Culinary cultures of Europe: Russia 3
Russian Federation in the 21st century - what next?
In the beginning of perestroika - official name (‘rebuilding’) for the reforms undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 - (the ruling slogan was: perestroika, uskorenie ‘speeding-up’, gospriemka ‘state check’) the following anecdote was very popular. Somebody is asking the man selling bubliki (circle bread of bretzel dough, boiled and baked, sprinkled liberally with poppy-seed, cousin of bagel but with quite a big hole in the middle):
Why are your bubliki underdone? - That’s speeding up!
Why has every single bublik a piece bitten off? - That’s state check!
Why are your bubliki square instead of round? - That’s perestroika!
In fact everything did speed up and change amazingly in just a few years. Incidentally true bubliki have disappeared together with the famous kalachi, saiki, sitniki, krendeli and many other unique breads and buns that had such popularity in Russia before the revolution and were inherited by the baking factories of the Soviet Union. As for the basic Russian bread, wheat bread has generally become more light and fluffy but has retained its characteristic touch of sweetness, and rye bread has lost much of its previous sourness. In Moscow due to mass immigration from ex-Soviet republics various Caucasian and Asian flatbreads (of Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan and so on, all those breads that the Russians of the 19th century look down at) are steadily becoming more popular, together with Arab pita bread. They lie on the supermarket shelves beside German-style multigrain bread, French-style croissants and baguettes, English-style toast bread
On the other shelves one can find plenty of canned and instant Russian soups and kashas, together with Italian pasta (both dry and fresh). In the delicatessen department spicy Korean salads coexist with Russian meat in aspic and pirozhki, Caucasian dolma (stuffed vine-leaves much like the Greek dolmades) and even Japanese sushi. Meat, fish, sausages, cheeses etc.- one can find everything one wants, if one is prepared to pay the price. One can also find Easter specialties (although they have been in the shops since 1980-s kulich masquerading as euphemistic ‘spring cake’ and paskha as ‘special curd paste’) and plenty of bliny, but classic Russian Christmas was mostly left behind in the time before the revolution and only certain families still cook sochivo (a special Chistmas dish after which Christmas Eve is named Sochelnik in Russian), traditionally wheat (although now when wheat as such is no longer sold in the shops people make do with other cereals, even pearl barley) cooked with honey and bits of fresh and dried fruit, that is eaten after the 24-hour dry fast as the first stars of the night before Christmas appear.
All vegetables and fruit (even the most exotic) are available all year, and bananas have almost become modern staple food, to think that less than twenty years ago people stood in long queues in order to get green ones (and were allowed no more than 2 kilos per person), then they had to be stored in a closet wrapped in newspaper and sometimes they ripened and turned yellow and were enjoyed as a great luxury once every two years (depending on shopping luck), but sometimes they just remained green and had to be thrown away…
Fast food in Moscow and other big Russian cities is no less diversified. Before perestroika only pasties and ice-cream and sometimes (much more rarely) kebabs could be eaten off the street. In summer if one was lucky one could find a cistern of kvas or diluted Russian beer and have a drink after standing in the long queue, there were also machines that produced soda water (with and without syrup). Now (starting with the arrival of McDonalds in 1990 - it fascinated thousands with its spotless WCs and smiling personnel, both previously really hard to find in Soviet establishments - and other western fast-food shops) all kinds of ready-to-eat food are available to be eaten outside from chain stalls that have cropped up around metro stations like mushrooms. The most frequent are those selling shaurma (or shaverma as it is called in St. Petersburg - actually it’s döner kebab, currently mostly made of chicken), grilled chicken (the luxury of the Soviet 1980-s), bliny pancakes with sweet and savoury stuffing (some of traditional Russian origin, some quite innovative like baked pork and horseradish, but the batter is definitely more French than Russian as it is done without yeast), stuffed baked potatoes, Danish hotdogs (even more ubiquitous are anonymous hotdogs and hamburgers sold at smaller stands), Chinese stir-fries and lots of made on the spot from frozen puff pastry pirozhki and pasties (yeast dough is steadily becoming less and less frequent). Soft drinks, tea and coffee and sometimes beer are usually sold at the same stalls, hard drinks - at drink-and-cigarettes stalls nearby. If for instance one takes a walk around Macdonalds corner at Moscow Pushkin square - one of the hubs of the city - one can discover no less than seven different fast-food stalls crowded together not to mention a great profusion of restaurants.
Russia is actually passing through a period of restaurant boom now. It is especially true for Moscow, where hundreds of new restaurants and cafés have been opening every year. A look at statistics on www.afisha.ru (kind of sophisticated ‘Time-out’ which appears both in a magazine and in web form), even though the material analysed is far from complete, shows an interesting ratio of national cuisines’ popularity in Moscow. Whereas Russian cuisine is professed by 150 restaurants, mainstream European (usually including some popular Russian dishes) is professed to be practiced in 260 (not to mention 90 International cuisine restaurants, that in practice would hardly differ in the menu from the latter). Chinese (168) restaurants are seemingly more numerous than Russian, Italian (146) and Japanese (138) slightly less. 94 Caucasian restaurants should be summed up with 52 Georgian, for in practice Georgian cuisine will be prevalent there too. French cuisine is openly proclaimed by a respectable number of 52 restaurants. A small sprinkle of wine restaurants usually stick to creative French and Italian menu. There are also beer restaurants (90) that have mostly adopted some basics of German cuisine, and lots of pubs (106) that generally work along American food lines. The revival of cafés (more than 300, mostly fake Wiener Café cum Konditorei style), many of them - chain establishments, is even more impressive. Although there were some pale versions of these in Soviet times, for instance Moscow two ‘Shokoladnitsa’ (Chocolatière) cafés, almost the only two where something with whipped cream was served in the 1980-s, needless to say one had to stand in long queues to get there... And of course in present day Moscow one can find lots of restaurant ‘minorities’ from the far East to the far West, from Tibetian to Brazilian, from Jewish to Siberian etc.
Although most of the Russian restaurants are content with the classic dishes of Russian cuisine as they were cooked in Soviet times, some of the restaurants’ chefs are interested in rediscovering the wealth of recipes that had been used in Russia before the revolution. One of the most dedicated is Alexander Filin from the ‘Red Square, 1’ restaurant at the State History Museum (he is ath the moment working on his own 'History' restaurant), who enjoys bringing to light some of the museum archive’s menus and recreating the dishes of the 19th century Russian cookbooks. Russian cuisine notwithstanding its peasant origin had by then a fine collection of gastronomic chef-d’oeuvres that have fallen into disuse after the revolution due to the Soviet simplistic culinary policy. But now one can once again taste the famous buckwheat Club’s kasha with fried onions, hard-boiled eggs, brains, mushrooms and toasted walnuts or Guriev kasha, that is a kind of sumptuous semolina soufflé with fruit and nuts. Botvinya, a cold summer soup made with kvas, greens and slices of noble fish (salt-cured sturgeon etc.) has come into its own again, so has wonderful kurnik-pie (for festive occasions), a many-layered pirog of bliny with three kinds of stuffing (one - necessary chicken), encased into a sour-cream dough crust. And so many more breads, soups, kashas to be saved from oblivion… Alexander Filin himself acknowledges that reenacting forgotten recipes could be rather tricky, some seemingly strange things like rye bread sorbet turn an instant success and some, like kvas jelly, on the contrary, are better left on the pages of the old cookbooks. Still there is always some past to look forward to, to modify and to change into a fabulous new gastronomic reality.
Canned Russian soups, precut light Russian bread, instant kasha, deep-frozen processed foods and ready-made salads - that’s probably what most of the Russians are finally settling for now, authentic Russian cuisine being too time-consuming and rich for modern life. It wouldn’t be possible to ‘eat Russian’ much if it were not for the restaurants and for some of the families (less and less of them) that strive to keep up the traditions. Eating Russian every day has become somewhat of a luxury and if in the Soviet era it was problematic for the lack of products now it’s the lack of time that causes one at home (if one does cook after coming back home from work at 8-10 p.m.) to boil some deep-frozen pelmeni (Siberian meat dumplings) or even perhaps make some simple Italian pasta instead of working painstakingly from scratch on a magnificent Russian soup...
In the beginning of perestroika - official name (‘rebuilding’) for the reforms undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 - (the ruling slogan was: perestroika, uskorenie ‘speeding-up’, gospriemka ‘state check’) the following anecdote was very popular. Somebody is asking the man selling bubliki (circle bread of bretzel dough, boiled and baked, sprinkled liberally with poppy-seed, cousin of bagel but with quite a big hole in the middle):
Why are your bubliki underdone? - That’s speeding up!
Why has every single bublik a piece bitten off? - That’s state check!
Why are your bubliki square instead of round? - That’s perestroika!
In fact everything did speed up and change amazingly in just a few years. Incidentally true bubliki have disappeared together with the famous kalachi, saiki, sitniki, krendeli and many other unique breads and buns that had such popularity in Russia before the revolution and were inherited by the baking factories of the Soviet Union. As for the basic Russian bread, wheat bread has generally become more light and fluffy but has retained its characteristic touch of sweetness, and rye bread has lost much of its previous sourness. In Moscow due to mass immigration from ex-Soviet republics various Caucasian and Asian flatbreads (of Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan and so on, all those breads that the Russians of the 19th century look down at) are steadily becoming more popular, together with Arab pita bread. They lie on the supermarket shelves beside German-style multigrain bread, French-style croissants and baguettes, English-style toast bread
On the other shelves one can find plenty of canned and instant Russian soups and kashas, together with Italian pasta (both dry and fresh). In the delicatessen department spicy Korean salads coexist with Russian meat in aspic and pirozhki, Caucasian dolma (stuffed vine-leaves much like the Greek dolmades) and even Japanese sushi. Meat, fish, sausages, cheeses etc.- one can find everything one wants, if one is prepared to pay the price. One can also find Easter specialties (although they have been in the shops since 1980-s kulich masquerading as euphemistic ‘spring cake’ and paskha as ‘special curd paste’) and plenty of bliny, but classic Russian Christmas was mostly left behind in the time before the revolution and only certain families still cook sochivo (a special Chistmas dish after which Christmas Eve is named Sochelnik in Russian), traditionally wheat (although now when wheat as such is no longer sold in the shops people make do with other cereals, even pearl barley) cooked with honey and bits of fresh and dried fruit, that is eaten after the 24-hour dry fast as the first stars of the night before Christmas appear.
All vegetables and fruit (even the most exotic) are available all year, and bananas have almost become modern staple food, to think that less than twenty years ago people stood in long queues in order to get green ones (and were allowed no more than 2 kilos per person), then they had to be stored in a closet wrapped in newspaper and sometimes they ripened and turned yellow and were enjoyed as a great luxury once every two years (depending on shopping luck), but sometimes they just remained green and had to be thrown away…
Fast food in Moscow and other big Russian cities is no less diversified. Before perestroika only pasties and ice-cream and sometimes (much more rarely) kebabs could be eaten off the street. In summer if one was lucky one could find a cistern of kvas or diluted Russian beer and have a drink after standing in the long queue, there were also machines that produced soda water (with and without syrup). Now (starting with the arrival of McDonalds in 1990 - it fascinated thousands with its spotless WCs and smiling personnel, both previously really hard to find in Soviet establishments - and other western fast-food shops) all kinds of ready-to-eat food are available to be eaten outside from chain stalls that have cropped up around metro stations like mushrooms. The most frequent are those selling shaurma (or shaverma as it is called in St. Petersburg - actually it’s döner kebab, currently mostly made of chicken), grilled chicken (the luxury of the Soviet 1980-s), bliny pancakes with sweet and savoury stuffing (some of traditional Russian origin, some quite innovative like baked pork and horseradish, but the batter is definitely more French than Russian as it is done without yeast), stuffed baked potatoes, Danish hotdogs (even more ubiquitous are anonymous hotdogs and hamburgers sold at smaller stands), Chinese stir-fries and lots of made on the spot from frozen puff pastry pirozhki and pasties (yeast dough is steadily becoming less and less frequent). Soft drinks, tea and coffee and sometimes beer are usually sold at the same stalls, hard drinks - at drink-and-cigarettes stalls nearby. If for instance one takes a walk around Macdonalds corner at Moscow Pushkin square - one of the hubs of the city - one can discover no less than seven different fast-food stalls crowded together not to mention a great profusion of restaurants.
Russia is actually passing through a period of restaurant boom now. It is especially true for Moscow, where hundreds of new restaurants and cafés have been opening every year. A look at statistics on www.afisha.ru (kind of sophisticated ‘Time-out’ which appears both in a magazine and in web form), even though the material analysed is far from complete, shows an interesting ratio of national cuisines’ popularity in Moscow. Whereas Russian cuisine is professed by 150 restaurants, mainstream European (usually including some popular Russian dishes) is professed to be practiced in 260 (not to mention 90 International cuisine restaurants, that in practice would hardly differ in the menu from the latter). Chinese (168) restaurants are seemingly more numerous than Russian, Italian (146) and Japanese (138) slightly less. 94 Caucasian restaurants should be summed up with 52 Georgian, for in practice Georgian cuisine will be prevalent there too. French cuisine is openly proclaimed by a respectable number of 52 restaurants. A small sprinkle of wine restaurants usually stick to creative French and Italian menu. There are also beer restaurants (90) that have mostly adopted some basics of German cuisine, and lots of pubs (106) that generally work along American food lines. The revival of cafés (more than 300, mostly fake Wiener Café cum Konditorei style), many of them - chain establishments, is even more impressive. Although there were some pale versions of these in Soviet times, for instance Moscow two ‘Shokoladnitsa’ (Chocolatière) cafés, almost the only two where something with whipped cream was served in the 1980-s, needless to say one had to stand in long queues to get there... And of course in present day Moscow one can find lots of restaurant ‘minorities’ from the far East to the far West, from Tibetian to Brazilian, from Jewish to Siberian etc.
Although most of the Russian restaurants are content with the classic dishes of Russian cuisine as they were cooked in Soviet times, some of the restaurants’ chefs are interested in rediscovering the wealth of recipes that had been used in Russia before the revolution. One of the most dedicated is Alexander Filin from the ‘Red Square, 1’ restaurant at the State History Museum (he is ath the moment working on his own 'History' restaurant), who enjoys bringing to light some of the museum archive’s menus and recreating the dishes of the 19th century Russian cookbooks. Russian cuisine notwithstanding its peasant origin had by then a fine collection of gastronomic chef-d’oeuvres that have fallen into disuse after the revolution due to the Soviet simplistic culinary policy. But now one can once again taste the famous buckwheat Club’s kasha with fried onions, hard-boiled eggs, brains, mushrooms and toasted walnuts or Guriev kasha, that is a kind of sumptuous semolina soufflé with fruit and nuts. Botvinya, a cold summer soup made with kvas, greens and slices of noble fish (salt-cured sturgeon etc.) has come into its own again, so has wonderful kurnik-pie (for festive occasions), a many-layered pirog of bliny with three kinds of stuffing (one - necessary chicken), encased into a sour-cream dough crust. And so many more breads, soups, kashas to be saved from oblivion… Alexander Filin himself acknowledges that reenacting forgotten recipes could be rather tricky, some seemingly strange things like rye bread sorbet turn an instant success and some, like kvas jelly, on the contrary, are better left on the pages of the old cookbooks. Still there is always some past to look forward to, to modify and to change into a fabulous new gastronomic reality.
Canned Russian soups, precut light Russian bread, instant kasha, deep-frozen processed foods and ready-made salads - that’s probably what most of the Russians are finally settling for now, authentic Russian cuisine being too time-consuming and rich for modern life. It wouldn’t be possible to ‘eat Russian’ much if it were not for the restaurants and for some of the families (less and less of them) that strive to keep up the traditions. Eating Russian every day has become somewhat of a luxury and if in the Soviet era it was problematic for the lack of products now it’s the lack of time that causes one at home (if one does cook after coming back home from work at 8-10 p.m.) to boil some deep-frozen pelmeni (Siberian meat dumplings) or even perhaps make some simple Italian pasta instead of working painstakingly from scratch on a magnificent Russian soup...