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Russian cuisine and Russian cooking recipes

Russian cuisine is one of the most popular and widely spread in the world. French cuisine is festive and elegant, Chinese cuisine is exotic, Russian cuisine is healthy and delicious. Russian dishes are easy to cook and they do not demand much skill and special ingredients, they do not need exotic equipment and tool and everybody who knows how to hold a cooking knife and how to peel potatoes can cook delicious Russian dishes.

Below you can see a list of most popular Russian recipes that can be cooked at home without much efforts.

Appetizers

Russian appetizers (salads) look and smell very delicious, and they stimulate appetite. Some of them are rather spicy. They are served with various seasonings and condiments, such as horse-radish, mayonnaise, kvass, garlic and piquant tomato sauces, etc. lending special pungency to the dish.

• Russian vinaigrette salad
• Mixed meat jelly (holodets)
• Fish jelly
• Salted herrings, home style

Soups

In Russia soups are served as the first course at dinner. In the Russian language the world "soup" was naturalsed quite late. Originally, Russian soups were called "khlebovo" or "pokhlyobka" - soup with cereals. The typical Russian soups are schi (soup with cabbage or sauerkraut)m borsch (beet and cabbage soup), rassolnik (soup with pickled cucumbers), okroshka (cold kvass soup), solyanka (soup with vegetables, pickled cucumbers, olives and bits of meat) and pohlyobka

• Ukranian borsch
• Solyanka
• Rassolnik
• Meat schi with sauerkraut
• Green soup
• Okroshka
• Mushroom soup

Pastry

In Russian cooking bread and pastry have always been especially important. Guests were met with bread and salt. Of no lesser importance were pies - a symbol of wealth and well-being.
Russian women were famous for their skills in making different sorts of cookies: blini (pancakes), kulebyakas, rasstegais, cheese cakes, spice-cakes, etc. Howere, especially popular were patties made from soudough.

• Pancakes (classical)
• Buckwheat pancakes
• Apple pancakes
• Fast thick pancakes
• Kulebiaka
• Kulich (Easter bread)
• Rasstegai (small open pie with filling)

Meat dishes

Russian cuisine has always beenrich in meat dishes. The following recipes deal with dishes of beef, pork, mutton, poultry, game, and wild animals. As a rule, meat dishes are served with vegetables. noodles and cereal.

• Beef goulash
• Boeuf Stroganoff
• Meat "Hedgehogs"
• Macaroni Naval Style
• Pork chops
• "Ushnoye" (Russian Stew)
• Pozharskiye chops
• Goose with apples
• Golubtsy
• Pelmeni

Hot fish dishes

In Russian cuisine fish dishes are some of the most favorite ones. The rivers, lakes and seas by which Russian people settled always gave them this tasty and accessible food.
Apart from fresh-water fish our ancestors also ate sea fish like cod, navaga. However, especially valued were sturgeon, salmon and other fishes of this kind. Most often fish dished are served with potatoes and boiled buckwheat.

There is one explanation why in past Russians used to cook fish dishes. It was not allowed to eat any kind of meat and any kind of milk food in duration of long fasts but fish dishes were permitted (except time of the Lent).

• Baked pike-perch
• Fish, monastery style
• Sturgeon fried in portions

Beverages

• Kvas

A few words about Russian cooking traditions. In old Russ, grain - that is rye, barley, oats, millet and wheat - was always the main food product. Since days of old the Russian s have been known as land-tiller. That is why bread remains their major national food. Pies have always been a par of the holiday fare. The pies are customarily filled with different kinds of meat, fish, and berries. As for the groats, millet was most often used since it was the main agricultural product. They also made various kinds of kashas (cereals), round loaves, baked puddings, and krupenik.

Russians have always eaten vegetables. In old times it was the turnip, cabbage, radish, and cucumbers. Since the 18th century the potato began to play an ever more important part as one of the most loved ingredients of the Russian board.

The abundance of berries, mushroom, and honey in Russian cuisine is accounted for by the country's vast expanses, especially in the north.

One more important thing should be mentioned for better understanding of Russian cooking traditions. Russian is an Orthodox country and all the feasts were always strictly followed. Totally there are more than 200 days in a year in which the Orthodox Christians should avoid eating meat, milk and milk products (including butter), eggs. That is why Russian cuisine widely uses vegetables, fish, berries, and mushrooms. In order to cook tasty dishes using just vegetables it is necessary to use different spice, Russians used dill, parsley, celery, later they used spidery which were delivered from other countries - pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves. Nearly all dishes include onion.

Author tested all these recipes and some of them are often used in everyday cooking. In general each cuisine roughly can be divided into two groups of dishes - official dishes and every-day dishes. The same is with Russian cuisine. Official dishes demands much time for cooking, often they include many different products. So in the end these recipes are Russian only by name, something like "Pork with Russian sauce", "Russian cutlets" etc. In opposite the every-day dishes that are cooked of common products and in limited time range, reflect the real Russian cuisine and they give the real impression about Russian cuisine. Here are recipes of so-called every-day Russian cuisine. Recipes are written in accordance with classical Russian cooking book which was called "The book about tasty and healthy cuisine" but with some practical comments.