Russian Cuisine
Original and varied, Russian cuisine is famous for exotic soups,
cabbage schi and solyanka, which is made of assorted meats. Russians
are great lovers of pelmeni, small Siberian meat pies boiled in broth.
 Every
housewife of any experience has her own recipes for pies, pickles, and
sauerkraut. Even more varied is the choice of recipes for mushrooms,
one of the most abundant and nourishing gifts of our woods. They are
fried, pickled, salted, boiled and what not. "No dinner without bread," goes the Russian saying. Wheat loaves
have dozens of varieties. As to rye bread, Russians eat more of it than
any nation in the world--a peculiarity of the Russian diet.
As the Russian custom has it, a festive table isn't worth this name
without a bottle of vodka. Russians are traditionally hearty
drinkers:as good whiskey shall come from Scotland, and port from
Portugal, so Russian wheat vodka is the world's best. We have an
amazing variety to offer, from the clear, colorless Moskovskaya and
Stolichnaya to all kinds of bitters with herbs and spices. Of our folk soft drinks, kvass is the best-known. Made of brown bread
or malted rye flour, it goes down best on a sultry summer day. If you
add it to chopped-up meat and vegetables, you get okroshka, an
exquisite cold soup.
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