The Vodka Belt from Norway to the Bering Strait
Today we hear from the Expat Cook! The weather since late August has been leaning towards a cold grey fall... It’s time to turn our thoughts to provisioning for a long winter in the Vodka Belt!
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The days are shortening towards darkness. Sunrise is at 742, sunset at 1959. Warm summer life is just a happy memory.
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Zymologically speaking...
I love to watch Larissa in her Russian kitchen! It’s fascinating to see her turn cucumbers, tea, and cabbage into scrumptious food I never tasted before.
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Many of the most traditional foods and drink are made with fermentation, zymology, such as...
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Russian Pronounced
| lowsalt fermented cucumbers | мало cолни огорец | mala salony agoretz |
| Kombucha fermented tea | коьбуча чайный гриб | kombucha chiny greeb |
| fermented cabbage | квашеная капуста | kwashenaya kaposta |
As well as ... milk products, bread, kvas, vodka, beer, dried sausage and pickled beets, mushrooms, or tomatoes... all based on fermentation!
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Fermented cucumbers and cabbage are a essential part of the Russian way of life. Alexander Solzhenitsyn attributed great benefits to drinking Kombucha.
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It just wouldn’t be Russia without these scrumptious foods!
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Malosolonia Agoretza!
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If a Russian has a beer or a shot, he looks for the pickles. They are on every table when people gather for an event.
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This summer we made low-salt pickles. We grew, were given, or found on our front steps many cukes.
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Russians are very particular about washing hands with soap before preparing or eating food. Everything has to be clean.
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America kitchens routinely have a set of metal or plastic measuring spoons on a ring. The Russian personality doesn’t see the need for such exact measurement while cooking. Things are added or diluted by eye and taste... I agree that in cooking -approximate is better than precise!
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Larissa placed the smaller cucumbers in an old two liter stainless steel milk can, and added water with a small amount of salt.
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Fermenting is decomposing. This slow rotting process is controlled using salt. *
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* Russian table salt usually has no iodine or anti-caking agents. This lack is good for pickling but bad for Russians, as cabbage consumption also reduces iodine. Iodine deficiency is the main preventable cause of mental retardation.
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Iodized salt results in a darker less-pleasing appearance while anti-caking agents make the briny mixture cloudy. The taste of salt varies in Russia whether it’s mined, from the sea, or iodized.
The best salt to use is specially produced pickling salt which has fine grains that mix well in the brine, making the process thorough and safer.
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You can follow your whimsy as to what else to add... maybe some onions with garlic and seeds from celery, dill, or mustard. Then top it with parsley and dill leaves from the garden.
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We left a covered can to ferment in the kitchen next to our drinking water. Within three days we had delicious агорецы for snacking and for our dinner plates. If you leave them in the brine for five days they will change from lightly salted to the usual salted pickles.
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If you don’t wish to have added salt in your food, it’s easy to make pickles with equal parts of vinegar and water... and no salt. They will taste fine, but they are not fermented.*
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*low sodium cooking tells you how.
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The Kombucha Monster from Russia... There’s a fungus among us!
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The first time I saw a mature ‘mushroom’ or ‘mother of vinegar’ culture (fungus) to make chinee greep, my reaction was...
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‘Ooh... What the heck is that?’
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It is a tough yet flexible growth that rests in the jar, something like a pancake. It will conform to the jar’s diameter.
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This mass of yeast and bacteria can grow a separate daughter, which you can gift to a friend!
It’s scientific acronym... SCOBY... stands for Symbiotic Colony of Yeast and Bacteria. {Scoobie doo, Scoby doo... }
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Leeda, Larissa’s friend five floors below us, gave her a kombucha last fall. It was a simple matter of placing it in a large jar, and adding cooled black or green tea with sugar mixed in. (Don’t use bergamot). Often we added some leftover English Breakfast tea.
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Sugar helps the process and then is absorbed, so this is a drink some consider safe for diabetics. Be careful with the sugar, the main food of the kombucha, as it stimulates alcohol production. The resulting tea should be no more than .5 to 1.5% alcohol.
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It tastes sort of like apple cider. It has many possible health benefits.
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We kept our brew on the the counter with cheese cloth fastened with an elastic. A few small glasses a day seem to be a tonic for overall health, particularly good for digestion.
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Most articles say to brew separate batches, but we just added tea and a little sugar to the three liter jar...to what tasted right for us... not too sweet, not too acid. We just continued to drink and add to it.
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The scoby gets a little sloppy after a month or two. Then it’s time to put the scoby safely in a bowl with some of the jar’s former liquid.
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You can clean off accumulated excess, even at times peel a layer off the bottom, with your freshly scrubbed hands. The scoby has a smooth flexible feel, like a jelly fish.
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Clean the jar, add freshly brewed tea, a little sugar, and the scoby with a cup or so of former liquid. Really the same procedure as cleaning a fish tank, except this is a scoby tank.
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Our scoby grew around an inch thick so Larissa thought it would be a problem bringing it home on the train. Now Larisssa has to tell Leeda that she left her ‘mushroom’ with her farmer cousin, and needs another one!
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Kombucha Cultures has a photo sequence on making this traditional drink.
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Onibasu ... lots of information about the kombucha. One woman uses a pizza cutter to share her scoby!
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Квашеная капуста... A big event in our apartment!
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I recently asked on Facebook ... “Is there anything more tasty than Квашеная капуста?” (Russian sauerkraut)
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We are awaiting the first frost... первый заморозки... a signal that the hard green-white cabbage can be taken from the fields and sold to make kwashenaya kaposta (written so English speakers can pronounce it).
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Impatient I am, but Larissa will not be rushed, even though I wanted to take photos for this post! Last year was poor for such cabbages, so I’m hoping soon we will be more lucky.
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Larissa says that everyone has their own method. She shreds the cabbage into нашинковать (cabbage slices), puts them in a deep basin, adds salt, and works it all over with her hands... pushing, kneading, squeezing the juice out.
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She places large cabbage leaves on top, a large plate on top of that, and a heavy stone or bricks on top of the plate! All this to weigh the cabbage below the water and juice.
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Larissa places the basin for three days next to the kitchen radiator (if the heat is on... now it still isn’t), lances it with a long spike to release gas, and checks it a few times a day.
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I loved to sit in the kitchen, look at the basin with the juices seeming to percolate, and smell the wonderful aroma with happy expectation filling my brain!
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Cabbage fermentation is considered a good protector from bad bacteria, a way to increase vitamin C (fight scruvy), and has other health claims made for it.
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Call to Action!
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These three kitchen projects are activities of Russian culture... reaffirming links to centuries past. Reading a book can be rewarding but I find using my hands in the kitchen to make food the traditional way mentally and physically satisfying.
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So, Get Thee to the Kitchen, and make a food that your grandparents prepared... and be good to your genes!
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