A-Z of Russian Food

As this blog grows I would like to use the oppotunity to put up some features (not written by myself but contributed by others) which talk about different aspects of Russian culture. To begin the series we have a article about Russian food (a subject close to my heart). If you would like to contribute an article to the blog please contact either myself via E-mail or my son (Mark@Machado.co.uk)

 Some basics of Russian food – in ABC order:

A – Alcohol. Necessary ingredient in any meal. Vodka, beer, champaign, home made suspicious drinks. Everybody drink – men, women, teenagers, old people. Especially on winters. Or holidays. Or family parties. Or lonely evenings. Or… You get a picture.

B – Bread. Huge pieces of brown heavy bread, with a lot of butter (another B basic) rubbed on. Very nice…

C – Cheese. 40% fat. 50%. 60%. Who cares? Yellow cheese with big round holes. Irresistible.

E – Eggs. In every breakfast, with bacon or sausages.

F – Fat, fat, fat. Every meal has to be fatty. Everything is cooked with a lot of oil or butter. Russian cardiologists must be very busy doctors.

G – Garlic. Russians believe the garlic is the only health source. They put huge amounts of garlic in every soup, or simply eat it like an orange.

H – Healthy food. No such a thing in Russian menu.

J – Jam. They made at home a lot of jam kinds, from every kind of fruits. If there are no fruits, everything else will do. They have even nuts jam and onion jam.

L – Lemon. In every tea cup.

O – Onion. Almost the only vegetable in Russian kitchen. They eat it fresh or add it to every salad.

P – Pickles. Another home made product. Usually Russian pickles are made from cucumbers and very salty. Go with vodka.

S – Soups.  Every dinner must start with soup. Sometimes they have soup on breakfast too. Borsht is the famous. There is a permanent issue between Russian ladies if you must make it with beetroots or tomatoes. Anyway it must have red / purple color and comes with a lot of cream.

T – Tea. Real Russian tea can't be made with tea bag, but with exact amounts of dry tea leaves and boil water putting together in special kettle for exact XXX minutes. They put a kind of a doll on the kettle to keep it warm till the tea process is finished.

V - Vodka. The favorite Russian drink made from wheat, looks like water but very strong (must be exactly 40% alcohol) and not tasty at all. It's not a legend. They really drink it all the time. Pure, from "stopka" (small glass), with pickles. They say "Na zdorovie" before every glass, which means "I wish you health" or something like that. I'm not so sure about vodka effect on heath improving. To those who still doesn't drink vodka I would suggest not to try…

W - Wine, Russian wine is often incorrectly referred to as wine from former soviet territories such as Armenia, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan. Russia it’s self does have a small but growing wine industry, mainly focused in the southern region of the country. The wines of Russia are found in a wide variety and are definitely worth trying.