very sad performance. It is not surprising that these establishments are becoming mainly a refuge for emigrants who associate their best memories with Soviet youth.
On the other hand, many international culinary competitions in recent years have nominated our young chefs to the first places. But they do not win there with "Domostroyevsky" porridges, cabbage soup and chicken coops. And with a bright and talented imagination, combining tradition with novelty. Here, in my opinion, lies the recipe for our success.
- What did you cook for the New Year at home? Who in your family usually stands at the stove?
We are often asked: "Do you cook only Russian cuisine for yourself?" - There is nothing funnier to hear it. We love to cook delicious food, and it doesn't matter what kind of food it will be - Russian, Ukrainian, Italian or French. For many years we traveled to Austria - for work, rest, skiing. This Austrian-Bavarian cuisine has become almost native to us. Goulash soup, strudel, Sachertorte are frequent guests on our table. Many years ago, we discovered the Italian "hinterland" - Tuscany, Liguria, Lombardy. And they were subdued by her. From our culinary trip to Provence, we had truffle oil in our closet for a long time, and an apron from Paul Bocuse's restaurant in Lyon hangs on a hook.
Christmas hodgepodge really brings back to life
As for the New Year, along with the usual Olivier (which is done differently every time, for example, with salmon) Olga and her daughter Vasilisa cooked a duck with a sauce of cranberries, orange, rum, allspice and cinnamon. For sweets - liqueur-soaked stollen. And on the morning of January 1 - the traditional reviving fish hodgepodge with capers and olives.
Should the Russian people give up, say, mayonnaise and semolina? Why is our cuisine so often criticized as unhealthy?
Today Russian cuisine is in a difficult situation. There are at least two serious questions here. The first is public perception of Russian cuisine. Ask the first person you come across what Russian cuisine is. And you will get the answer: porridge, cabbage soup, pancakes, fatty meat, a lot of calories, etc.
You can disagree with this. But this is the popular opinion about our cooking. Trying to fight it is very important. But to ignore this fact, to pretend that the perception of Russian cuisine by the people is different is stupid. And above all for the prospects of that very Russian cuisine.
However, there is another problem. And it is connected just not with external circumstances. Let's fast forward 200 years. The beginning of the 19th century.
The Russian nobility prefers the "widow Clicquot", oysters and "Strasbourg pies". But Russian cuisine at times really "slows down", lags behind historical development.
And at the beginning of the 19th it became obvious. People who had the opportunity to compare, get acquainted with foreign culinary, made their choice. Another thing is that half a century has passed, and through the efforts of Russian chefs, our gastronomy has reached the world level.
By the way, history repeats itself, and the same thing happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s. When the decaying Soviet cuisine was so tired of most of our fellow citizens that they rushed to all these waves of French, Italian, Japanese dishes that swept over us.
So they criticize our cuisine, it happens, and on business. But our business is to turn it into a truly modern gastronomy. Which, without abandoning the traditions and tastes of the past, will correspond to today's concepts in tasty and healthy food.
- What else inspires you besides food?
The last two years - a grandson. Which, we hope, will receive a strong culinary training in the family. The little man is a serious test for us. But also a great joy.
The LJ editors are looking forward to the start of the watch for Pavel and Olga and wish them great success!
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