Russian New Year is a mixture of Christmas, Fourth of July and Thanksgiving: Americans about us - ForumDaily
The article has been automatically translated into English by Google Translate from Russian and has not been edited.
Переклад цього матеріалу українською мовою з російської було автоматично здійснено сервісом Google Translate, без подальшого редагування тексту.
Bu məqalə Google Translate servisi vasitəsi ilə avtomatik olaraq rus dilindən azərbaycan dilinə tərcümə olunmuşdur. Bundan sonra mətn redaktə edilməmişdir.

Russian New Year is a mixture of Christmas, Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day: Americans about us

Even far from Russia, it is impossible to celebrate New Year without a grand bowl of Russian salad, which in Russia is a modern national dish. It is believed that such nourishing dishes like Russian salad, salmon and lard, as well as traditional black bread, protect the stomach from the alcoholic effects of vodka, the New York Times writes.

Фото: Depositphotos

Many cooks say that their passion for cooking has been shaped in the kitchens of their mothers. Often due to the fact that mom's food was very tasty, and sometimes because it was disgusting, writes Julia Moskin for Inosmi.ru.

For chef Bonnie Frumkin-Morales (Bonnie Frumkin Morales) is much more complicated.

“Homemade food has always embarrassed me,” says Ms. Morales, chef and co-owner of the popular Kachka and Kachinka restaurants located here in Portland, where she rethinks the Russian-Soviet homemade food she grew up with. Cooking “with soul”, a sense of nostalgia, skill and delicacy, she inhales new life into such products as smoked fish, pickled cherries, wild mushrooms, cottage cheese and black “Borodino” bread.

Before, when Bonnie Morales was younger, this whole idea would have seemed ridiculous to her. In 1990, when she grew up in a Chicago suburb with her parents who had recently emigrated from the Soviet Union, it seemed to her that everyone else was eating only American food — chicken nuggets, frozen pizza, steaks.

And in the basement of her house there was sauerkraut beside endless rows of cans of canned fruits and vegetables. At dinner, they ate fish that were specifically smelling and porridge, as well as snacks from “past life” —for example, jelly from calf legs and salted red caviar. The kitchen often had “gifts of nature” in abundance - berries and mushrooms, which her parents believed should be collected in the forest, and sometimes in the neighborhood.

In college, she finally had the courage to invite friends for dinner, seducing them with the promise that vodka would be poured.

“I told them that the food would be very unusual, and before they come, they probably need to eat,” she says. - They agreed".

Although 37-year-old Bonnie Morales was born and raised in the USA, her parents, Slava and Lyuba Frumkina, lived most of their lives in Belarus (then the Byelorussian SSR). Like many who emigrated from the former USSR, they say “Russia”, telling where they come from, instead of the name of this place (which is rather difficult to understand).

They brought with them and still continue to observe the centuries-old traditions of Russian cooking and food culture - embellished with some Soviet "delights". And, as was customary in Soviet times, they celebrate the New Year by arranging a feast that overshadows any other holiday of the year.

Every time before the Frumkins are going to celebrate, the women put a lot of snacks on the table, so that before dinner — while everyone is talking and making toasts — which can take more than one hour — people are not hungry or drunk.

At a recent New Year's Eve party in the Portland suburb of Happy Valley, Ms. Frumkin and her daughter-in-law Asya Rokhkind piled plates of appetizers all over the table, leaving not an inch of free space on it. There they also placed a giant round dish of deviled eggs, arranged in such a way that it all resembled a kaleidoscopic Busby Berkeley dance. (One section of Ms. Morales’s 2017 cookbook, Kachka: A Return to Russian Cuisine, is called “How to Fit More Dishes on Your Table.” It shows how to make the most of your table space.)

Mrs. Frumkina slowly put on the table black sturgeon caviar and red caviar of salmon fishes, three types of fish - salted, pickled and smoked. Homemade pickled green tomatoes, pickled apples, red pepper and quince. Eggplant salads, beets with potatoes, mushrooms and cucumbers. Stuffed eggs and cabbage, and eggplant rolls. Chopped beef tongue, veal leg chole and chop.

“The Russians have never lost all these skills in procuring food for the winter,” says Morales. And, given the constant shortage of food, for them it was not some kind of whim, an occupation for the pleasure of taking hands - they needed this food in order to survive. ”

Фото: Depositphotos

Representatives of the Frumkin family lived in Belarus from generation to generation, and they could not avoid the upheavals of the 20th century. Frumkin's mother, the only one in the family who survived the Nazi occupation, ran out of the ghetto in her city in 1941 and went on foot for several months, reaching the territory of Ukraine, where she joined the resistance forces. When she got to one of the settlements, the sentry called her, and she managed to get through only because she knew how to be duck in Ukrainian - “pitching”.

“It proves that miracles happen,” says Frumkin, pronouncing the first of many toasts for his mother, who was still alive and lived in Minsk, when her descendants left in 1980 for good. He and Anyone and their son Simon, who was then six years old, like many Jewish families, left the Soviet Union after the emigration rules became less stringent in the 1970s. When they arrived in Chicago, they continued to speak Russian at home, so Bonnie Morales speaks this language fluently - and also knows Russian cuisine well.

Now the whole family, as well as a new generation - grandchildren (who were eagerly waiting for chocolate sausage to be served, a confection like truffles that look like salami) live in the Portland area.

But in a sense, the Frumkins remain Russian, and the New Year's Eve for them is still the biggest holiday of the year - it is Christmas, July Fourth and Thanksgiving combined.

The reasons for this are related to the events of the first years after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, when the vast possessions of the Russian Orthodox Church were nationalized, religious instruction was outlawed, and belief in a miracle was officially banned.

Approximately ten years later, the Soviet government banned the celebration of Christmas (December 25 was declared a public holiday - "Day of Industrialization", which should be celebrated going to work). New Year's Eve was announced as an official holiday, which was celebrated at midnight with concerts and fireworks approved “at the top”. Gradually, the Christmas traditions, such as Christmas trees, gifts and sweets, including Santa's non-religious incarnation Santa Claus, who distributes gifts with his granddaughter Snow Maiden, quietly penetrated the New Year celebration.

Today, the celebration of the New Year is a family dinner, which lasts until the morning of January 1 and is accompanied by a many-hour television gala concert with the participation of Russian pop stars, glitter, fireworks and an address to the people of President Vladimir Putin.

On New Year's Eve, snacks should not end until midnight when hot dishes are finally served - such luxurious ones as stewed ribs, Georgian chicken tobacco (fried in a pan with lots of garlic and flattened under the press, like chicken under a brick), mushrooms with potatoes cooked in large quantities of sour cream.

When 47-year-old opera singer Anna Netrebko grew up in the Russian city of Krasnodar, in celebration of the New Year, she said, there were all the attributes of Christmas that are not related to religion - Christmas tree, gifts and family feast.

“By that time, Christmas and the church were no longer forbidden,” she says. “But it was no longer part of our tradition.”

At the annual New Year's party at home in Manhattan, she traditionally makes the whole table snacks. (However, this year, on New Year's Eve, she will perform the main part in the Metropolitan Opera at the gala premiere of the new production of the opera Adriana Lecouvreur).

Фото: Depositphotos

Even far from Russia, according to her, it is impossible to meet the New Year without a grand bowl of Russian salad (a complex mixture of chicken and vegetables, dressed with mayonnaise), which in Russia is a modern national dish. Boiled chicken meat is mixed with diced potatoes, pickles, eggs, carrots and everything that is provided for by family traditions (in tsarist times for the rich they were crayfish and caviar, and in Soviet times for all - sausage and canned peas). If the salad is cooked well and served fresh, like at the Frumkin's house, this is an amazingly tasty dish.

“Without Olivier,” says Netrebko, “there is no Russian feast.” It is believed that such nourishing dishes, such as salad olivier, salmon and lard (pork fat), as well as the traditional thick, black bread, protect the stomach from alcohol and astringent effects of vodka, which is usually served with snacks.

At the same time, vodka is considered a good medicine, says Anna Netrebko, confirming universal conviction. According to her, “she kills microbes during the Russian winter,” when people are forced to stay indoors because of the cold weather.

Although while making toasts, people traditionally drink vodka, now champagne and cognac are also popular in Russia, which are new sources of pleasure, symbolizing "status" consumption.

“In Soviet times, everyone drank vodka — sometimes too much vodka — but only the elite could get French brandy and champagne,” says Israel Morales, husband of Bonnie Morales, and the father of their two sons, nine-year-old Isaac.

Mr. Morales is not from Russia (his ancestors came from Latin America, and he grew up in Kansas City, Kansas). But he fully absorbed the Russian culture of food and entertainment, and with his wife Morales is engaged in restaurants.

According to Bonnie Morales, he was the first “outsider” who was not confused by food in her family, but delighted. “After he came over for dinner the first time, we walked out and he said, 'What the hell was that?' This dinner was one of the best of my life."

Then they both graduated from culinary school and worked in Tru, one of the most ambitious restaurants in Chicago. It was his admiration that prompted her to open “Kachka” over time, where she cooks a little more elegant versions of her mother’s dishes and traditional dishes in such far-flung lands as Georgia, Uzbekistan and Siberia. On New Year's Eve in the restaurant “Kachka” there are more than ever many visitors, and it is here that the holiday is celebrated by her family - while her father dresses up as Santa Claus.

“This is a wonderful food that is a legacy of a high level civilization - even if it is not taught in a culinary school,” she says.

She is especially proud of the unusual hand-made ravioli that are cooked in her restaurant, including intricately made dumplings with canned cherries or cottage cheese, and large dumplings stuffed with meat and greens.
Israel Morales says that his first Russian New Year began after he and Bonnie worked their holiday shift at the Tru restaurant in Chicago.

“When we left the restaurant, it was already an hour and a half night, and we had to go in a blizzard from the city of 145 to the north, and when we got there, we didn’t even have the main course on the table,” he says. - And then I realized that dinner for these people has a completely different meaning. They just love to sit at the table. ”

Read also on ForumDaily:

Why is it advantageous to celebrate New Year in America, but not Christmas?

Lukashenka gave Putin a new present for the New Year

Twenty best New Year movies for adults and children

The most luxurious showcases in New York, which can be viewed after Christmas

Scientists explain why so many couples get engaged to Christmas and New Year

Turkey and Macaroni with Strawberries: How will the Christmas and New Year's Day be held by astronauts

20 language errors that will be issued abroad

Miscellanea New Year Our people Russian Americans Russians in the USA
Subscribe to ForumDaily on Google News

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis. 



 
1086 requests in 1,130 seconds.