Posted: 2004-10-22 22:08:00
Ladies and gentlemen’s!
Caviar to anyone?
Caviar from Caspian Sea has been always welcomed at Royal tables; -luxurious dinners, coronation festivities and victory celebrations. How about intimate breakfast with caviar in bed, or cocktail parties with caviar. The black caviar (the eggs) from Beluga, Sevruga, and Osetra fish that lives in Caspian Sea from pre-historic times is one of the most expansive sea products in the world. This caviar is known as Royal caviar.
Russian blintzes with black caviar and sour cream is a delicacy always accompanied with shuts of chilled Russian Vodka. How many shuts of vodka can we drink with this?
Royal appetizer? Red caviar from Salmon is also a delicacy and can be served as well as black caviar on top of Russian blintzes with a sour cream.
Siberian pelmeni- small dumplings with meat fillings are also very delicious dish. Pelmeni usually served steaming hot with a sour cream, a black paper and vinegar to the taste. This is traditional dish from northern regions of Russia; I love with a lot of sour cream and a vinegar-unbelievably delicious. Pelmeni made in quantities by hundreds and even thousands, they are laid in floured boards, carried outside to the freeze and stored in big packets.
Vareniki-also dumplings ,but larger in size and filled usually with potatos,meat,mushrooms and cabbage;-served hot with sour cream.
Vareniki and pelmeni can be served as appetizer or as the second dish.
Shashlik or shish kebab -very tender, and succulent traditional grilled meat form Southern parts of Russia. Usually large cubes of lamb or beef marinated first with a lot of onions and black paper, stored over night and later grilled with onions, fresh tomatoes and eggplant.Shashlik can be served with a rice on the side or vegetables,and very good to flush with a good brand of Georgian vine.
Posted: 2005-05-10 16:19:00
hiii rangu,
i really happy to see the collections and it was made possible by you only else i dont have patience to search such a huge data base.
cheers
ravi
Posted: 2005-05-12 11:08:00
I agree that one of the joys of travelling is trying out the local food!
Thailand - almost everything! Not to keen on the crickets i had or the other insects much to my Thai friends amusement. I even had dog when staying in a Hmong Village (sorry animal lovers - i was once vegetarian too!)
Zimbabwe - one of my students cooked me mopame (sp?) worms. These are grub that are dried out then cooked up with a sauce.
Nigeria - suya, eba, egusi
Nepal - the biggest doza i have ever seen in a small place near Durbar Square. I especially enjoyed all of the home cooking of my friends mums and dads who took great pleasure in making such a huge variety of dishes for me to try. Wonderful!
Nepal/ Tibet - Momos - love them!
And being a good Brit i love our national dish - curry!!!!
Did any one as ever drank fermented Horse milk???#
It is a speciality in Mongolia, it is Daraig.
Well you have to drink it even you don' t like it, so your host will not be offended. (between you and me, it is worth to taste, but that's all!)
See you
Isabelle
--- "It is far more better to have seen it once than to have heard about it a thousand time." Mongolian proverb
Posted: 2006-01-23 13:10:00
Hi Boris
Pelmeni are a happy memeory for me. In 1992 in Kemerovo Western Siberia we were invited to dinner in a Russian home. Three meats blended together (I think beef lamb and pork) were the delicious filling of the dumplings. Fruit compote made by the Mother of the family herself was another specialty of the meal.
Also at that time, at the Sonnesovo (Moscow suburb)headquarters of Mc. Donalds we tasted a prototype of a mass produced pelmeni intended for sale in the Mc Donald restaurant at Pushkin square. It was very good too!!
I never learned afterwards whether the product was launched.
I prefer pelmeni to caviar (not very sophisticated i fear)
Do not forget to add in the list other less known “delicatessens” that I have seen to sale during my journeys, but not of them tasted.
(Please, stop reading if you are scrupulous!):
1 - Ants from Bucaramanga (Colombia). They are served in a box covered with chocolate and it is considered a good gift for a girl. Some eat them alive (I tried them fried in the Colombian Amazonas. The taste is like the Spanish jamon). You only eat the body, not the head and the antennas. These ants are enormous!
2 - Balut from Phillippines: this is a giant egg containing the fetus of the hen. Young boys sell them in a bucket for a few pesos in the streets of Plaza La Luneta, Manila, during the nights, shouting: Balut, balut…!!! First you drink the juice, and then eat the wings and body of the chicken. They say that it is aphrodisiac.
3 - Snakes blood and brains of monkeys in the streets of Taipei: The monkey is alive; you choose one, then the seller takes a hammer and hit the head of the poor monkey, taking out the brains that are served to you immediately in a plate. It is cruel and should be forbideen. The snakes are hanged, also alive, and when you select one of them, they take off the skin, then cut the head, pour the blood in a glass that the customer drinks, still hot, and a few minutes later he eats the meat of the snake cut in small pieces with the help of his chopsticks.
4 - North Korean dogs. This is a very common dish not only in both Koreas, but in China, Taiwan and Philippines. They are served and cooked like the pigs and are eaten with the hands.
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Please, do not hate me for this list. I know many more local exotic dishes, mainly in Africa, but for today is enough. Gastronomy is also culture and, I repeat, I have not tasted all the above mentioned products, only the Bucaramanga ants and some others insects and repellent beasts in Central America and Africa. Have you been in the Carnivore restaurant in Nairobi… it is an experience of a lifetime!
Buen apetito!
(Now, after writing this, I think that I am going to take some bicarbonate).
--- Bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum.
Posted: 2006-04-14 08:52:00
I was starting to get hungry reading all these yummy post's until I came to Jorge's. Then I lost my appetite so I think I will now go and get a bucket....
