To this day, the cuisine of England has well preserved and conveyed many traditional dishes, which are based on meat, vegetables, cereals and fish. Characteristic feature of English cuisine is conservative cooking. The British cook practically without hot spices and sauces, and if they use seasonings for dishes, these are most often a variety of sour, hot and other spices, which are served in bottles and used after the dish is ready.
Traditional English cuisine
The cuisine of England can boast a large selection of cold snacks, the most popular of which are, of course, sandwiches, in particular the traditional triangular ones. Soups are served quite rarely. The British prefer puree soup or broth as a first course.
To prepare meat dishes, traditional English cuisine uses almost all types of meat - veal, beef, pork, lamb. England is perhaps the only country in which so much honor is given to the roasted thigh of a bull, which is food for aristocrats. The meat can be baked whole, rare, or cut into steaks and fried in a frying pan. The meat is usually not cooked until full readiness. As a side dish for meat dishes Baked vegetables (most often potatoes), gravy, pickles, as well as all kinds of sauces, most often tomato, can be served. Also widely popular mint sauce, which is a mixture of water, sugar, wine vinegar and finely chopped mint leaves. Favorite national dishes are without a doubt steak and roast beef. Real roast beef has a crispy crust on top, while the inside should remain juicy and pink. Pork pies are also popular. leg of lamb, kidney pate, etc.
In addition to meat, an important place in the British diet belongs to fish - cod and smoked herring. Salmon and kakana are cooked very tasty. The most preferred seafood by the British are squid and lobster.
Among other things, such traditional dishes as potato casseroles with lamb, ground beef or fish, fries and puddings, the latter are even considered the hallmark of Great Britain. Basically, two types of puddings are prepared: unsweetened (vegetable, meat and cereal), which replace the main course, and sweet, which are served as dessert. Some traditional English dishes are served only on holidays. The most popular of these dishes is Christmas plumpudding, which is made from bread crumbs, lard, raisins, flour, eggs, sugar and all kinds of spices. Immediately before serving, the pudding is doused with rum, set on fire and placed on the table in a flaming state. In addition, traditional holiday dishes include turkey stuffed with a side dish of vegetables, sausages and potatoes for Guy Fawkes Day and cross buns for Easter.
Drinks in English cuisine
The British prefer tea as their main drink, which they drink up to 6 times a day. A certain time of day has its own type of tea, as well as its own tea drinking traditions. It is customary to serve milk with sweets for tea. English baked goods, including sponge cakes, muffins, saffron buns and biscuits, are popular far beyond the UK.
The British prefer to drink beer - porter and black ale - as alcoholic drinks. Beer from barrels is especially valuable. From more strong alcohol The British drink rum, gin, whiskey and port.
In their diet, the British follow the same tradition as in other matters.
* Traditionally, an Englishman's day begins with morning tea or juice, which is most often served in bed. At 7-8 am, the first breakfast is traditionally served with scrambled eggs and bacon or oatmeal with toast and orange marmalade. Breakfast must be washed down with plenty of tea. Many English people stick to the same breakfast every day.
* At half past one, a more hearty second breakfast (lunch) is served, the menu of which usually includes a roast with a vegetable side dish, dessert, rice with milk, pudding or fluffy cheese.
* At 5-6 pm traditional tea party with cake or cookies
* At 7-8 pm – lunch (dinner). English families from the northern or central regions may have lunch instead of big tea. The cakes are usually accompanied by smoked herring, cold meat, sandwiches, salad, and sometimes a hot dish. However, families with more conservative views remain loyal traditional lunch consisting of soup or light snack, roast with vegetables and dessert.
The most common dessert are fresh fruits, as well as fruit and berry shores with cream or ice cream. The most popular fruit is the apple. Plums, oranges, grapes, lemons, almonds, dates and other nuts are used in making cakes. As usual desserts, dried fruit compotes with tea and cream are served.
National dishes of England
One of the most traditional dishes - deep fried fish and chips, which is usually prepared with salt and spirit vinegar and served wrapped in newspaper. Another traditional dish is sausages with mashed potatoes with onions and gravy. Nowadays, spices from India and Bangladesh are being experimentally added to this English staple, giving it a new aroma and taste.
Traditional cucumber sandwich consists of the thinnest slices of cucumber between two pieces white bread thinly spread with butter.
Cumberland sausages is a type of traditional sausage that originated in Cumberland, England. They are usually very long (up to 50 cm) and are sold rolled into a flat round coil. They are sometimes made shorter, like regular British sausages.
Eccles puff- small, round pie filled with currants. Made from puff pastry with a lot of butter and named after the English town of Ecclese, near Manchester.
Jellied eel- a delicacy of the East End of London - often served with pie and mashed potatoes. It is no longer commonly eaten in London, although the existence of this dish is not unheard of.
Lancashire stew originated during a time of increased industrialization in Lancashire, North West England, when it consisted of meat, onions and potatoes, left to bake in the oven over low heat in a heavy pot for an entire day. The dish requires minimal cooking effort and is extremely tasty so that you will not be able to tear yourself away from it. It is sometimes served on holidays in the North of England because it is easy to feed large numbers of people and is relatively inexpensive.
Parmo- a variation of chicken parmesan cheese, apparently invented in the Teesside conurbation of northern England. The dish is highly prized there, both as restaurant food and as a takeaway dish.
Simnel- fruit pie, similar to Christmas cake covered with almond paste, made at Easter in England. Eleven marzipan balls are placed on top along the edge, representing the true apostles of Jesus; Judas is missed.
Yarg- semi-solid cow cheese, made in Cornwall, with a distinct veining pattern. The texture can vary from creamy and soft with a dense pattern to the medium texture of Carphilly cheese.
There are several other dishes in English cuisine which are not as well known and highly regarded as other European cuisines, such as Italian and French, but which admirably illustrate and represent the whole of England. Classics like English breakfast, Cornish pasty, blood sausage, Yorkshire pudding and Sunday roast are adopted in many other cuisines around the world for their excellence and ingredients.
English food and Scottish cuisine
English cuisine would be incomplete without its component - Scottish cuisine. In their fundamentals they are very similar, and if they differ in some way, it is insignificant. One of the popular national dishes Scotland is Porridge - liquid oatmeal. It is usually served for breakfast. There are many known recipes for making porridge, which are passed down from generation to generation. Like the English, the Scots prefer puddings, especially white, which is a mixture of onions, lard and oatmeal, and black, blood. Sweet Scottish pudding is usually prepared for the holidays. Just like the English, the Scots prefer tea, and from strong alcoholic drinks– whiskey.
It is worth noting that, compared to the British, the Scots consume more of all kinds of cereals, which are served mainly in the form of porridges. Quite often, sweetened milk wheat porridge or cereal porridge is served for breakfast.
The Scots also surpassed the British in consuming soups. Soups are mainly prepared with meat, cabbage, potatoes, cereals and fish. One of the national dishes of Scotland is boiled with oatmeal and well-seasoned veal tripe with peppers and onions. In addition, there are a great many Scottish national recipes roast with a side dish of fresh peas or potatoes. As a traditional holiday dish serves goose or chicken stuffed with oatmeal and chopped offal.
The story of how Charles Dickens loved fried cheese and his wife Catherine, who bore him children with enviable regularity, kept an impeccable household and even wrote a cookbook. And also about how, after 16 years of marriage, family happiness ended, and the recipe for Charles’ favorite dish disappeared from the cookbook.
Victorian culinary legend Isabella Beeton and her book Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management household»).
The two hats that cast a shadow on the curtain were the hats of two of Mrs. Bardle's closest friends, who had just come to drink a peaceful cup of tea and share with the hostess a modest hot supper of two portions of pig's feet and fried cheese. The cheese was browning deliciously in the little Dutch oven in front of the fire; The pig's legs felt great in a small tin pan hanging on a hook.
Charles Dickens. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
In October 1851, Lady Maria Clutterbuck's cookbook, What's for Dinner?, was published. The foreword was written by Charles Dickens, and the text was written by his wife, Mrs. Catherine Dickens.
The history of this book began in 1835, when the aspiring journalist Charles Dickens, who was 23 years old, held a home party to celebrate the publication of his essay on the life and characteristic types of London. Among the guests were the famous publisher George Hogarth and his eldest daughter, twenty-year-old Catherine. The pretty, dark-haired, romantic-looking girl didn’t exactly awaken his passion, but he liked him for her freshness and spontaneity. He sincerely became attached to her, and in the late spring of the same 1835, Catherine Hogarth and the aspiring writer Charles Dickens announced their engagement.
They married in April 1836 and in the early years of their marriage, the young wife was, according to the writer, “his better half.” As for Catherine, she, according to Dickens’s younger sister Mary, “has become an excellent housewife and is completely happy.”
What followed was a series of years when her husband published one novel after another with enviable regularity, and Catherine just as regularly bore him children. She found it increasingly difficult to manage the household, and this care first gradually fell on the shoulders of her younger sister Mary, and after her sudden death, another younger sister, Georgina, who lived in the Dickens house from the age of fifteen.
By the time the book was published in 1852, the writer’s family already had 10 children, and Georgina became the true mistress of the house. Exhausted by childbirth and miscarriages, the aged and discolored Catherine could no longer give what Dickens’ energetic, passionate nature demanded, and the end of their relationship was first a gradual and then a final cooling of feelings, which ultimately led to the severance of family ties. Bernard Shaw said this about this: “The main problem with his wife was that she was not Dickens in a skirt.” Catherine was a typical woman and wife in Victorian England. As her daughter Kate recalled, “she had her faults, like all of us, but she was a gentle, sweet, kind person and a true lady.” However, life next to the great writer left its mark on Catherine, which allowed her to write a book that left its mark on the culinary history of England. It contained all the experience of running a household of the writer, who loved not only his wife, but also strict order in the house, comfort and well-cooked delicious food.
It is possible that the idea of writing a book arose in Catherine under the influence of the writings of the Victorian spinster and modest poet Miss Eliza Acton of Tonbridge in Kent, who in 1845 published the first English cookbook for housewives, Modern Cookery for Private Families, written in simple language , with food recipes easily accessible to make. This book, which for the first time indicated the amount of ingredients and the time required to prepare dishes, served as a kind of model for ladies who sought to publish the fruits of their culinary and economic activities.
Catherine Dickens's modest work did not become as popular as Miss Exton's book, and even less so than Mrs. Beeton's extensive book Housekeeping, published later in 1861. But for the history of cooking, it turned out to be a valuable source of information, giving an idea of everyday Victorian family cuisine, the basis of which was beef, lamb and pork, always accompanied by potatoes, with much less consumption of vegetables (beets, cabbage, carrots and turnips) and a contemptuous attitude to the food of common people - fish.
Catherine Dickens's book was a simple collection of homemade dinner menus, complete with easy-to-make recipes. Katherine, who was originally from Scotland, diversified the standard menu with dishes of cod and mullet, fried oysters, oyster sauce and stewed eels. The work of the writer's wife was republished several times, but after the divorce, Catherine vindictively removed one of Charles's most favorite dishes - fried cheese - from the new editions. This hot snack It was often served to the writer with his morning coffee, or for lunch along with mashed potatoes, and therefore it is not surprising that he mentioned it in his first novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.
It turned out that in order to prepare fried cheese, you need to follow several simple rules. First of all, you need to take pickled cheeses - mozerella, feta, Adyghe, Suluguni, etc. Then you will need fresh eggs, coarsely ground breadcrumbs, cooked with my own hands from dried bread, butter or refined deodorized vegetable oil.
Fried cheese in English
For 1 serving you will need 80 g of soft pickled cheese, 10 g breadcrumbs, 10 g butter, parsley.
Thick slices soft cheese breaded in breadcrumbs, put on hot frying pan with melted butter and quickly fry over high heat. Place on a plate and sprinkle with chopped parsley leaves if desired.
Note: Durum varieties The cheese should first be moistened with milk so that the breading sticks better.
Russian fried cheese
For one serving you will need 120 g of Adygei cheese, 15 g of breadcrumbs, 7 g of sesame seeds, 1 egg, vegetable oil, lettuce.
Cut the cheese into cubes, dip in beaten eggs, roll in a mixture of breadcrumbs and sesame seeds, place on a plate and place in the refrigerator for 3 hours. Heat sufficient quantity to high temperature vegetable oil In a deep frying pan, using kitchen tongs, place the cheese in the oil and quickly fry until the breading is golden brown. Using tongs, remove the fried cheese from the oil, pat dry on a paper towel, cool slightly to a temperature that is comfortable to eat, and place on a plate on a lettuce leaf.
The author prepared fried cheese in one way or another, tried it himself, treated it to his family, who appreciated its wonderful taste and advised him to publish these recipes, which he does with the hope of receiving approval from his respected readers.
02.01.2012
People often wonder what the dish they are about to eat is made from, but rarely ask where it got its name. The origin of the dish's name is as interesting as the food.
Beef Stroganoff
A combination of beef, mushrooms, and sour cream, Beef Stroganoff was a prize-winning culinary competition held in the 1890s in St. Petersburg. The cook who created this dish worked for the Russian diplomat Count P. A. Stroganov, a member of one of Russia's greatest noble families.
Beef Wellington
A national hero who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Arthur Wellesley was made the first Duke of Wellington. He loved dishes of beef, mushrooms, truffles, Madeira wine, and pate cooked in dough, which was named after him.
Caesar salad
In the 1920s, Cesar Cardini, owner of an Italian restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, and his brother, Alex, came up with a dish of romaine lettuce, anchovies, eggs, lemon juice, grated cheese parmesan cheese, and garlic-flavored croutons seasoned with Worcestershire sauce. The salad was originally called Aviator, but Cardini later named it after himself.
Chicken Marengo
French chicken dish stewed with garlic, tomatoes, olives, white wine, served with crayfish or fried eggs. On June 14, 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Austro-Hungarian army at the village of Marengo, in northern Italy. Chicken Marengo was prepared from whatever the soldiers could find in the village.
Steak and Potatoes Delmonico
Swiss immigrants, the Delmonico family opened the first luxury restaurant in New York, which they operated from 1835 to 1881. Under the leadership of French chef Charles Ranhofer, the Delmonico company became a gourmet standard. Delmonico steak, prepared from the rib portion, without bones. Delmonico potatoes are first boiled, spread with butter, sprinkled with lemon juice and seasoned with parsley.
Eggs Benedict
Eggs Benedict was probably created at Delmonico's Restaurant in response to a complaint from frequent customers. One day Mr. Benedict said to the head waiter, “Could you suggest us something new?” And received boiled eggs on toast with a thin slice of ham, hollandaise sauce and truffles on top.
Omar Newburgh
In the mid-1800s, tycoon Ben Wenberg asked Charles Ranhofer, a cook at Delmonico's Restaurant, to prepare him a dish he had tasted in South America—pieces of lobster fried in butter and served with a cream-and-egg sauce flavored with sherry. Wenberg liked the dish so much that it was added to the menu as Lobster Wenberg. Wenberg later had an argument with Delmonico and was banned from the restaurant. Since then, this dish has become known as Newburgh.
Peach Melba
Chef Auguste Escoffier created a slow-cooked dessert using peach halves, vanilla ice cream, and raspberry sauce, named after Australian opera singer Nellie Melba. A Frenchman, Escoffier worked at the Ritz Hotel in London in the early 1900s, when Melba performed regularly at the Covent Garden Opera House.
47 chosen
"Porthos looked at the bottle standing next to him, hoping that somehow he would dine on wine, bread and cheese, but there was no wine - the bottle was empty..."
/A. Dumas. "Three Musketeers"/
As a child, when I imagined the scene of Porthos having dinner with the Coquenards, I felt very sorry for the brave musketeer who remained hungry. Wine didn’t interest me in those days, and cheese and bread seemed too ordinary. Now I would gladly agree to such a meal - provided, of course, that all its components are French... Noble French cheeses have already been the topic of our culinary journey, the wide selection of wines deserves a separate discussion, and the bread... Oh, this french baguette– aromatic, with a crispy crust and tender crumb – how to get it out of the store untouched?!! But I got distracted...
So, French cuisine. These words say everything and say nothing. What do we imagine when we talk about it? Onion soup? Frog legs? Foie gras? Refinement and perfection in everything - both in preparation and in serving dishes, honed over centuries? Let's start with the fact that there is no single French cuisine... There are many regional variations (cuisine regionale), there is “ordinary” or “common” cuisine (cuisine bourgeose) and, of course, haute cuisine, the ancestors of which were the cooks of the French kings. The division, however, is very arbitrary - dishes easily “migrate” from one category to another. Thus, the famous Marseille bouillabaisse has gone from an unpretentious dish of fishermen to a masterpiece culinary arts. And, of course, there are features that are typical for any version of French cuisine. One of them is sauces.
For me, sauce is the quintessence of French cuisine. This is not just an addition to food, it is an elegant touch, a final flourish that turns good dish into a true masterpiece. A properly prepared sauce is designed to emphasize, highlight, but in no case change the taste of the food! There is a saying: “An architect hides his mistakes under ivy, a doctor hides his mistakes in the ground, and a cook hides his mistakes in sauce” (attributed to Bernard Shaw). There is some truth in it, but it’s just some truth – no sauce can make a bad dish good, but "average" can significantly improve. About attempts to disguise it as spicy sauce I don’t even say “second-fresh sturgeon” - there’s no place for that in a decent kitchen! Served with various sauces familiar dish begins to play with new shades of taste and aroma. But looking for the unusual in the familiar is so exciting!
The sauce has another important role. Beautiful design dishes are an indispensable component of French cuisine, and sauces play into the chef’s hands. If the sauce is served separately, then an elegant gravy boat will add the right note to the serving. Do we often use gravy boats that are in our sets, inherited from our mothers and grandmothers? I'm afraid that many people ignore this serving item - and completely in vain!
If the dish is served with sauce, then the scope for the culinary imagination is even wider. French chefs manage to create real pictures on a plate, “revitalizing” appearance dishes with bright spots of colorful sauces. Sometimes such beauty is even a pity...
How many sauces does French cuisine know? There is no answer to this question - after all, new ones appear every day. The French statesman Talleyrand is credited with the following words: “In England there are 360 religions and 3 sauces, and in France there are 3 religions and 360 sauces.” However, some claim that the British said this. But what difference does it make if the meaning is clear - there are a lot of sauces in France, much more than 360. Experts count about 3000. It is impossible to talk about them all, but here the history of French cuisine comes to our aid.
In the 18th century, France became a trendsetter in culinary fashion and consolidated its position in the next century. Not only European royal courts, but also more or less rich and noble people strive to have a French chef. It was during those times that “classical” French cuisine was born, and sauces took their rightful place in it. An important role in the classification of sauces was played by the “king of cooks and cook of kings” Marie-Antoine Carême, who served under Talleyrand, Rothschild, the English king George IV and (albeit briefly) at the court of Alexander I in Russia. The traditions of Carême’s “haute” cuisine in a more modern version were continued by the no less famous Georges Auguste Escoffier, who worked in famous restaurants in Paris, Cannes, Monte Carlo and London. He published the best-selling Culinary Guide, which devotes significant space to sauces.
|
M.-A. Karem |
J.O. Escoffier |
I present to you (according to the classification of the great chefs of the past) the main sauces of French cuisine. They are also called “basic”, and Karem called them “great” or “mother”, since many others can be prepared on their basis.
Bechamel sauce (bechamel). This is probably the most famous, most versatile and not at all difficult sauce to prepare. Like all dishes with a history, Bechamel has several versions of its origin. One of them says that the sauce was invented by the court chef of Versailles, Varennes, but the dish was named after the Marquis de Bechamel.
To prepare Bechamel sauce we will need:
- ½ l milk
- 50 grams of butter
- 50 grams of flour
- Salt, white pepper, grated nutmeg to taste
Melt the butter over low heat, add flour, stirring continuously. This will be the base of the sauce, called roux in French. Remove from heat, add cold milk to the hot base, whisking until completely smooth. Put it back on low heat, cook with constant stirring until it boils and for a few more minutes. Add salt and spices.
The main difficulty, in my opinion, is to achieve complete homogeneity of the sauce. If it doesn’t work out, then you can strain it through a strainer.
"Béchamel" goes well with light meat, chicken, for lasagna, potato, vegetable and mushroom casseroles. This sauce also opens up wide scope for culinary experiments - you can add various spices, herbs and many other products to it. A wonderful sauce is obtained if you add onions fried until golden brown to the Bechamel. Grated cheese (preferably several different varieties), yolks and cream will turn “Béchamel” into “Mornay” sauce, ideal for pasta and seafood, and chopped shrimp with cream - into an exquisite “Nantua”...
Hollandaise sauce(Hollandaise) is another masterpiece of French cuisine that has nothing to do with Holland.
For Hollandaise sauce you will need:
- 2-3 yolks
- 250 grams of butter
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice (you can substitute half wine vinegar)
- Salt, pepper to taste
According to the classics, the sauce is prepared in a water bath, but you can simply beat it with a mixer (although the first method makes the sauce more tender). Beat the yolks with salt in a water bath, then gradually add butter, pour in lemon juice and add pepper. The main difficulty is that the yolks should not overheat and curl. If the sauce is too thick, you can add a little warm water. Hollandaise sauce is prepared immediately before serving and is not stored.
There is another option - using proteins, which are whipped separately and added to the finished sauce. This “Dutch” is more airy, and it can also be stored and even reheated. Hollandaise sauce goes well with vegetables (especially asparagus), fish and seafood, and eggs (like the famous eggs Benedict).
There are many variations on the theme of Hollandaise sauce. If we add shallots and tarragon to it, we get a wonderful “Béarnaise”, ideal for steak, and Dijon mustard will turn it, accordingly, into “Dijon”. Mayonnaise, by the way, is also a relative of Hollandaise sauce. There is a legend that the well-known mayonnaise was born on the island of Menorca, where during the siege a French chef ran out of butter and came up with a sauce based on olive oil. Homemade mayonnaise is a wonderful sauce, high in calories, of course, but very tasty... You can also prepare “Tartare” by adding herbs, pickled gherkins, capers and mustard to mayonnaise, or “Remoulade” - with herbs, capers, spices and anchovies. These sauces are very good for seafood, vegetables and meat.
Veloute sauce (velouté) has been known since the middle of the 16th century and exists in several varieties - depending on the broth - the base. The broth (weak and light!) can be made from veal, chicken and fish, and it is thickened with the same roux base that we mentioned in connection with Bechamel.
It is prepared in the same way as Bechamel, but instead of milk they use broth, which is added hot to the base. Very simple and very tasty, try it! IN pure form The sauce is served with poultry and fish, and can also be used as a base for soups.
On the basis of "Veloute" you can prepare many of the most various sauces. The most famous of them is perhaps “German” (allemande). Interestingly, during the First World War, the patriotic French abandoned this name (but not the sauce itself!) The sauce is prepared by adding yolk, cream and lemon juice to Veloute. White wine, shallots and butter are often added to fish Veloute, while cream and fried mushrooms are added to chicken Veloute. Try experimenting with different herbs and spices - I'm sure you'll find your own!
"Spanish" sauce (Espagnole) is a member of the family of dark, or brown, sauces. It features a strong, dark broth that is made from veal, beef and bones, and a base of butter and flour that is fried until brown. According to legend (this sauce also has one), its author was a Spanish cook who came to France with Anne of Austria.
To prepare Espanol you need:
- 1 liter strong broth
- 50 grams of butter
- 50 grams of flour
- Salt, pepper to taste
- Tomato paste or tomato puree – 1-2 tablespoons
Add flour to melted butter and fry until brown with continuous stirring. Mix with tomato paste, add warm broth, and cook for at least 4 hours over low heat. The sauce should not boil and, of course, burn. Sauteed onions, carrots and celery, various spices and herbs are often added to this sauce.
Preparing “Spanish” sauce is a long and troublesome process, but you can make it in large quantities and then freeze it, which does not affect the taste at all.
This sauce is rarely used in its pure form, and others are created based on it. You can search for your options by trying different combinations of spices, herbs and spicy vegetables by adding red or white wine, bacon or mushrooms. Or you can turn to numerous recipes - Okhotnichy, Peregue, Robert, Lyon... These sauces are perfect for meat dishes.
And finally tomato sauce, which for some reason I want to attribute to Italian or Latin American cuisine. But it became one of the main sauces with light hand Escoffier at the beginning of the 20th century and became an integral part national cuisine France. You can, of course, buy tomato sauce in a store - fortunately, the range of modern supermarkets allows this. Or you can cook it yourself, which is what I’ve been trying to do lately. The technology for its preparation is not at all complicated, it just takes time, so I make it “on an industrial scale” and store it in sealed jars in a cool place.
Basic tomato sauce is simply reduced puree of fresh and ripe tomatoes with the addition of olive oil, salt, garlic and other spices. By the way, it is better to add spices (except those that can be crushed) to the sauce in a bag towards the end of cooking. What's good about tomato sauce? First of all, there is room for creativity - it goes perfectly with greens and herbs (try Provençal!), with vegetables, olives, mushrooms and cheese... Adding chopped meat, we will get the classic "Bolognese", and with cream the sauce will turn into a delicate tomato-creamy... This sauce and its derivatives are indispensable for pasta, pizza, dishes made from potatoes and other vegetables, meat (especially chopped), fish and seafood.
Of course, “mother” sauces and even those based on them do not exhaust the richness of this page of French cuisine. There are whole families wine sauces and sweet sauces, as well as salad dressings(the most famous of them is “Vinaigrette”). But, as they say, you cannot embrace the immensity...
I confess that for a long time sauces remained a “closed secret” for me. It seemed to me that it took too long to cook them, it was difficult, and in general, you could do just fine without them. But once I started, I can’t imagine how I managed without these elegant culinary additions that so diversify the usual cuisine. How interesting it is to experiment with ingredients, creating your own signature sauces! One of the great French chefs (either Brillat-Savarin, or Dumas the Father) is credited with the statement that it is impossible to learn how to make sauces - you need to be born with this talent. With all due respect, I disagree! There would be a desire.
How do you feel about sauces? Is it common to cook them in your home?
Svetlana branch , especially for Etoya.ru
Photo: mebelramka.ru, msk.lookmart.ru, luzana.ru, ru-gold.ru, azurworld-rossia.ru, vkysnoemenu.com, turist-mira.ru, abc8.ru, discoveric.ru, sharemykitchen.com, amasauce.fr, simplyrecipes.com, videojug.com, fr.wikipedia.org, kitsapcuisine.com, marsupialkitchen.com, escoffierathome.com, recettesduchef.fr, recettessimples.fr, ediblecommunities.com
It is firmly ingrained in the heads of book lovers that D’Artagnan loved Angevin wine, and Pontius Pilate loved Falernian wine. James Bond loved bechamel sauce, and Chichikov ate brains and peas in a tavern. To describe is not to cook, the pages of novels are full of unusual dishes. Especially good for science fiction writers. You need to feed the heroes on an alien planet - once, and there will be edible glowing moss there. Sometimes writers “revive” forgotten dishes, sometimes they find real, but exotic ones. And it happens that someone brings to life the food of your favorite characters, which did not exist before. So let's make up sample menu literary restaurant.
1. Cream “Margot”
Remember how Ostap Bender consoled Kisa Vorobyaninov: “We will wear cambric foot wraps and eat Margot cream.” But does this cream really exist? In the era of Ilf and Petrov they did not do this. But there was Margot ice cream from the popular cookbook by Fanny Merry Farmer. The recipe went like this:
“Fill a champagne glass with vanilla ice cream. Top it with whipped cream, sweetened with pistachio syrup, which gives it a subtle greenish tint. Garnish the ice cream with pistachios and Malaga grapes, cut in half.” Since on English language ice cream - ice–cream, Ostap Bender was not much mistaken. However, today you can find on the Internet a lot of recipes and the cream glorified in the novel.
2. Bertie Botts jelly beans
The world of Harry Potter is full of memorable dishes. Wizards love firewhiskey and butterbeer, kids love Fortescue's ice cream, jumping chocolate frogs and, of course, Bertie Bott's jelly beans. Harry Potter tries it for the first time on the train, on the way to Hogwarts School of Wizardry.
“You better be careful,” Ron advised, noticing that Harry had picked up a packet of jelly beans. - It says there that they have very different tastes, so this is the true truth. No, there are quite normal tastes - orange, say, or chocolate, or mint, but sometimes you come across spinach, or kidneys, or tripe. George claims that he once came across a piece of candy that tasted like snot.”
Today you can freely buy multi-colored Bertie Botts, although without too radical tastes. And I drank butterbeer in Lviv at the Harry Potter cafe. Tasty!
3. Stew from the Sister Islands
George Martin in his series of novels “A Song of Ice and Fire” deliciously described the cuisine of the inhabitants of Westeros. In response to requests from fans of the saga, a gastronomic guide to the world of Game of Thrones was published. Many dishes are based on real recipes from medieval cuisine, and it is proposed to replace dragon eggs or camel meat with available ingredients. The book includes wild ox baked with leeks, locusts with spicy honey, Black Castle salad, frozen blueberries with Bastard cream... Here, for example, is a stew from the Sister Islands:
“The beer was brown, the bread was dark, the stew was the color of cream. She served it in a pot made from a hollowed-out stale log. The broth was rich, with leeks, carrots, barley and turnips of two colors: white and yellow, and in this stew generously seasoned with cream and butter you could taste the shellfish and cod, and crab meat. It was food that warmed you to the very bones - just what the soul asked for on a rainy, cold evening.”
4. Moose lips in sweetened vinegar
In Vladimir Korotkevich’s “Dzikim Palyavanni of Karal Stakh,” the intelligent Andrei Beloretsky comes to visit Pan Dubotovka and finds himself at a riotous noble feast.
“What about geta?” - I’m experiencing, hanging around the videls at the wrong place for the talers.
You are my kahanenki, geta lasinya lips ў padsalodzhanym vatsatse. Eat, brother, be quiet. Geta strava for volataŞ. Our products, the land of their fluff, were not bad. Yesh, abavyazkova ikh esh.”
Whether such a dish - moose lips in sweetened vinegar - was real, opinions were divided. But it went to wander through historical literature, decorating the tables of noble heroes. The delicacy, by the way, is still real, although it is usually prepared differently.
5. Kurdelny cream
During one of his trips, Stanislaw Lem's hero, astronaut Ijon Tikhy, ends up on the planet Entevropia, where the basis of civilization is some Sepulki.
“I tried in vain to understand what it could be; Finally, around midnight, refreshing myself with curdel cream in a bar on the eightieth floor of a department store, I heard the hit “Ah, Tiny Sepulka” performed by an Ardritan singer.
What are sepulki, Iyon and we will never know. And curdled cream hints at another stronghold of Enteropia civilization - curdled cream. “Since this animal, in the process of evolution, adapted to meteorite fallout by growing an impenetrable shell, the curdl is hunted from the inside. To hunt Kurdel you need: a) at the introductory stage - primer paste, mushroom sauce, green onion, juice and pepper; b) at the decisive stage - a rice panicle, a time bomb." The hunter coats himself with paste and sauce, the curdle swallows it... Next is a matter of technique: install a bomb and use pepper to induce vomiting in the animal. The mentioned kurdel cream indicates that the natives not only live in kurdels and eat them, but also receive milk from them.
6. Leeches made from chocolate dough
The hero of Volkov's children's book "Oorfene Deuce and His Wooden Soldiers" decided to take the place of his deceased owner, the evil sorceress Gingema. However, an evil wizard is supposed to eat mice and leeches. To confirm his authority, Urfin plans to deceive.
“The courtiers shook when they saw what the cook brought. On one dish there was a pile of smoked mice with screw tails, on the other there were black slippery leeches...
In the deathly silence of those present, Oorfene ate several smoked mice, and then brought a leech to his lips and it began to wriggle in his fingers.
But how surprised the viewers of this unusual picture would be if they learned a secret known only to the king and the cook. The magic food was a clever counterfeit. The mice were made from tender rabbit meat. Baluol baked leeches from sweets chocolate dough, and the dexterous fingers of Oorfene Deuce made them squirm.”
7. Lebmas
Remember how Tolkien’s hobbits were helped out by the elven bread received from the beautiful Galadriel on the road to Mordor? This bread is called lembas and is specially designed for long journeys. It is light, does not become stale, does not lose its qualities, but quickly replenishes strength. Thin cakes, crumbly, light brown on the outside and creamy on the inside, are stored wrapped in mallorn leaves. A small piece Lembas is enough for the whole day. The recipe is strictly guarded by the elves. Tolkien fans even calculated the calorie content of lembas: one flatbread should contain 2,638 calories.
8. Herakliophorbia-4
The eccentric scientists from H.G. Wells' novel "Food of the Gods" come up with a substance that can accelerate the growth of a living creature. It is called “Heracliophorbia-4”, or “Food of the Gods”. Alas, the miracle powder, which was tried to replace food or be used as a supplement, brings innumerable disasters. At first, experimental chickens and wasps, worms and rats who accidentally got to the powder turn into monsters and terrorize people. Then the people who have grown into giants go crazy and start behaving aggressively. In general, the author honestly warned humanity against all kinds of food additives.