My Russian blog about Russian Food...

I'm a journalist. 

Like to travel. 

Practice my English. 

Doing nothing very much  - temporarily jobless :-))))

The Real drug of the Russian South.

The south of Russia is rich with fruit and vegetables, they are all over the place and if you are travelling through this region by car in the depth of Summer you are bound to see the spectacle of beautiful, bright, vivid, colourful fields on both side of the road. They stretch for miles and miles as far as the eye can see. This yellow is the brighest yellow you will ever experience. So what is it? Well these are sunflowers and in this region people use them, and have been using them for decades, to make sunflower oil which is used all of Russia. Additionally the seed is used to eat! 

(First I wrote this paragraph by myself, but then ask my English teacher to correct my sentences to be "more English" :-)))

  

In the South of Russia we eat fried seeds by ton. We buy them raw and fry them with salt and garlic at home. People have their own recipes almost in every house. We buy them packed, we bye them from old ladies on the street and in the market. We eat seeds at home in the evening sitting in front of the TV set, and in the street or sitting on a bench talking with friends. 

Seeds are like a cigarette or a beer, just to kill time, but much cheaper. Usually sold by the glass, seeds cost about 1 euro or even less.

The worst thing about seeds are the shell and the need to peel them. In the street young people spit them out on the ground and the shells become a pile of rubbish, where they stay for ages and look horrible and displeasing to the eye.

I asked some of my friends about seeds and most of them told me that they do not eat them regularly. Those who are native from the South for sure used to fry them with their parents or grandparents when they were children. 

Some ladies do not eat black seeds from sunflowers because they don’t want to spoil their manicure and prefer the white ones from pumpkins. 

"Therapeutic pumpkin"

Some men told me that they regard eating seeds as something done by lumpens, marginals and teenagers.  They don’t want to appear uncultured. But I’m a hundred percent sure that if I invited them to my house and put a full bowl of fried salty seeds in front of them it would be very difficult for them to stop nibbling. It concerns only my friends from the South, but not from Moscow or from the North. They do not understand this kind of drug – they have their own.

It is written "Fresh harvest" - means that the harvest was croped in the autumn ( it is winter 2013now)

БЫКИ - means BULLS - it is a sotr of seeds

P.S. I asked about 20 people using my facebook account. My “southern” friends replied at once with long descriptions of their “pros and cons”. The “Northern” ones were very much surprised to get such a strange question from me.

Russian South Market

Russian South Bazaar

 

Russia is a pretty big country and usually people from the North don’t know anything about the South, or those who live in the West can’t imagine how people in the East really live.

As I used to live in three different towns (in the North in my childhood, in the central part of the country and in the South) I always compare life in these different regions as they are so different from each other

And if you ask me about my favorite place in the South, I will tell - The Market. Here people call it “ The Bazaar”, like in Turkey. I believe it is the most picturesque place in my city.

A Bazaar is a kind of a huge market under the open sky (alfresco?) where one can find all ingredients for any traditional Russian dishes. Often everything here is sold by people who make or grow products themselves. But it is not a rule.

The man I love the best in my city's Bazaar is a good giant who sells “salo”.

It is a piece of salty or smoked pig fat. Those pieces that have a thin meat interlayer in England called bacon, but in Russia we don’t fry it, we eat it raw with bread and a drop of very spicy Russian mustard.

By the way, you should eat “salo” only with  “black bread” ( rye bread with coriander, called “Borodinskiy” – from the Soviet 1930s).

                                    

                                    

Another part of the Bazar that is worth mentioning, is the “Meat market”. Long rows of raw meat looking especially picturesquely from the second floor. You can find here all sorts of meat that are typical in the south part of Russia.

                                         

                                        

Things that are also sold indoors  - are milk products. Russian people are crazy about everything that is made from milk. It comes from Soviet times.It turns out to be a problem nowadays: we  only have dairy cows and no any beef species, like in Argentina, Australia or the USA.

  

For example a kind of home-made milk product – “ryazhenka” ( “zh” here pronounced like the first sound in the word “join” but without “d”). It is cow milk, that is first heated and than baked in the oven till the crust is brown. In the market it is sold in a “faceted” glass ( with a spoon ) – the most widespread glass all over the country. It usually has 12 or 16 edges in order not to roll from the table.

                                           

  

I can bet that Russia is the only country where one can find such a diversity of dainties ( pickles – but without adding vinegar – only salt and sugar ). We have salty cucumbers, tomatoes, paprika, garlic and cabbage. The most exotic things for a foreigner are soaked salty apples, plums, water-melons and blackthorn.

                                 

                                            

Another kind of Russian “delicacy” is a dried or jerked fish. We have dozens of different sorts, depending on the part of the country. In the South we have bream, vimba and sea roach. For Russians it the best beer appetizer

Have a good gay on the Russian Bazaar!