Читать книгу The Soviet Diet Cookbook: exploring life, culture and history – one recipe at a time - Anna Kharzeeva - Страница 7

After working my way through Book of Healthy and Tasty food for a month, I was pretty familiar with most of its main myths. It’s clear that propaganda was as strong in the fields of soups and stews as it was in art, labor and politics.

The main surprise for me was the quantities of food a Soviet citizen was meant to procure and consume: starting with a protein-heavy breakfast of fried meat or fish with boiled eggs, bread, cheese and milk, tea or coffee. This was followed in just a few hours by a second breakfast consisting of a vegetable bake or sandwiches. Then after work was “lunch” or the main meal of the day, which involved an appetizer, soup and a main meal with fruit kompot or dessert.

After all that, you’re supposed to have dinner, about two hours before bed. This should consist of prostokvasha (a kind of dairy drink like buttermilk), and an omelet or a salad.

The Book also reminds housewives of the importance of a balanced and diverse selection of dishes: “One must vary the menu. A housewife has the habit of making 10—12 meals… that get repeated throughout the year. As a result, members of the family get monotonous food.”

Russian, and especially Soviet food, has never known much variety, but this was mostly the result of a lack of available ingredients, rather than a lack of desire to feed a family well.

My childhood memories of “monotonous food” are confirmed by my grandmother.

“There was no food. What we ate was very much the same, no variety whatsoever,” Granny said. “There wasn’t a cult of food, like there is now. Today I think of what I want to cook, then go to the shop and get the ingredients for it. Back in the Soviet times, I went to the shop to try and find anything, and then cooked with whatever I found. There was never a fuss about food – you just cooked and ate what you could find, that’s it.”

Then she added: “Don’t forget, the Book was an ad for the happy Soviet life. Sure, some recipes were realistic, but a big part of the Book is just for show.”

And what a show it is! The variety of recipes is truly endless. Time has worked in its favor, too. Now that you can get the ingredients, the Book of Healthy and Tasty Food can be ranked up there with some of the best cookbooks I’ve seen. Although it could be more user-friendly. Of the overall lack of instructions, I can only assume the authors thought: “Why write it all out if no one’s going to be able to make it anyway?”

For this “light” dinner, I chose to cook fried eggs with a side dish – a meal that didn’t really suffer from a lack of instructions. The meal was pretty simple and quick and, I must say, absolutely delicious! I cut up dark bread and fried it in a pan, and then added tomatoes, which I stewed for a bit before pouring the eggs on top. If you have a lot of “base” and add other vegetables, it will be a little bit like Israeli shakshuka, in which eggs are poached in a tomato base. I had never before thought to fry eggs right on top of tomatoes and fried dark bread, and that was clearly my loss. Eating breakfast for dinner makes sense, too, when you’ve had meat for breakfast.

Recipe:

To make fried eggs with a side dish you need to first fry pieces of dark bread, lard, ham, sausages, salami, zucchini etc..

Then put eggs on top, salt and keep on the stove for 1—2 minutes and then bake for 3—4 minutes. As soon as the egg white is the color of milk, serve it on the frying pan or a warm plate.

If you don’t have an oven, the frying pan with eggs should be covered with a lid or plate.