Peasant Cuisine: Eat like a Peasant to live like a Lord, Series #1
Live to One Hundred and One – Eat like a Peasant to live like a Lord.
Eat like a peasant in Sardinia, Russia or Japan, people who are the healthiest around the world.
What is peasant cuisine? One definition is those dishes specific to a particular culture made from accessible and inexpensive ingredients. Focusing on ‘living only off what you can grow’, the traditional peasant diet was therefore predominantly plant-based, with wholegrains (rice, barley, oats, rye) and vegetables such as potatoes being the main source of nutrition, and legumes providing the primary source of protein.
My first foray into this subject is food from Russia and Ukraine. I want to start with a traditional Russian appetizer called zakushi. The plural form of the word for appetizers is zakuski, which loosely translates as “little bites” and they are meant to soften the effects of the iced vodka or other strong potables they are served with.
The selection can be simple or it can be a real spread of salads and small plates and the tradition dates back to the czars’ tables of the 18th century. These Russian hors d’oeuvres were often served to standing guests outside the main dining room, usually buffet style or passed by waiters.
Zakuski are often described as Russia’s answer to tapas. Zakuski are often described as Russia’s answer to tapas — a little bite to have with your drink. Traditionally, when you welcome guests in from the cold (whether from the Moscow streets, or from the hundreds of miles it takes to travel to a country estate), you give them a warming shot of vodka. And to protect your stomach and palate from the harsh vodka, you quickly follow it with a bite of zakuski.
Drink vodka, eat pickles, repeat. Here is an interesting article
Salads, caviars, mushrooms, as well as various kinds of vodkas were standards . While this remains unchanged, a more modern approach is take some hearty dark sour rye bread (much more on that later), add some a mix of purchased smoked fish, caviar, hard cheeses and salamis, and a homemade bean salad, eggplant caviar, brined mushrooms, beets, tomatoes, watermelon, and bread or pastry pockets filled with meat, potato or cabbage.
This website has a nice list of some of them.
But you say, this is about peasant food, not kings.
(more…)