Irina Sergeevna Potanina

Odessa cuisine

I am what I eat

Confession of an almost Odessa woman

It's logical to assume that I want to talk about food. Indeed, in the opinion of many, the consumption of a particular food largely determines the character. For example, my girlfriend who has turned vegetarian loves to say that meat makes us aggressive. And a common friend, listening to her assaults on meat-eaters, always answers, they say, the aggression of a predator is a necessary thing in our life, and the one who prefers plants ends up with a herbivorous character. But what is there, if the characteristic features of entire peoples are explained by their addiction to certain national dishes.

But, oddly enough, my article is not about food at all. About other food ...

Once I dreamed of writing a diploma "The influence of city architecture on the formation of a creative personality." Did not work out. But since then, I often return my thoughts to the topic, again and again convinced of the importance of this relationship. For me, nationality is determined not by place of residence or birth, not so much by blood in your veins, but by the number of features and characteristics of a city or country that you have taken into yourself ...

I again thought about it today, standing in the middle of Odessa, wet, cold - so dear that my heart ached. For the first time I said to myself that, being a native of Kiev in no one knows what generation, by character, disposition and disposition, I am rather a woman of Odessa. Precisely because in childhood I was fed like porridge, not Kiev at all, but Odessa.

Until the age of 16, I was a typical book girl, closed in a triangle house-school-circle in the palace of pioneers - and again a house. But almost every summer our family went to Odessa to the Dacha. And, unlike in Kiev, my Odessa life was a continuous "+ infinity". An endless sea from which my mother could never get me out. Endless excursions, trips to distant shores and rocky beaches, many hours of walking around the city, museums and theaters, including the most beautiful Odessa Opera House in the world. Endless, like a TV series, the story of the old Dacha, where several generations of our family grew up, Dacha, who still remembered my grandmother as a funny little toddler in swollen panties (I adored grandmother's stories about her childhood summer adventures and asked me to repeat them again and again). Endless relatives - uncles and aunts, cousins ​​and cousins, many children, together with whom we came up with thousands of games. Endless adventures - with my best friend from Odessa, we constantly climbed trees, fences and roofs, poured water on passers-by, invented pranks and tricks. The Kiev quiet girl turned in Odessa into a completely robbery element ...

Later, this metamorphosis occurred in my biography. A marvelous vinaigrette of remarkably controversial qualities simply could not go unnoticed! Unsinkable confidence in one's own originality and originality, the sharpness of language, jokes (sometimes on the verge of a foul), the desire to dress brightly (sometimes on the verge of bad taste, but in Odessa it was always customary to shine three times brighter than in Kiev!) And even the conviction that I have the right to break out the Russian language according to your own understanding - all this is the upbringing of the legendary Odessa.

It was Odessa that helped me understand - we are what we consume, taking in. We are raised by cities and countries, families and people, whose ideas we absorb into ourselves so that they become us. (But it happens the other way around: the country, the environment - do not go, they stand in the throat like a fish bone, causing the process of reverse peristalsis.) "I am what I eat." In all senses. It seems like a simple thought, but how often we neglect it to our own detriment. It’s hard to become a great creator if you consume extremely low-quality literature and stupid pop music for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s hard to believe in yourself if in the “menu” you only have reproaches, jabs, criticism of loved ones, convinced: they didn’t work out, and you will never succeed either. And how easily we become infected with faith from those who truly believe in us, believe in themselves, believe in the best!

A common advice from all psychologists is not to hang out with losers. Their failures are contagious, they pull you down at the same time. If you want to quit drinking - first, quit the drinking company. If you want to rise in soul, surround yourself with highly spiritual ones. A couple of years ago, one of my acquaintances (by pure chance she is from Odessa) began an affair with a famous show business figure. She herself had neither relation to this sphere, nor a desire to get in there. However, in the second year of their romance, she had to retrain from just a business woman to show business ... She simply had no other choice. She had to either become part of the environment of her beloved, or reject him along with the art world.

Therefore, when failures lie in wait for me, I watch films about people who managed to overcome troubles and achieve their goal - I “gorge” on their faith in victory. Better yet, surround yourself with winners, people who radiate success, who, by their very existence, can teach you the rules of the right game ...

When I feel really, really bad, I run to Odessa. So, in a difficult moment, you run to your mother to hide your head under her arm. Mom loves you anyone. And Odessa-mother also taught me the main quality: to love yourself, anyone. Accept your imperfection as a peculiarity. As an individual that is dearer than any perfection! Accepting wrongness as an opportunity will stand out by deviating from the general norm. Not to adjust to the world, but to adjust the world to yourself. How they do it in Odessa! Arriving there, people begin to diligently distort words to match the local chic.

I have always called Odessa my second hometown. Love for her, which has become almost the religion of our extended family, is in my blood; I inherited it as a family treasure, instead of diamonds and silver spoons. And it is possible that this inheritance is more expensive than diamonds. After all, I received as a gift myself - the way I am. And I understand my country cousin: being a Muscovite, having an excellent apartment in the center, she prefers to spend most of the year in Odessa. “Because this is where all the best happened to me,” she tells me. I would say otherwise: all the best that happened to me, I owe the upbringing of Odessa. And if I didn’t introduce myself as “almost a woman from Odessa,” it was only because I doubt whether I am worthy to bear this title? Odessa is almost the only city in the country, to be a native of which is already a reason for pride. Introducing yourself in Kiev: "I am a woman from Odessa" - you will hear in response an admiring "Oh! ..", as if your belonging to the royal family was revealed.

They say that the old Odessa no longer exists. That she only remained in old books and films. This is a lie. Odessa is immortal. Upon arrival there, my husband called the ad. We wanted to buy an antique lampshade.

Hundreds, thousands of words have been written about French, Italian, Asian, American cuisines... Each state, even if it has learned only to stew lamb and bake potatoes, declares the existence of its own unique cuisine. Odessa should not be shy. There is no second city in the world where they love to eat, argue about food and, of course, cook.

To learn how to cook in Odessa, I advise, for a start, to master the main principles of this cuisine.

• The principle of honesty. In food, we love the truth and do not disguise the product under sauces and spices. There is nothing like a grilled piece of meat with a pinch of salt.
• Seasonality principle. Repertoire Odessa cuisine directly depends on the month in which you cook. Wait for the Danube herring in April, look for the famous Roksolanovo potatoes in the market in spring, and the best blue ones at the end of July.
• The principle of freshness. If the fish is caught in the morning. If the meat, then it was cut before your eyes. If vegetables, then seasonal and from the market.
• The principle of delicacy. Odessa cuisine is tiny, which means it requires painstaking and careful preparation. Let's take cabbage rolls. We make them tiny, "with a little finger." Or, for example, dumplings. We make mugs of dough using a glass and in no case use a glass or, for example, a saucer for this.
• The principle of balance of taste. We combine ingredients by matching flavors, not contrast. That is why the dishes of Odessa cuisine are so harmonious. Perhaps the most characteristic range of flavors: not salted feta cheese from Privoz, sweet watermelon and mikado tomatoes.
• The sweetness principle. Odessa food is not sour and spicy, but rather sweet and salty. Sweetish mashed potatoes with lightly salted cucumbers rather than famous in Austria potato salad with vinegar. And by the way, pickled cucumbers are not ours.
• The principle of multinationality. Odessa cuisine is woven from Jewish, Ukrainian, Armenian, Georgian, Russian, Bulgarian and Greek flavors. So don't be afraid to compare. Odessa table is a mosaic of dishes that perfectly complement each other.
• The principle of rationality. We use common sense in our cooking. Don't buy whole fish for cutlets. Part of the carcass can be fried, part can be put on cutlets, and the rest can be sent to broth. If you bought fresh peas, it makes sense to just eat it, and not invent a bicycle.
• The principle of slowness. The salad is not considered ready immediately after slicing and stirring. He needs half an hour to brew and start up the juice. To cook the right Odessa food, you need to slow down. Odessa cuisine does not tolerate speed or fuss, it is calm, unhurried and balanced. Odessa borsch loves to stand, preferably at night.
• The principle of "nuance". You need to cook with nuances, very carefully, without pretentiousness, without trying to give the food an unnatural taste. However, use only local products and only in season. Cooking tasty does not mean expensive, difficult or imported, but always “nuanced”. Even if residents of Odessa eat bacon, this bacon is cut like a carpaccio, half a millimeter thick, properly cooled and served correctly.
• Spices Garlic, black pepper, dill, parsley, salt. Odessa food smells, it does not require additional spices.

Book "My Odessa cuisine", Savva Libkin, in English.

THE BOOK "ODESSA FEAST -from Privoz to Deribasovskaya "

It is not just a book of recipes - this is a great gastronomic walk along Odessa. As it should be, the route originates from the grocery rows of Privoz, then it goes along French Boulevard, Myasoedovskaya street, Bazarnaya street, Jewish street and other colorful places with their own culinary history. And it will end with a big feast on Deribasovskaya street, at the table spread out in the open air and full of delicious Odessa specialties.

Following from street to street and from recipe to recipe, Savva generously shares details known only Odessa natives - stories, jokes and city legends. But of course on the first plan, colorful Odessa dishes, sometimes almost forgotten. Their recipes are carefully collected by the author in the city and country kitchens, in the stories of famous Odessa natives, as well as in the cookbooks of three generations of the Libkin family.

The book "Odessa feast from Privoz to Deribasovskaya"

In his second book, Savva Libkin suggests following him to taste the unique flavor of different Odessa quarters: start from Privoz, walk along Bazarnaya, turn to Jewish and Deribasovskaya and stand in the shade on Myasoedovskaya, which is the legendary Moldavanka.

For each place he has stories in store with details known only to the indigenous inhabitants of Odessa, and even then not to everyone.
Tales and anecdotes about the Olivier salad brought to Odessa by Richelieu himself, about a live elephant that escaped from the zoo to free grazing and walked along the Fruit Rows, or about the writer Babel, who learned about the gangster showdown on Moldovanka from the stories of his own grandmother - all this by itself in itself FUNNING READING, worthy of the best examples of Odessa prose of the same Babel or Zhvanetsky.

Savely Libkin is a well-known Odessa restaurateur and a person keen on cooking, the author of 2 cookbooks. His articles on cooking are published by the world-renowned Forbes magazine.

And the ODESSA cuisine itself, as it were, stands apart and is a symbiosis of Ukrainian, Jewish cuisine with elements of Moldavian, Russian cuisine of the Soviet period (as defined by the moderators).

February 13, 2013

I stopped perceiving borscht as a dish from the age of 7. It was then in the 74th school that it was given for lunch almost every other day. The state school, the state buffet and the watery brown water with cabbage were remembered for a long time.

In short, I did not eat borscht at school. At home too ... Just because the name was the same, and I was afraid to try. Of course, I assumed that at home everything was not at all like that, but school fears made themselves felt.

The first time I became interested in this dish was when I saw exactly how Reis's grandmother prepared it. I don't remember exactly whether I was 10 or 11 years old then, but considering that the discussion about what to cook always took place in front of me, I remember some of the repetitive nuances of conversations about food.

Every night my grandmother told my grandfather that my uncle did not eat anything, and therefore was very thin. Then the question of what exactly to give my uncle to work with him was discussed. Then what to cook for tomorrow and so on. I slept in the same room with them, so I was in the know.

The only dish that my uncle perceived was the same borscht. Therefore, borscht was cooked often.

Borsch is a recognized gastronomic hit in Russia and Ukraine. When friends or relatives from abroad come to me, I certainly cook red borscht and I consider this dish not just a tradition, but one of the most delicious soups in the world.

First, let's cook mashed tomatoes

Ripe, but not too soft red tomatoes, blanch cream, remove the skin. Cut into slices, remove the remnants of the stalk.

Wash carrots, peel, rub on a medium grater. Cut the onion into rings, celery stalks and garlic into slices.

We spread the vegetables in a cast-iron cauldron, fill in olive oil and put on medium heat. Add salt, sugar and some freshly ground pepper.

Cook the puree under the lid for one hour, stirring occasionally with a wooden spatula.

Cool and wipe with a puree maker. (I had to see in Italy a passapomodoro - a device for making mashed potatoes from tomatoes: a cross between an electric meat grinder and a juicer. But in Odessa, they are not used yet).

We lay out the finished mashed potatoes in clean jars and, if desired, either put in the refrigerator, or "twist" and hide until winter.

Let's move on to the borscht itself. Brisket - sawn ribs with meat, pour cold drinking water and cook for two hours practically without boiling, observing all the nuances of cooking the broth (see the recipe for Bouillon Cubes).

We bring the broth to taste and remove all vegetables and herbs from it. Leave the meat. It is important that it is cooked at the same time as the borscht.

We clean the early beets and chop them into strips. We do not use a grater.

Sprinkle the beets with vinegar and simmer over medium heat in vegetable oil... At the last stage, add the pulp of red peeled tomatoes without seeds or homemade puree from them to the beets. Simmer for another 10 minutes until thick and add a spoonful of sugar.

Chop the carrots, parsley root, onions into strips and sauté them in vegetable oil for 10 minutes.

My 40-day potatoes, peel, cut into large cubes. Even if we prepare borscht from early vegetables, we use last year's: young potatoes are not perceived in borscht.

Thinly chop the early cabbage. Cut the young beet stalks into 5-6 millimeter pieces.

In the broth, without taking out the meat, put the potatoes and cook for 15 minutes. Then we simultaneously introduce all the other stews and raw vegetables... Cook without boiling for another 10 minutes.

Leave the borsch to rest for two hours without removing the lid.

We take out the bones, leaving the boiled meat in the borscht.

We crush a clove of garlic with a knife and chop into crumbs. Chop the parsley and chop very finely. V homemade sour cream put salt, garlic, parsley and mix.

We tear off a piece of meat reddened from the beets with our hands and put it on a plate. Add two ladles of borscht and put a tablespoon of sour cream with herbs on top.

For the winter version, I pre-boil the beets for half an hour in water with vinegar. In addition, some of the potatoes can be replaced with pre-cooked large beans. At my place they called her "shovel". The rest of the technology for preparing winter borscht is the same as for spring borscht. But the taste is different.

I don't put lard, black and allspice in borscht - it distracts. During the cooking process, you can add a little fresh porcini mushrooms and then do not put garlic in the sour cream.

It is better to cook borscht for 2 days. The next after cooking, it acquires a characteristic density and richness of taste.

See the recipe in the book:
Savely Libkin. "My Odessa cuisine". Eksmo 2013

As soon as they do not eat tulka in Odessa, this small silver fish, which Odessa residents miss in all overseas countries! Musician Irina Rakova, an Odessa resident who has worked for many years on cruise ships of the Black Sea Shipping Company, left for Australia in 1978, but continues to cook Odessa cuisine in Sydney. The tulle is not there, but she replaces it with a small sardine: “I salt according to the Odessa recipe, as I saw from my grandmother and my mother - I sprinkle the unwashed sardine with intestines and head with salt. Salting it takes longer, because it is larger. And when it’s salted, I wash it, clean it, fill it with vinegar and oil. It tastes like a tulle, but the consistency is different. It is denser - like a small herring. But this is the only way with potatoes! "

For this salad, you need to choose potato varieties that do not boil over. Tulka and sauerkraut here they are interchangeable: in the second case, the vinegar must be replaced with cabbage brine.

Odessa cuisine is a real mix of culinary traditions... It harmoniously combines oriental spices, Slavic products, Caucasian pungency and French sophistication. In the list of ingredients, you can often find tomatoes, sea ​​salt, fresh herbs, sauces and a hint of the southern sun.

These recipes are suitable for those who like to gather at a large table with a noisy company of family and friends. The simplicity of the execution of the dishes will make a real chef out of an amateur. Savely Libkin's book is bright and warm, encourages to cook and create in the kitchen!

Ingredients,

required for the recipe

rooster - 3-4 kg

two domestic chickens - 1.2-1.5 kg

veal shank - 1.5-2 kg

large head of spring garlic - 3 pieces

medium carrots - 2 pieces

parsley root - 2 pieces

medium onion - 2 pieces

a bunch of parsley - 2-3 pieces

bay leaf - 5-6 pcs.

egg - 5 pieces

allspice

black pepper

Description of preparation

For one 3-4-kilogram rooster, we take two domestic chickens and about 1.5-2 kilograms of a veal shank. We rinse well and put everything together in a large saucepan: meat in a large piece, poultry in whole carcasses.

We wash and peel onions, carrots, parsley root. We do not chop - we will cook them whole.

Fill the meat with cold drinking water and put it on fire. Festive jellied meat according to the Odessa unwritten rules is cooked for 7 hours, and practically without boiling. Therefore, you need to immediately calculate the time.

An hour and a half before the end of cooking, put prepared vegetables and spices into the broth. It is very important to salt it correctly: cold meat will taste 10-15% less salty than hot.

After an hour, remove the vegetables from the broth. You need to make sure that they are not overcooked, especially carrots, which are to be decorated with jellied meat.

In the meantime, filter the broth through cheesecloth (preferably several times) and briefly put the pan in the cold, in order to make it easier to remove the fat. We collect all the frozen fat with a spoon. It is very important not to leave a single drop on the surface of the broth.

Then let the broth stand for 10 minutes and carefully drain it from the sediment.

We crush the garlic and put half in the strained and cooled broth, and half in the meat

Cook, clean and cut into rings homemade eggs with bright beautiful yolks. Cut the boiled carrots into slices.

Let's start pouring the jellied meat. Fill the bottom of the tray or plate with a 6-7 mm layer of broth and let it set.

More large pieces put the chicken on the frozen broth. Add a boiled egg circle, a carrot slice and 1-2 parsley leaves to each container. Put a portion of the rest of the meat on top.

Then we fill it all with repeatedly strained broth and put it out in the cold.

Ingredients,

required for the recipe

beef entrecote - 1 kg

Sineglazka potatoes - 1 kg

refined sunflower oil- 200 ml

5-6 onions - 600 g

carrots - 2 pieces

pitted prunes - 300 g

white raisins - 100 g

beef broth - 1.3 l

allspice - 5-7 pieces

bay leaf - 1 piece

ground black pepper

Description of preparation

We buy prunes and white raisins at the market. Please note that they must
be dull: dried fruit can only shine if it has been additionally processed. The aroma of a campfire emanating from a prune suggests that it was most likely smoked with "liquid smoke". Therefore, we choose necessarily black, matte, "no haze", preferably dry and sweet, but with a slight sourness. Better to take with bones and take them out at home.

Soak pitted prunes and white raisins in cold water for 1 hour.

We clean a piece of beef entrecote from all films and cut into cubes of about 50 grams each.

Wash large tubers of Sineglazka potatoes, peel and cut into cubes of the same size as the meat.

Wash onions and carrots, peel and chop: onions - into large slices, and carrots - into cubes.

In a cast-iron cauldron, fry the meat in vegetable oil for 20 minutes. Add the onion and fry for another 15 minutes.

Pour in 200-250 ml of broth and reduce the heat. Simmer for 75 minutes, stirring constantly and sometimes adding broth little by little.

We dry the pieces of fish with a napkin, salt, pepper and leave to rest for 30 minutes.

You can sprinkle the flounder with lemon juice before frying.

It remains only to brew the fish in flour (it is better to add 15% corn to wheat flour) and
fry on both sides in a pan, sparing no vegetable oil.

Be sure to fry over high heat without a lid and until golden brown.