Russia - It Runs in the Family

Lisa, 28, lives with her mom and dad

(Serves tea and offers to add ginger and honey because she likes all those extras.)

On the eve of December 24th we went to Latvia with my friend Dasha. And we were lucky to catch their ginger cookie season. We would buy a big bag of them and I would finish half of the bag in no time! They were so delicious I had to try to do them myself back in Russia.

I went online and found the recipe but the problem was that by that time the Orthodox fasting season came and she had to avoid products like eggs and milk. I made the dough and without those ingredients it fell apart. I needed advice and I called my grandmas: "Grandma it wouldn't stick together! What do I do?!"

My grandmas know everything but the answer didn't come at once. After we tried several tricks and nothing worked grandma offered to use boiled water and it helped!

Cooking Rescue

Like almost every Russian family we have these Cooking books from 1953.



Everybody spent a lot of time looking at those pictures in their childhood.





Plus we have this notebook from my great-grandma with all the recipes through the generations:


I can always turn to these or online or call my grandmas for help.

Cooking for Friends

A friend of mine has a brother and mentioned once that he likes the cake called The Count's Ruins. I never heard about it and had to find out about it. So I discovered it is the same as Pancho. And I decided to make it for him. When it was ready I ring him up: "Come to my place and pick up your cake!"

He was very surprised and he gave these cookie cutters for New Year's and then a baker's syringe for the Women's Day. Now I have a huge collection of all the bakery additions and utensils.


I love it. And my friends love it. If we have a home party, people bring champagne and I bring rolls with cranberry and everybody is excited. Or for New Year's I make cookies and put them in the cooking sleeve and tie it at the ends so it looks like a giant candy and give it my friend as a gift. Of course everybody likes it more than stuff you can buy.

I am not concerned with spending time on cooking or baking.

Fasting and Cooking

I am fasting for several years now. Most of my family is fasting regularly. So cooking from scratch is a perfect way to make sure you avoid certain ingredients.

I know exactly what I eat when I cook myself.

Theme Food Parties

I haven't had alcohol in a long time. I prefer to drive everybody around to avoid drinking officially. It's OK - I can have fun when my friends are drunk. I can dance without drinking too.

Plus there was a shift in the way I entertain myself with friends. I realized I am through with clubbing. I even had to stop seeing some friends of mine who are still into clubbing all night.

Last time I went out with this girl I was clubbing together for a long time and when I told her I plan to go to bed by 1 am she was furious: "I would never even have called you if I knew you are not dancing till morning!"

I would rather just have a conversation in a cafe and go to bed before everybody else.

Conversations at these food parties are not forced like the ones in the clubs. Nobody has to pretend. Anything can become a subject. A cool video someone saw on Youtube or whatever.

Cooking buns with cinnamon

Let's cook buns with cinnamon! I've loved cinnamon since I was a child. I will do it so that everyone who fasts can eat it. I always have layered dough from the store in the fridge.

The trick is to know that you can spread it only along or across the dough. Never do it randomly in all the directions at once. It breaks the structure.

Cooking with Butter

I never bake using butter. I work at the seeds company - Russian Seeds - we sell seeds for planting, we make oil from seeds, we make mayonnaise. I know everything about those products.

I can add some butter in mashed potatoes. BTW I only do it with a blender, I love it whipped and light as feather.

Other than that I use butter only on sandwiches with caviar and that's it. I can forget to buy butter altogether. I know nothing about shopping for butter actually.

This is the butter mom buys. It's stored in door of the fridge until grandma comes to visit them and uses it all up on bakery.

Naturalness

2 years ago I found out I have allergy to sauces - to the unnatural stuff in it. I had something at MacDonald's and it broke out and my face became like a pillow. Now I have to watch closely and read the labels to avoid unnatural stuff. I look at the producer, judge by the image of it. It can tell you a lot.

Some of the rules you just have to remember. Like, never drink juice in packs only in glass bottles.

Or never buy water melons when it's not the season. You can buy them even now in spring but it will be full of chemistry. In summer I can eat only water melons for days.

Shopping

I recently asked friends on Facebook "Can you buy the vegetables from this company that advertises their freshness but judging from the size of the operation is it possible they can produce it all near Moscow in their hothouses?"

They probably import it. It's better to go to the open market. There you can at least have a CHOICE. You see tomatos from Abkhasia, Uzbekistan, etc. You can smell them and choose the best ones. Do you know that tomatoes should smell at the place where the branch is connected?

One big difference even from premium supermarkets is that at the market they have little space for storing so it doesn't sit in the store for a year deep frozen.

Conservative

I am actually very conservative. It took my mom several years to turn me on to aubergines. Now I can eat them everyday. Or I can stick to doing only lamb and pilaf at home for a long time.

[Now is the time to cut and lay the buns on the tray]

And now Lisa prepares the second part of the dough:

Shopping continued

Usually I shop in the nearby stores to avoid getting stuck in traffic. We have one trick with my girls to avoid traffic and human crowds. Once a month we go on a weekday to Metro Cash&Carry at exactly 11 pm. At 11.45 they start the shift change and you have to make it before that time. This is the only time when there is few people in the store.

We split in three routes with three trolleys. When we cross paths we ask if someone needs for example these spices and we buy a pack and divide it between each other.

This is the sauces that were bought there:

Good food

It's easy to define it. Good food doesn't take away from your health.

Plus you get the satisfaction from eating it - you give yourself a mental praise for not eating junk.

At one point I was eating lots of frozen vegetables fried on oil but the my allergy broke out and I had the official need to watch what I eat. That's when I bought a steam cooker. [It's hidden somewhere in the shelf because it's for the microwave and it's portable.]

[Now the buns are in the oven]

[When the buns are almost ready Lisa's mom comes in the kitchen. She tells how finding good food has changed from the Soviet times. It used to be you would be able to find the best fish and caviar in the Eliseevsky store in Moscow. Now all you get is rude shop assistants and expensive fish that is stored deep frozen, and not fresh from the sea as it used to be.]

Conclusion: Even if you have to avoid some products (due to fasting or allergy) you can still cook whatever you want if you are inventive enough.

Conclusion: Cooking from scratch is a way to make sure you consumer the right products (required by your diet, health or belief restrictions).