How and what do the Russians eat?

Russians used to eat 3 times a day: in the morning before leaving for a work they have breakfast. Lunch time - at 13-14. After work they have their supper at home. Usually they do not eat a lot for breakfast: a sandwich, eggs or firied eggs, cottage cheese or yougourt. Russians drink tea or coffee in the morning.

Russian dinner takes place within the period from 1 to 3 pm. Today more and more people have dinner in the cafes and restaurants, there was no such tradition in the past. Sometimes there’s a special canteen in the office for the employees. People have soup, main dish and tea or juice for dinner.

In the evening the whole family has supper at home. For supper there’s usually one hot dish and a tea.

In big cities more and more people have recently started to have dinner in cafes and inexpensive restaurants. There’s a special price for dinner from 12 to 16 pm (it’s called “business lunch” price in the menu) not more than 300 roubles.

There’s a tradition in Russia to give bread: white and black to every meal. Black bread is made out of rye. It has a specific pleasant taste. Black bread was traditionally baked in Russia. The idea of motherland is usually associated with the taste of black bread. Russian people who live outside Russia are always missing the taste of rye bread. Do not forget to taste black bread!

Foreigners often think that Russians drink vodka as often as they eat. This is not true! Of course, people drink vodka in Russia, but usually when there are many people at the table: family members, friends, acquaintances and when there is a reason, an important event, holiday, birthday, a wedding, etc. Beer becomes more popular now in Russia, but people usually do not drink beer in winter time, when it’s cold. And in summer when it’s hot, a popular national beverage kvass becomes very popular. It helps to stop the thirst in summer time.

Moscow restaurants and cafes

There’re many different restaurants in Moscow where you can try any cuisine: Italian, Russian, Georgian, French, etc. One can find information about restaurants in the newspaper “The Moscow Times” or in the Internet on the information sites rambler.ru, mail.ru in the section “Restaurants”. If you’re looking for inexpensive ones, it’s worth mentioning the network of restaurants “Mu-Mu”, “Jolki-Palki” and “Grabli”. These are comfortable, middle sized restaurants of self-service, where you can have lunch or dinner for 300-400 roubles. Here the owners try to keep traditional Russian cuisine. Dishes resemble homemade ones. They are simple and very tasty.

Walking along the streets of Moscow you can drop in at one of the cafes of the city: “Coffee House”, “Shokoladniza”, “Coffeemania”, etc. The minimum price for a cup of espresso is 60 roubles. You can also take some juice or a cocktail, a sandwich, a salad or a cake.

If you don’t have enough time to sit in a café, you can buy food in a kiosk in the street. You can find inexpensive and tasty food in such kiosks as “Kroshka-Kartoshka” (a very big potato with a salad inside), or “Russian Bliny” (pancakes with different fillings).

In big and expensive restaurants you can pay by a credit card or cash. If you want to pay cash, find out beforehand if they take it or not. Sometimes they don’t take credit cards in small places, they take only cash. Speaking about the tips, there’re no strict rules in Russia regarding additional for “tea”, as it’s called. Usually it’s 10-15 % from the total account.

If you come to the restaurant or a café with a Russian girl, take into account that she will be waiting for a man to pay. There is a tradition in Russia that men pay the bills. Of course, if a girl says proudly that she will pay, then there’s nothing to worry about. If you go to the restaurant in a big company, people agree beforehand who will pay. Usually these are men, who divide the bill between them.

Russian cuisine

In the ancient times all dishes in Russia were cooked in the Russian oven. The temperature inside was not so high as the temperature of the open fire, but it could stay high for a long time. A clay pot was put inside the oven and the food was being cooked for a long time. That was why all the dishes were semi liquid. The most traditional Russian dishes are dishes from veggies and wheat: porridges, dough dishes (bread, pirogi) and all kinds of soups. Even today we have a proverb: “Shchi and porridge is our food”. People ate little meat and more often they ate fish.

We eat and we like porridges: from wheat or buckwheat even today. Porridges are given to kids for breakfast. Buckwheat is eaten as a separate dish or side dish. If you cook buckwheat porridge right, add some butter into it, you’ll find it very delicious. Porridges are often eaten with milk. You have to add milk to the plate with porridge or you can cook buckwheat porridge with milk..

The main food in Russia is bread. People eat a lot of bread, bread is always served to the table despite the number of dishes. In the former times a worker or a peasant usually ate from half to a kilo of black bread with soup. This was often all his dinner.

There’re many kinds of bread in Russia, but you can divide this into two main groups: ”white” bread (from wheat flour) and “black” bread (from rye flour). “Black” or “brown” bread is made from rye and is traditionally Russian bread. It has specific taste and aroma and you can taste it only in Russia.

The history of blyny is as old as the history of bread. When Slavic tribes were still pagan blyny were considered sacred food. Lots of traditions were connected with blyny. They were cooked by peopled dressed in special clothes in special places and cooking was a mystery for many. The first pancake was left for the souls of dead predecessors – people wanted to be taken care of by them. In the long run pancakes became very important in the pagan spring holiday Maslennitsa (Pancake Week). It was the holiday of meeting the Spring. A pancake is round and hot and it looks like the sun. All people in Russia cooked and ate pancakes. People contacted the sun which brings warmth and spring. People ate lots of pancakes. For the whole week people were eating, singing songs about spring and burning a scarecrow of a Pancake Week, which imitated winter.

Traditionally people cooked big and round pancakes from different sorts of flour (today pancakes are made mostly from wheat flour). Pancakes should be soft and friable. In Russia one has to put butter or sour cream on pancakes to make them softer. It’s better to eat such pancakes with salty fish or caviar. You can put such adding to a pancake, wrap it and eat. To feel Russian one can also drink a shot of vodka before eating a pancake. This is traditional Russian dish! Today people eat pancakes not only during a Pancake Week. One can also meet not only traditional pancakes but lots of other types: small sized pancakes with lots of sweet addings: jams, condensed milk, etc. This is really tasty but most Russians prefer to eat pancakes with salty addings.

Today people eat pancakes not only during a Pancake Week. One can also meet not only traditional pancakes but lots of other types: small sized pancakes with lots of sweet addings: jams, condensed milk, etc. This is really tasty but most Russians prefer to eat pancakes with salty addings.

One has to name kvas among traditional Russian beverages. Kvas is a low alcoholic beverage (not more than 1.2% of alcohol in it). It’s made by natural brewry process. Kvas is more than 1000 years and it’s also popular in Lithuania and Poland.Kvas is light, foaming beverage, it’s very healthy and it helps to overcome thirst in hot months of summer. But kvas has specific shades of taste which a foreigner may not like. One has to get used to kvas. Kvas is now sold in plastic bottles in the shops.

A very unusual summer soup is cooked on the basis of kvas. It’s called okroshka. One usually puts boiled potatoes, fresh cucumbers, boiled eggs and green onion in okroshka. You have to cut all ingredients into small pieces and then put some kvas. It’s served with sour cream. This is typical okroshka but you can put all leftovers that you have at home: veggies, sausages and green herbs. The recipe for peasant okroshka is very simple: green onion, bread and kvas. Choose what you like.

Soups

One can mention traditional Russian soups: schi, borsch,okroshka, soljanka and fish soup. You know about okroshka, now let’s cook a famous Russian borsch.

Borsch is a soup made out of beets. People in many Slavic and European countries: Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, etc. like to cook it. The basis for borsch is meat broth where you add such veggies as beet, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, parsley, onion, tomatoes, and sometimes beans, apples, zucchini and some meats. There are different types of borsch but one can make them more or less thick and fatty.

Shchi is a typically Russian dish not like international borsch. Many years ago all soups in Russia were called shchi, later only cabbage soups were called shchi. Fresh cabbage as well as sour cabbage was used in shchi. Sour cabbage gave unforgettable sour flavor to this dish. Classical shchi is cooked on the beef broth (sometimes on fish broth). Onion, carrot, celery, potato, dill, sometimes mushrooms, and cabbage are necessary ingredients of shchi. One puts pieces of boiled meat or fish into the plate then add shchi and sour cream on top. It’s better to eat shchi with brown bread.

Spring time is good for cooking green shchi. It’s cooked from young sprouts of sorrel or nettle. We call it shchi because it is as sour as shchi. Green shchi is served with sour cream and cut boiled eggs.

Soljanka is not so popular as shchi, because it’s more difficult to cook it. In ancient times soljanka was called seljanka from the Russian word “sjelo” – “a big village”. Perhaps this soup was popular in the village. It looks like shchi, because the base is meat or fish or mushroom broth. Besides vegetable ingredients (potatoes, cabbage, onion, carrots) one has to add sour and salty ones: salty cucumbers, a lemon, olives, salty mushrooms and a lot of cut meat of different kinds or fish. One should add herbs and tomato paste to make this soup thick and flavory.

Attention! There is one more dish in the Russian cuisine under the same name “Soljanka”. This is a dish made from stewed cabbage and it doesn’t have anything in common with soljanka soup!

Fish soup is sometimes is called Ucha which is no right. Ucha is a soup made from fresh fish with clear broth where one can see small pieces of fish. One can use one type or several types of fish for Ucha. Carrot and onion which is added to the broth in the beginning of cooking is taken away afterwards and only some potatoes and herbs are left: peper, parsely, dill and bay leaf.