Shopping for good food
I love Mediterranean cuisine. That’s why perfect food for me is vegetables and seafood. It has everything I need. Easily digested protein, fiber, vitamins.
This is where it gets hard for me in Russia. Because everywhere I look I only see meat, bread, potato and meat here includes pork most often. Pork is too fat for me, I can’t eat it at all. My organism rejects it. But it doesn’t mean I don’t eat meat at all. I can enjoy fresh lamb or beef. Ideally it should come from a farm or from the market.
So the options I have here in Russia is shop at open markets. It is not a perfect option, but at least at the open market you can have a choice. If this vendor seems fishy to you, the meat looks bad, you can make three steps further and look at another vendor. If you have some experience, you know this kind of meat, you will be able to make a good choice. But of course you can err and choose something that will taste like shoe sole.
Open market is the place where I can buy “useful substances”.
Shopping at supermarkets does not make me too happy but at least it will help me maintain myself till I get to the good shopping options. You have to understand that most of the substances you buy at the supermarket are “dead”. You buy salad and it tastes like paper. If it tastes like this – you can’t expect it to make you healthy.
How do you determine a good product
People forget that we have a perfect tool for determining what is good and what is not good for us. It is our senses. Your organism will tell you what is good for you by rejoicing. When I was in Paris my entire organism was high from eating their bread! It was just baguette with cheese or jamon – but it tasted like paradise! You look at a bun at a Paris bakery and your entire body tells you “Eat this bun!”
In Moscow you go to expensive bakeries and their ciabatta tastes like carton.
So remember - if your organism is your ally and your friend, it will tell you what to eat.
Opportunity: Celebration of the sensual pleasure from treating your body like a friend.
My senses also help me in cooking. I cook very good, times better than some pros and chefs. And it's all because I read the recipe and adapt it to my senses. If you take pilaf, I usually take away all the fat from it, because my senses reject fat. I adapt recipes and my food 1) tastes better and 2) is more useful.
Number 1 and 2 do not go separately if your organism is your ally. If you listen to yourself.
Rule number one is - react honestly. If it doesn't taste good - don't eat it. Many people ignore this simple rule. They eat everything they can lay their hands on, because they are hungry or whatever. These people are deaf to their senses and that's why they don't eat healthy.
I listen to myself. If something tastes good, I will eat it. I can eat a chocolate cake maybe once a month because my body wants it. So why not? But if you take this one instance of your body wanting a cake and stretch it to everyday - it will be bad for you.
You have to balance these things out. Balance is important, that is why I don't understand people on strict diets - for example no sugar for one year. It will not do you any good. Follow your body needs and you will be doing fine.
Cooking with your senses
My senses also help me in cooking. I cook very good, times better than some pros and chefs. And it's all because I read the recipe and adapt it to my senses. If you take pilaf, I usually take away all the fat from it, because my senses reject fat. I adapt recipes and my food 1) tastes better and 2) is more useful.
Number 1 and 2 do not go separately if your organism is your ally. If you listen to yourself.
Living in agreement with your body
Rule number one is - react honestly. If it doesn't taste good - don't eat it. Many people ignore this simple rule. They eat everything they can lay their hands on, because they are hungry or whatever. These people are deaf to their senses and that's why they don't eat healthy.
I listen to myself. If something tastes good, I will eat it. I can eat a chocolate cake maybe once a month because my body wants it. So why not? But if you take this one instance of your body wanting a cake and stretch it to everyday - it will be bad for you.
You have to balance these things out. Balance is important, that is why I don't understand people on strict diets - for example no sugar for one year. It will not do you any good. Follow your body needs and you will be doing fine.
What is Russian cuisine?
This friend Masha who called us to enjoy some borscht lives alone in Moscow. She says that when you are left to your own devices, cooking is the easiest way to please yourself.
Insight: Food is the easiest way to add variety to the way you spend your free time.
When she cooked the same borscht for her mom, her mom was shocked. It was better than hers. I have never tasted anything better myself.
Masha said she just started experimenting. The recipe that everyone knows is boil meat, add beet and potato, fry carrot and dump it there too.
Masha combined beef and chicken, added pepper, lots of vegetables... she was looking for something that tastes good to her. And ended up with perfection everybody likes.
You can find organic products on separate stands in premium supermarkets. You will spend 400 rub (9 pounds) for jam there. Simple folks will make jam themselves from their kitchen garden or get it from their grandparents' village garden. You can buy jam from an old lady (=babushka) in the street and it will be even more pure and organic.
Rich people who don't care about spending 9 pounds on a jam, know that babushka makes better jam.
That's where different layers of our society connect.
I don't believe in Fair Trade. I work for a fashion company and I was at this fair in India where you buy fabrics, accessories, etc. I saw an Indian buyer who ordered the same fabrics I did by just believing what the vendor told him. He never actually went to the factory to make sure the underaged are not working there, to check the conditions.
And people who don't travel outside Russia would never even have heard about Fair Trade.
I haven't had a good experience in Russian restaurants in years. Expensive or budget ones. Only abroad. In Russia you get dead, untasty food regardless of the class of the resto.
There is a lot of argument about it - but nobody really knows what's a Russian cuisine.
Let's look at what we call Russian food nowadays. It's all about starch and flour. All the bliny, pirogy, etc.
But I read that a long time ago it was all about vegetables and porridges. Russian cuisine originally was very complicated. Cooking a porridge on a Russian pechka (stove) was a very intricate process. It involved simmering because the brick stove took a long time to cool down, so the porridge was left on it for a long time to simmer.
Now with the Soviet era legacy we ended up with simple stuff: noodles and mince meat, pelmeni, potato and meat. Even when it is a soup it is mostly potato and meat again. Summer time is when some greens enter the kitchen. Plus there is a lot of frying involved.
I am not saying complicated cooking is always good.
Perfect cooking for me means:
1) (any kind of) vegetables combination
2) treatment (I would always prefer steam cooking to frying in the pan with fat)
3) time (if you cook your steak on steam or grill for 10 minutes only you will preserve all that is good in it).
Sometimes you go to a good restaurant and you get a steak that was deep-fried by a chef who just doesn't understand the time factor. The faster - the better.
But how are you supposed to know about these things if nobody told you about them when you were a kid? You grew up in the Soviet times like me and you would never find out that there are other beans except peas. Everybody knows a pea soup from their Soviet childhood.
But nobody knows that other beans (legumes) can provide you with lots of useful stuff. Lentil, beans proper, chili bean.
The Soviet legacy didn't even leave us an understanding the difference between black and red pepper.
And herbs. The old Russian cuisine knew a lot and relied a lot on all kinds of herbs. During the Soviet times we knew only few spices from the Soviet republics like Georgia, Uzbekistan, etc. The all-purpose spice was Khmeli suneli and people used on everything.
Thank goodness - today we have the exciting phenomenon of the uprise of culinary blogs in Russia! I know that each housewife now ended up with 2 or 3 fave blogs she uses on a regular basis.
It used to be our parents and grandparents would swam paper clippings and family recipes - you were limited in your cooking habits.
Now you can cook ANYTHING. Now we discover anchovy and capers. The words that sound almost obscene to a Soviet-era ear.
With the internet you can mix all kinds of cuisines. You like Indian food, so you can put some pickled mango on a piece of a toast that came to us from Europe.
ALL my friends are into cooking now. Cooking blogs saved the marriage for a friend of mine. When she moved in with her boyfriend she couldn't make even scrambled eggs. Now she cooks seabass, duck in apple sauce. She was following the blog recipes for a year and now she started improvising and experimenting.
Last weekend another friend of mine summoned friends for a borscht. You have to understand the difference - we came to her during the day to enjoy a traditional soup. We didn't come to her place in the night to drink and party. I had only a glass of wine with the borscht.
And we enjoyed the conversation about places to buy good food, places to buy spices, places to buy olive oil, meat, fish. Sharing information about cooking in a conversation is a hot topic today.
Everyone is into good food because it's actually a psychology thing. At the end of the day food affects your self, your filling. And that's what it's all about.
It is all discussed in the same breath: I watched this movie, I read this book and I cooked this dish. It is all about improving yourself. You want to enjoy quality in everything that fills you.
It's only natural: you shop for nice clothes, you want your soul to consume good movies and books... and good food completes it.
All my friends read this book that describes all of this. It is called "Eat. Pray. Love"
We thought that younger generation wouldn't understand it. But this girl I know who is in early 20s is a fan of the book. My brother who is 24 spends a week reading online forums about a frying pan. He is not yet concerned with cooking something sophisticated, but he wants to fry his steak properly.
Let's look at what we call Russian food nowadays. It's all about starch and flour. All the bliny, pirogy, etc.
But I read that a long time ago it was all about vegetables and porridges. Russian cuisine originally was very complicated. Cooking a porridge on a Russian pechka (stove) was a very intricate process. It involved simmering because the brick stove took a long time to cool down, so the porridge was left on it for a long time to simmer.
Now with the Soviet era legacy we ended up with simple stuff: noodles and mince meat, pelmeni, potato and meat. Even when it is a soup it is mostly potato and meat again. Summer time is when some greens enter the kitchen. Plus there is a lot of frying involved.
Cooking that is good for me
I am not saying complicated cooking is always good.
Perfect cooking for me means:
1) (any kind of) vegetables combination
2) treatment (I would always prefer steam cooking to frying in the pan with fat)
3) time (if you cook your steak on steam or grill for 10 minutes only you will preserve all that is good in it).
Sometimes you go to a good restaurant and you get a steak that was deep-fried by a chef who just doesn't understand the time factor. The faster - the better.
Lack of education
But how are you supposed to know about these things if nobody told you about them when you were a kid? You grew up in the Soviet times like me and you would never find out that there are other beans except peas. Everybody knows a pea soup from their Soviet childhood.
But nobody knows that other beans (legumes) can provide you with lots of useful stuff. Lentil, beans proper, chili bean.
The Soviet legacy didn't even leave us an understanding the difference between black and red pepper.
And herbs. The old Russian cuisine knew a lot and relied a lot on all kinds of herbs. During the Soviet times we knew only few spices from the Soviet republics like Georgia, Uzbekistan, etc. The all-purpose spice was Khmeli suneli and people used on everything.
Information abundance today
Thank goodness - today we have the exciting phenomenon of the uprise of culinary blogs in Russia! I know that each housewife now ended up with 2 or 3 fave blogs she uses on a regular basis.
It used to be our parents and grandparents would swam paper clippings and family recipes - you were limited in your cooking habits.
Now you can cook ANYTHING. Now we discover anchovy and capers. The words that sound almost obscene to a Soviet-era ear.
With the internet you can mix all kinds of cuisines. You like Indian food, so you can put some pickled mango on a piece of a toast that came to us from Europe.
ALL my friends are into cooking now. Cooking blogs saved the marriage for a friend of mine. When she moved in with her boyfriend she couldn't make even scrambled eggs. Now she cooks seabass, duck in apple sauce. She was following the blog recipes for a year and now she started improvising and experimenting.
Last weekend another friend of mine summoned friends for a borscht. You have to understand the difference - we came to her during the day to enjoy a traditional soup. We didn't come to her place in the night to drink and party. I had only a glass of wine with the borscht.
And we enjoyed the conversation about places to buy good food, places to buy spices, places to buy olive oil, meat, fish. Sharing information about cooking in a conversation is a hot topic today.
Lifestyle trend
Everyone is into good food because it's actually a psychology thing. At the end of the day food affects your self, your filling. And that's what it's all about.
It is all discussed in the same breath: I watched this movie, I read this book and I cooked this dish. It is all about improving yourself. You want to enjoy quality in everything that fills you.
It's only natural: you shop for nice clothes, you want your soul to consume good movies and books... and good food completes it.
All my friends read this book that describes all of this. It is called "Eat. Pray. Love"
We thought that younger generation wouldn't understand it. But this girl I know who is in early 20s is a fan of the book. My brother who is 24 spends a week reading online forums about a frying pan. He is not yet concerned with cooking something sophisticated, but he wants to fry his steak properly.Insight: Good food is one of the key elements leading to a happy wholesome life.
Loneliness in a big city
This friend Masha who called us to enjoy some borscht lives alone in Moscow. She says that when you are left to your own devices, cooking is the easiest way to please yourself.
Insight: Food is the easiest way to add variety to the way you spend your free time.
When she cooked the same borscht for her mom, her mom was shocked. It was better than hers. I have never tasted anything better myself.
Masha said she just started experimenting. The recipe that everyone knows is boil meat, add beet and potato, fry carrot and dump it there too.
Masha combined beef and chicken, added pepper, lots of vegetables... she was looking for something that tastes good to her. And ended up with perfection everybody likes.
Organics
You can find organic products on separate stands in premium supermarkets. You will spend 400 rub (9 pounds) for jam there. Simple folks will make jam themselves from their kitchen garden or get it from their grandparents' village garden. You can buy jam from an old lady (=babushka) in the street and it will be even more pure and organic.
Rich people who don't care about spending 9 pounds on a jam, know that babushka makes better jam.
That's where different layers of our society connect.
Fair Trade
I don't believe in Fair Trade. I work for a fashion company and I was at this fair in India where you buy fabrics, accessories, etc. I saw an Indian buyer who ordered the same fabrics I did by just believing what the vendor told him. He never actually went to the factory to make sure the underaged are not working there, to check the conditions.
And people who don't travel outside Russia would never even have heard about Fair Trade.
Restaurants
I haven't had a good experience in Russian restaurants in years. Expensive or budget ones. Only abroad. In Russia you get dead, untasty food regardless of the class of the resto.
Butter
I love butter in any shape and form. I loved it when I was a small girl. When I was a teenager I thought that butter makes you fat. Now I understand that it doesn't.
I know that in India it is one of the holy products along with milk, and almonds. I did yoga for a long time and I know a lot about that culture.
Today I can add butter everywhere. I can add it as it is on bread. Or put it on a toast so that it melts. I have it with buns, porridge, pasta, caviar of course.
I never cook on butter. It is not good for my organism. I only fry on vegetable oil. To some recipes I add a touch of butter to attain the dairy flavor - that's all. Just a finishing touch.
Butter is required at home all the time but it is consumed slowly. If I run out of butter it is a disaster.
I know that in India it is one of the holy products along with milk, and almonds. I did yoga for a long time and I know a lot about that culture.
Today I can add butter everywhere. I can add it as it is on bread. Or put it on a toast so that it melts. I have it with buns, porridge, pasta, caviar of course.
I never cook on butter. It is not good for my organism. I only fry on vegetable oil. To some recipes I add a touch of butter to attain the dairy flavor - that's all. Just a finishing touch.
Butter is required at home all the time but it is consumed slowly. If I run out of butter it is a disaster.
[Elena has lots of spices and utensils at home]
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