Useful information to make you feel confident when traveling in Russia
Useful information to make you feel confident when traveling in Russia
Culinary secrets of Russian syrniki
Step-by-step cooking recipe
These culinary secrets will help to hone your syrniki game to perfection.
Syrniki – aka Russian cottage cheese pancakes – are one of the most beloved national breakfasts. With just five ingredients and 20 minutes you’ll have a second-to-none morning dish with a signature sweetish cheesy texture. Despite seeming quite easy, however, there are some points and steps in the recipe that you must pay attention to. Your syrniki can easily lose the shape, or taste more like pastry instead of having the desired unique cheesy consistency. Just follow these simple tips, and enjoy the most authentic and scrumptious syrniki that you’ll ever taste. Bon appetit!
1. Proper tvorog base
Tvorog – or some type of cottage cheese /curd – is the key to ideal syrniki. Firstly, it should be quite dry and not too moist so that the syrniki hold their shape while cooking. It is also important to use tvorog with a creamy consistency. So, if you have grained cottage cheese, make sure to pass it through a sieve or work it with a blender. Another tip – make the dough with cold tvorog straight from the fridge because this also influences the proper syrniki shape.
2. Less flour is more
Syrniki are known for their signature cheesy texture; so, one important point in the cooking process is not to go overboard with the flour. Add 1 heaped-tablespoon of flour per 200 g tvorog, or cottage cheese, and enjoy the ultimate syrniki consistency.
3. Yolks for eggs
Egg white makes the dough too liquid – so adding just yolk instead of a full egg into the dough is one of the key secrets of ideally shaped syrniki. Moreover, if you make a double portion of syrniki, double all the ingredients, except the yolk – one is always enough.
4. Baking instead of frying
The right cooking technique is very important. If frying syrniki on high heat, they quickly burn on the surface but stay raw inside. They need to be baked, and you can actually “bake” syrniki right on a pan: just cook them covered with the lid on low-medium heat for around 7 minutes on each side. This way syrniki are well-cooked and slightly golden-brown on the sides.
5. Sugar lastly
Or not sweeten the dough at all. The point is that adding sugar gives the dough extra moisture, which is one of the factors that cause syrniki to lose their shape. That’s why I recommend adding 1 tablespoon of sugar. This should be the very last step just before shaping syrniki, and then sweeten the cooked ones with various toppings such as sour cream, jams, condensed milk, powdered sugar and others.
♦ 200 g tvorog / cottage cheese
♦ 1 yolk
♦ 1 heaped tbsp wheat / rice flour + some for shaping
♦ 2 tsps sugar
♦ 1 tbsp vegetable oil
♦ pinch of salt
1. In a bowl mix tvorog, yolk and salt with a fork.
2. Add flour and mix again until you get a smooth thick consistency. Leave the dough in the fridge for 5 minutes to set. Finally, add sugar right before shaping your syrniki.
3. Generously dust your cooking surface with flour and separate the dough into 5 equal pieces. Working with one at a time, first round the dough into a ball, then slightly flatten it and shape into a patty with even edges.
4. When you are done with all the dough pieces, place syrniki on a pan with a small amount of flavorless vegetable oil on low-medium heat. Cover with a lid and cook for around 7 minutes on one side or until the bottoms become slightly golden.
5. Then reduce the heat to low, and cook covered on the other side for 5 minutes or so.
6. Let your syrniki cool to room temperature and serve with your favorite toppings – I prefer sour cream and strained strawberry. Priyatnogo appetita!
Perfect rose hip varenye à la Russe
Jam, warming in Russian frosts
Take a chance to warm yourself with this honey-sweet, yet healthy jam that is so rare to find.
In late autumn, rose hips peep out at us from behind leafless bushes and bring joy to our eyes with their bright red berries.
Rose hips are known for their rich content of vitamin A, E and C and are especially beneficial in colds and flu prevention as they help to fight diseases. That’s why rose hip jam is considered one of the healthiest and, when properly prepared, is no less delicate and tasty dainty. I suggest that we stock up on some small jars of tasty and healthy rosehip jam for the winter.
Echpochmak famous for the triangular shape, and the name literally means «three corners». Historically, it was cooked and eaten in the open air during long military campaigns.
Every Tatar meal has echpochmak, which is usually served with a broth or tea. You can find it in every food market or cafe, not only in Tatarstan but in Tatar restaurants all over Russia.
Dough:
♦ Milk — 150 ml
♦ Flour — 400 g
♦ Eggs — 1 pc
♦ Sour cream (30% fat content) — 85 g
♦ Butter — 60 g
♦ Sugar — 1 tbsp
♦ Salt – 1 teaspoon
♦ Yeast (fresh) — 18 g
Filling:
♦ Lamb meat (with fat parts) — 400 g
♦ Potatoes — 100 g
♦ Onions — 200 g
♦ Black pepper
♦ Cumin
♦ Salt — 1 tbsp
♦ Butter — 150 g
1. Put sugar and yeast into a mixture of eggs and milk. Stir it till the yeast dissolves.
2. Sift 1/3 of flour. Stir the mixture.
3. Add melted, but not hot, butter, as well as sour cream, and then stir the liquid dough thoroughly.
4. Sift the rest of the flour mixed with salt, and knead in a mixer for about 20 minutes.
5. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it sit in a warm place for about one hour until it rises and doubles in size.
6. Meanwhile, cut meat, onions and potatoes in cubes of 5 mm. Keep everything apart.
7. After the dough doubles in size, put it down and leave for another 20 minutes.
8. Squash onions to make them softer. Add salt, spices and combine all filling ingredients.
9. Let the filling rest while the dough rises again.
10. Put down the dough again. Divide it in pieces of about 50 g each. Make small balls and keep those under a towel while you work with the rest.
11. Flatten a ball, put a table spoon of the filling in the middle.
12. Fold the edges together, forming a triangle with a hole in the middle.
13. Put the pies in a tray, cover them with a towel and let them rest and rise a bit.
14. Bake your echpochmacs for about 45 minutes at 180°C.
16. When they are ready, pour melted butter into the holes, spreading on top of each pie with a brush. Enjoy!
Echpochmak: Fast food from Tatar nomads
The art of cooking
Leading a nomadic life, the Tatar people used to travel long distances across the steppe.
Echpochmaks, or little triangle pies, became a nourishing and quick food solution, making their camping stops shorter. Echpochmak is a Tatar pastry made of yeast dough, stuffed with meat, potatoes and onions. Echpochmak has a particular way of cooking. The hole on top is not for decoration, but has a function. After the pie is baked, a meat stock can be poured into it to make echpochmak juicier. The trim braided ribs are to prevent the filling from falling out of the pie. Usually, this dish is cooked with lamb meat or beef.
Echpochmak famous for the triangular shape, and the name literally means «three corners». Historically, it was cooked and eaten in the open air during long military campaigns.
Every Tatar meal has echpochmak, which is usually served with a broth or tea. You can find it in every food market or cafe, not only in Tatarstan but in Tatar restaurants all over Russia.
Dough:
♦ Milk — 150 ml
♦ Flour — 400 g
♦ Eggs — 1 pc
♦ Sour cream (30% fat content) — 85 g
♦ Butter — 60 g
♦ Sugar — 1 tbsp
♦ Salt – 1 teaspoon
♦ Yeast (fresh) — 18 g
Filling:
♦ Lamb meat (with fat parts) — 400 g
♦ Potatoes — 100 g
♦ Onions — 200 g
♦ Black pepper
♦ Cumin
♦ Salt — 1 tbsp
♦ Butter — 150 g
1. Put sugar and yeast into a mixture of eggs and milk. Stir it till the yeast dissolves.
2. Sift 1/3 of flour. Stir the mixture.
3. Add melted, but not hot, butter, as well as sour cream, and then stir the liquid dough thoroughly.
4. Sift the rest of the flour mixed with salt, and knead in a mixer for about 20 minutes.
5. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it sit in a warm place for about one hour until it rises and doubles in size.
6. Meanwhile, cut meat, onions and potatoes in cubes of 5 mm. Keep everything apart.
7. After the dough doubles in size, put it down and leave for another 20 minutes.
8. Squash onions to make them softer. Add salt, spices and combine all filling ingredients.
9. Let the filling rest while the dough rises again.
10. Put down the dough again. Divide it in pieces of about 50 g each. Make small balls and keep those under a towel while you work with the rest.
11. Flatten a ball, put a table spoon of the filling in the middle.
12. Fold the edges together, forming a triangle with a hole in the middle.
13. Put the pies in a tray, cover them with a towel and let them rest and rise a bit.
14. Bake your echpochmacs for about 45 minutes at 180°C.
16. When they are ready, pour melted butter into the holes, spreading on top of each pie with a brush. Enjoy!
How does Russian borsch differ from Ukrainian?
Three significant differences
Russian and Ukrainian cuisines have a lot in common, which is hardly surprising given the close proximity and kinship of these two nations that were joined at the hip for nearly four centuries no less.
In Soviet times, “friendship of peoples” was one of the pillars of the state ideology.
This dish is common to many Slavic peoples, and they all consider theirs to be the one true recipe.
A dish by that name has been cooked by East Slavs since time immemorial (it was first mentioned by Russian chroniclers in the 16th century), and similarly named dishes are found not only in Russia and Ukraine, but also Belarus, Poland, Romania and Moldavia. Everyone has their own variety.
Today, the word “borsch” conjures up a mental image of dark red soup made from beetroot and cabbage.
This version of borsch appeared that was based on beet kvass, which was diluted with water, filled out with cabbage and carrots, and left to simmer in the oven. Only later did people start to use a meat broth base, which peasants could afford only on holidays, so all other times they added salo (lard) with garlic to make it more filling.
The Slavic peoples have so many different borsch recipes, which vary not only regionally, but also according to the weather — summer beet-based vegetarian soup is called kholodnik («cold soup») or svekolnik («beetroot soup»), and these too are varieties of borsch.
In Poland, people eat so-called “white borsch” based on sourdough made from rye flour, with boiled egg and sausage instead of beetroot. There are also fish and mushroom varieties. In Romania, they have a sour vegetable soup with kvass that is called borsch. In southern Russia, there is the delicious «Taganrog» borsch, made not from beetroot but tomatoes and based on oxtail or chicken broth. Borsch is also prepared with beans or potatoes.
In modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, hot red borsch is the most popular version, served with smetana (sour cream) and bread, but there is no definitive recipe — not only in one country, but even in one region.
For Russians (and most people who remember the USSR), the word “borsch” generally means a mixture of anything that comes to hand. And that’s fair enough, since the soup has no single recipe, as we’ve established.
The cooking process itself is the cause of fierce culinary debate: under any recipe on a Russian-language website you will see comments like: “You can’t cook to save your life”; “You’re making slop, not borsch”; “Your recipe is just cabbage soup with beetroot”.
First, the broth. It is generally considered that Russian borsch is based on beef bone broth, and Ukrainian on pork ribs, but that distinction is tentative to say the least. Borsch can be cooked in chicken broth or water. Svekolnik, for example, is generally based on kefir (fermented cow’s milk).
Second, the cabbage. Some chefs write that sauerkraut predominates in the Russian version, which is added at the start so that it becomes soft, while the Ukrainian version prefers fresh cabbage added at the end of the cooking process so that it remains chewy; still others ditch the cabbage, asserting that beans are the be-all and end-all of borsch. As for Belarusian borsch, that is likely to be served with potatoes.
Third, the beet variety. Those in the know say that beet used for vinaigrette should not be added to borsch, because it won’t give the desired color.
Most important of all, the extra ingredients! Modern chefs in whatever country often add tomato paste with carrots, onions and beetroot to make their borsch juicier and brighter. Meanwhile, borsch traditionalists remain staunchly anti-tomato. Some like to add vinegar, lemon and sugar (yes, straight in the soup!), cook the broth with unpeeled onion, or use pork scratchings as well as meat.
Interestingly, the easiest way to distinguish the origin of borsch is by the way it is served: most often, Russian borsch is served with black (rye) bread, and Ukrainian with garlic pampushka rolls; Belarusian borsch is sometimes additionally decorated with herbs and half an egg. But it’s not an exact science.
How long ago did the Russian military salute appear?
HISTORICAL REFERENCE
In the military forces of the Russian Federation, a hand military salute is carried out with the palm facing down and only when the head is covered. What else is special about the Russian military salute and what is its history?
Essentially, a military salute is a sign of peaceful intentions – a military person is showing that the right hand is open and free of any weapon. But why is it raised to the head? There are several explanations for this. One is that in the times of chivalry, knights lifted the visor on their helmets to look at the person they were greeting. Another, more plausible, is that this is a rudimental gesture, performed instead of lifting one’s headwear to show respect.
What is important about a military salute in general is that it’s not a person who is saluted, but the military uniform. A military salute is a gesture of mutual recognition and belonging to the same corporation, a symbol of mutual respect of military men.
This is why a military salute is performed only by people in military uniform and towards other people in military uniform – except when head of state, like the President, is saluted. However, when, for example, President Vladimir Putin, dressed in civilian clothing, is saluted, he doesn’t return the salute, because he is not in uniform and isn’t wearing military headwear.
In the army of Medieval Russia, no military salutes were performed – there were few certain military ranks, no common uniform and high-ranked military persons were at the same time high-ranked people in the state hierarchy, so they greeted each other with bows.
There is no clear information on the military salute in Imperial Russia earlier than 1765, when great Russian military commander Alexander Suvorov defined the rules of the military salute in his theoretical work ‘Regimental Institution’. According to it, the headwear, was to be taken off with the soldier’s left hand, 6 steps before approaching a person of a senior rank, and held in the left hand until the senior is 6 steps away.
However, with the growing number of military men and the difference between their headwear there came a need for a universal military salute. Slowly through the 19th century, the so-called ‘Two-fingered salute’ came to be used in the Russian Imperial army. It was performed with the middle and index fingers extended and touching each other, while the ring and little fingers are bent and touched by the thumb. The tips of the middle and index fingers touched the peak of the cap. In Russia, the salute was to be performed solely when the head was covered with military headwear.
After the mid-19th century, the ‘Two-fingered salute’ was replaced with a full-hand salute.
Commanders of a high rank were to be saluted while standing at attention. Such commanders and persons included: all members of the Imperial family, generals, admirals, garrison commanders, commanders of regiments, escadrons, staff officers and also while passing by state banners and standards (flags). While carrying a rifle or a naked sabre, the soldiers were to put the weapon on their shoulders. And never, under any circumstances, was a soldier obliged to take off his headwear – even in the presence of the Tsar.
The General Order of the internal service of the Armed Forces of the USSR (1960) prescribed that all military persons must greet each other with a military salute. The lower ranks salute the higher ranks first. Forgetting or, worse, refusing to salute was considered an offense and was subject to punishment. Also, some objects were to be saluted: the Lenin Mausoleum, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, mass graves of the soldiers perished defending the Fatherland, all military banners and standards, as well as funeral processions accompanied by troops.
The old tradition of giving military salute only when the head is covered is still preserved.
How many words are there in the Russian language?
A LITTLE HISTORY & FACTS
The number of words in the most comprehensive Russian dictionary is just a third of the number of entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, but what does it say about their real numbers?
The first Russian dictionaries were compiled in the late 18th century. Those were dictionaries of church vocabulary, as well as Academy of Sciences dictionaries, which sought to draw up a map of the origin of all words based on their roots. Those dictionaries consisted of under 50,000 words. In the 19th century, Vladimir Dal included over 200,000 words in his famous ‘Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language’. Its core was made up of words commonly used in standard Russian.
The most up-to-date and authoritative source of information on the vocabulary of modern Russian is the ‘Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language’. Its 30 volumes contain about 150,000 words – this is the amount of words believed to be used in standard Russian today.
For example, the Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language contains only modern words, whereas the Oxford English Dictionary lists all words from year 1150, including obsolete and dead ones, as well as words from American and Canadian English.
Also, some lexical items are not listed in dictionaries, for example, adverbs formed from adjectives. That is, the number of actual words is higher than the number of lexical items. In addition, Russian has some 40 words with the root люб-, while English has only about five words with the root “love”.
So, does an average Russian use all 150,000 words? Certainly not. It is believed that the average vocabulary of an educated person consists of about 10,000 words, with just some 2,000 of them being in active use. Professionals who use a specialized vocabulary may have about 2,000 more words in their active vocabulary.
One of the record holders in terms of the number of words in their vocabulary was poet Alexander Pushkin. In the mid-20th century, a Dictionary of Pushkin’s Language was published, which had been several decades in development. Having analyzed all of the poet’s works, as well as his letters, business papers and drafts, the compilers included about 21,000 words in the dictionary.
It is Pushkin who is widely considered to be the creator of the modern standard Russian language in use today. He introduced into writing colloquial words that had not been used before and lowered the overall register of written Russian, which used to be very high-flown and formal.
The Russian language has absorbed borrowings from many other languages: It adopted Greek words with the spread of Christianity and Turkic with the development of ties with Turkic-speaking neighbors. Under Peter the Great, Russian became enriched with many European words in various areas of science, navigation and other spheres of life.
In the 19th century, Russian aristocracy adopted French as their second language, so it is not surprising that about 6 percent of Pushkin’s vocabulary was made up by borrowings. Scholars have established that 52 percent of borrowed words in the poet’s vocabulary came from French, about 40 percent from German and only 3.6 percent from English.
In the 20th century, Anglicisms accounted for most of borrowed words in the Russian language, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, their number grew even bigger. It is believed that more than half of words in modern Russian are borrowings and about 70 percent of them are borrowed from English.
Used content from the site: https://www.rbth.com