Your Russian gastronomic guide
Traditional Russian cuisine
Russia is a vast country populated by different folks who have different gastronomic preferences and their own ways of food cooking. When travelling to Russia you have a great opportunity to taste cuisines of different regions of Russia. One of the main gastronomic symbols of traditional Russian cuisine is blini – Russian pancakes served with caviar, sour cream or jam. There are also blini with different fillings such as meat, quark. Russian cuisine is characterized by great amount of different soups. Borscht (soup with fresh cabbage, beet and tomato usually improved with sour cream) and shchi (fresh or sour cabbage soup often with mushrooms) are well-known as typical Russian dishes. It is quite correct for shchi but place of origin of borscht is Ukraine. Any case borscht became very popular dish in Russia, Poland, Byelorussia, Lithuania, Romania.
The next very popular in Russia dishes are golubtsi (cabbage rolls filled with meat and rice and usually served with sour cream – East Slavic variety of dish very popular at the Balkans, the Caucasus, West and Central Asia) and pelmeni (meat dumplings – traditional dish of Finno-Ugric peoples usually served with sour cream or with oil and vinegar; different varieties of it are popular in China, Korea, the Caucasus, Italy, South Germany, Crimea, Central Asia), studen or kholodets (Russian variety of aspic — meat-jelly known in Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia).
Well-known Russian salad (meat, chicken, crabs or sausages with potato, green peas, pickled cucumbers and boiled eggs thickened with mayonnaise) was created not long ago (the end of the XIX c.). In Russia this dish is called the Olivier salad. It was named after its inventor, the owner of the Hermitage Restaurant in Moscow Lucien Olivier, a cook of Belgian origin.
As for Russian traditional drinks we recommend you to taste kvass (a fermented beverage commonly made from rye bread), kissel (viscous fruit dish popular as a dessert and as a drink), mors (non-carbonated fruit drink prepared of berries, mainly of red bilberry and cranberry), honey drinks (medovukha, sbiten). And of course Russia is famous for its vodka (a strong alcoholic drink).
When traveling to Kazan or to the Crimea you will have a chance to try Tartar cuisine. One of the major traditional dishes in Tatarstan is echpochmak (it means in Tartar “triangle”). It is a simple pastry containing yeast dough, meat, onion, cubed potatoes. The pyramid-shaped pastry is baked in the oven. The triangles are stuffed with different kinds of meat, while the best combinations are beef and duck and mutton and goose. Don’t miss to try the most iconic Tartar dessert called chak-chak. This dessert was originally served at weddings and festivities. It is a flour sweetness made from deep-fried dough pieces mixed with honey syrup sometimes decorated with nuts and dried fruit. One more Tartar delicacy is kazylyk. It is horse meat sausage commonly prepared cured, spiced with cumin and coriander. And in the Crimea you can taste everywhere Chiburekki (a deep-fried turnover with a filling of minced meat and onions) traditional for Mongol and Turk nomads and its Crimean Tatar variation yantyk cooked on a dry pan without any fat.
The aboriginal peoples of the Elbrus and the Caucasian Mineral Waters areas (Karachays, Balkars) are descendants of Turks who led a nomad’s life at the vast territories of the Great Steppe since the Migration Period of the Early Middle Ages. That’s why traditional cuisine of these peoples is based on the dairy and meat products. Drinks made of the boiled milk kaymak and ayran are very popular here. Actual proud of the North Caucasian cuisine are cheeses. The most famous of local cheeses is byshlac that is stored for a long time in barrels with brine. Meat is usually served fried or boiled. Lack of vitamin plants is compensated by using of fresh wild plants: sorrel, burdock root, various edible herbs, wild fruits. We recommend you to taste local variety of chorba – soup very popular at the Orient and at the Balkans, khychin — fried tortillas with filling of potato and cheese or meat with greens, sokhta — sausage of sheep’s liver. And of course you will have a chance to taste shashlik — a dish of skewered and grilled cubes of meat.
When making a stop in Ulan-Ude you can try traditional Buryat cuisine. The most popular Buryat dish is Buuz – steamed dumplings filled with meat (beef with pork or beef with mutton) or its fried version — Khuushuur. Following dishes of Buryat national cuisine are also recommended: Buukhelyor (soup with large pieces of meat), soup with fine noodles, sausages made of offal, blood sausages, Urme (grated bird-cherry grades with sugar and sour cream), Boove (sweet fried buns), traditional green tea with milk.
If you stay at the Lake Baikal area this is absolutely necessary to taste the Baikal omul, fish inhabiting at the Lake Baikal only. All local restaurants and cafes offer a lot of original dishes made of omul. Unusual and very delicious varenye (traditional whole-fruit preserve widespread in East Europe and in the Orient) made of young cedar cones or cones of other taiga conifers is also recommended. Cedar nuts and the roasting of the cedar nuts in chocolate, balms infused with local medicinal herbs and herbal teas are also very good edible souvenirs from the Lake Baikal area. Very popular in Baikal region is tea with sagan dayla plant (Adams’s rhododendron).
An actual gastronomic symbol of Karelia is kalitka, small open patty with different filling known at the northern regions of Russia. Finnish version of kalitka (so-called Karelian pasty) brought to modern Finland by natives of territories lost by Finland as the result of Soviet-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940 became very popular dish of Finnish cuisine and its recipe is officially protected with the EU legislation. Cafe and restaurants of Karelia offer a lot of original and very tasty dishes cooked of fresh fish caught in numerous local rivers and lakes. Very popular dish of local cuisine is kalakeitto (fresh fish milk soup traditional for Finno-Ugric peoples) and its holiday version – lohikeitto (fresh salmon fish cream soup).Dishes made of mushrooms, pickled mushrooms for refreshment as well as various desserts made of local wild berries are also recommended.
Yakuts don’t have vegetables and fruits at their menu, but this is quite compensated with using of berries (for example, kyuerchekh — traditional Yakut dish of sour or whipped cream with berries and sugar). There are practically two main ingredients of their national dishes — boiled meat or fish and milk products (cheese, curds, sour milk and traditional for many Asian peoples kumis) but nevertheless Yakut cuisine is very various and similar for cuisine of Central Asian nomadic peoples (Kazakhs, Mongols) and also for Russian traditional cuisine. All offals are used maximum completely. Soup of the giblets (is miine), blood sausages (haan) are very popular in Yakutia.
The basic food in Khakassia are considered to be meat dishes in winter and diary products in summer. Also an integral part of daily ration in Khakassia is bread, different kinds of soups (ugre) and broths (mun) with boiled meat in it. As for cereals, they prefer soup called charba ugre and barley cereal (koche ugre). Speaking about Tuvan people, they also can’t do without meat and diary products. In fact they eat mostly meat and all other food is just an addition to it. Various dishes made of meat and flour are quite popular with local people, these are soup with meat and noodles (uzken bydaa), meat dumplings prepared on steam (boozy) and traditional ones (manchy), round fried meat pie (khuzhuury), minced meat with pastry (tyrtykan) and many others.
Moreover, you can find on the table of Tuvan people vodka made of milk (araga), which is made of sour milk, boorzaki – pieces of pastry fried in boiled oil, cakes, which are eaten not with prepared food, but as individual dish and soktaan dolgan – ground barley. Also Tuvan people like blood pudding, green tea with milk (it is drunk with butter or salt). The importance of diary products as well as meat product is very high for these people. They developed different ways of cooking products made of milk such as – cheese (bashtyk), butter (sarzhag), cream (oreme), kumis, kefir (tarak), sour clotted milk (khoitpak), dried cottage cheese – of hard and crumbly consistence (kurut and aarzhy respectively).
Fish is one of the basic ingredients of local cuisine in the Russian North and Baltic regions. At local restaurants and cafe you will taste a lot of excellent dishes made of fresh Baltic and Arctic fish. Ukha (fresh fish soup) cooked of local sea and river fishes combination is recommended. Very popular local delicacies are also smoked fresh fish. In St Petersburg you will find at many local restaurants koryushka (local smelt fish) which is fried and served with different sauces. In Kaliningrad herring is very popular and is one of its symbols. We recommend you to taste very popular in Russia dressed herring (so-called Herring under Fur-coat) – salad made of salty minced herring with vegetables thickened with mayonnaise. In Kaliningrad you can taste marzipan (sweet product made of chopped almonds usually covered with chocolate). And in St Petersburg you can taste a dessert beloved by local citizens called pyshka (donut). Pyshka is covered with powdered sugar and is served with a cup of coffee. For enthusiasts of exotic meals local cuisine offers dished cooked of quite specific bear and elk meat.
If you get to Vladivostok or to Kamchatka, you can try seafood. There are enough restaurants in the city of Vladivostok that can serve you fresh and tasty seafood dishes among them scallops, sea cucumber, Ussuriysk solyanka (a salad made from sea cabbage, chopped calamari, onion and carrot) etc. The main gastronomic brands of Kamchatka are smoked salmon fish, salmon (the red) caviar and Kamchatka crabs. Popular local dishes are fish cutlets made of salmon fish and potato stuffing with addition of other kinds of fish or squid meat, Kamchatka ukha (fresh fish soup made mainly of salmon fish), different varieties of salads made of salmon fish or reindeer meat with local berries, herbs and cedar nuts, yukola (dried salted salmon fish or reindeer meat traditionally used by the Far East aboriginal peoples as provision good for long keeping and transportation). Visiting Magadan you have a chance to taste also traditional food of local native peoples: dried salted fish (especially grayling) and dried salted reindeer meat.
