And today, dear friends and not so, I have a wonderful recipe for all lovers of antiquity. The real Russian cuisine, as it is, is cruel and merciless.
French bun with natural, freshly brewed coffee, spread with the same natural butter, poured with honey, and eaten what other organic, without any pesticides and GMO delicacies, it was undoubtedly good, but the Russian people quickly got bored.
These are all sorts of barchats and ladies who could choke on white bread day after day, eating pickled pineapple and eating all this cabbage soup, cooked by a French chef in accordance with all the rules of the then high kitchen.
And the Russian peasant knew: there are a lot of much more tasty things. Cabbage soup made of gray crumb, without any roasting there, in the coming days, flavored with lard. Black bread, with all sorts of different herbal additives for taste and so as not to get fat. Quinoa in the spring, and even with nettles!
Or here - birch porridge for the winter ...
To be honest, I thought for a long time that "birch porridge" is an expression that is used only in a figurative sense when they talk about punishment with rods. And I was very surprised when I learned that birch porridge was actually cooked.
Do you know how?
From the layer of wood that lies directly under the bark and, in fact, the bark itself is. Only not yet hardened, but soft, tender. In some sources it is called "sapwood", but the official biological name is phloem.
By the way, they used not only birch phloem. I have come across references to linden and even pine. Linden was boiled and beaten, and then eaten (or beaten and boiled). Pine was boiled in several waters to remove the resin, then eaten., Or dried, and then added to the dough when baking bread.
Modern "survivalists" experimenting with all kinds of "hungry" recipes for peasant life are now often reconstructing these dishes, but they do not delight them.
“Surviving on such a problem is problematic,” they say.
If you want to give it a try, here's the recipe:
Pull the soft phloem, soak it for several hours so that it is completely saturated with water. Then boil until the moment, until it begins to resemble... something jelly-like. Or slug-like (for me, it is slug-like that is nevertheless closer to this definition).
Salt (not really scattering salt, you have to buy salt, and you still have to pay a rent to the master and all kinds of taxes and taxes).
You have on your table a primordial dish of a Russian peasant. Many people consumed it much more often than meat and certainly more often than French rolls, which have become a symbol of past prosperity.
When to cook - tell us how the impression is. I didn’t cook it myself, I was treated to it, and, to be honest, I could not force myself to even try this porridge (the stomach is no longer tinned).
Bon Appetit!