Russian cuisine

Delicious food is one of the greatest pleasures in our life. I've been living in St. Petersburg since my birth and can tell you many interesting things about its restaurants of Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese and Indian cuisine. However, first of all I'd like to share some secrets of typical Russian cuisine with you.

Russian cuisine is indeed original. Its distinctive feature is not only in original recipes but also in the fact that it reflects a certain way of life. Russian people usually have meals three times a day. In the morning they have breakfast, in the afternoon — dinner and in the evening it's time for supper.

Let us start with breakfast. This meal doesn't usually take much time to prepare, due to the fact that people, as a rule, are in a hurry for work, school or somewhere else. It may include just sandwiches, fried or scrambled eggs, corn flakes or muesli and various kinds of porridges. It can be cream of wheat, oatmeal porridge, rice or buckwheat porrige. It is more common for Russian people to drink black tea with jam or honey but there are ones who prefer coffee in the morning. You may think there is nothing special in this set of dishes. You are right. But it was a description of a typical working day breakfast, when people have little time to prepare something. Now I'd like to call your attention to breakfast of a dayoff.

Have you ever tried traditional Russian sirniki? I'm sure, if you live in Russia, at least once in your life your grandmother or mother prepared them for you. Nothing can be compared with sirniki, made of fresh village cottage cheese and fried on a pan. They are usually served with sour cream and sugar. Perhaps, the only dish which is as delicious as sirniki is blini or pancakes. In Russia they say that the thinner blini are made the tastier they are. Blini are served rolled with a variety of fillings but the most delicious ones are pancakes with jam, honey and sour cream.

A traditional Russian dinner consists of three courses. It is the main meal of the day. First of all snacks are served. It can be caviar, herring, salt cucumbers and sauerkraut. All these salt dishes are served in order to excite the appetite. In general Russian cuisine is famous for its pickles.

Then comes the first course — soup. There is a great variety of different soups in Russia but the most famous is "borsch". Shchi, rassolnik, shchaveleviy soup and cold soup — okroshka are also cooked in Russia. Of course, it is not the whole list of traditional Russian soups, but these are the most popular ones.

After the soup the second course follows. It usually includes meat or fish and garnish. The Russians prefer freshwater fish like carp and pike. As for meat, it may be pork, beef, veal, lamb, turkey or chicken. The most famous meat dishes in Russia are zharkoye (stewed beef with potatoes, onions, carrots and garlic seasoned with salt and pepper), beef Stroganoff (the dish consists of pieces of beef served in a sauce with sour cream) and cutlets (the dish made of minced meat). The main course is usually served with garnish — mashed, baked or fried potatoes, pasta or vegetables. Russian people often eat pelmeni (meat dumplings) for the second course. Pelmeni are often cooked by the whole family. Firstly, the filling of minced meat is made due to the particular recipe, then they roll out the pastry and after that everybody sits at the big dinner table and makes pelmeni. Sometimes the preparation of this dish takes almost the whole day. Very often people cook pelmeni for a holiday. The Russians eat everything with bread but sometimes pies are served instead of bread. These pies may be stuffed with various fillings: fish, spring onions and eggs, meat, chicken, potatoes and mushrooms. Sweet pies are served for tea. They are usually stuffed with different fresh berries or jam. Every housewife has her own cooking secret.

As for the third course, it is usually a drink — compote, kissel or mors. In old Russia there existed another popular drink — Medovukha which is derived from the word "honey" (in Russian it sounds as "mjod"). Sometimes this course includes desserts. It may be ice-cream, baked apples or some fresh fruit.

Supper is the longest meal of the day, since it is time when the whole family can gather at one table and discuss some news. Russian people usually have a substantial meal for supper. It may be fried potatoes, potatoes in their skin with herring, fried fish or chicken. But there are also people who prefer light supper such as cottage cheese with sugar or milk and jam, an apple cake called "sharlotka", or a potato cake, or some vegetables. It will depend just on a person's preference.

It is worth saying that Russian cuisine is famous for its natural products. Russian people are fond of gathering, drying and using mushrooms and all kinds of forest berries in their dishes.

In my opinion, Russian cuisine is one of the most varied and delicious in the world but tastes differ. As far as I know, people from other countries consider Russian people heavy eaters not only because of the amount of food we eat per day, but also due to its fat content. Anyway, if you are not keen on Russian cuisine, it is up to you to choose any other food