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Tatar/Russian cooking class
Today our students were treated to a cooking class at the Mirage, Kazan's first five-star hotel.
Tatar cuisine:
- Home style salad
- Azu, a Tatar beef stew, served with match-stick potatoes on the side
- Lapsha, a Tatar chicken noodle soup
- Esh poshmak (Russian: треугольники), which are meat-filled, triangular pastries
- Shak-shak, a wheat noodle desert drenched in a honey/sugar syrup
Russian cuisine:
- Pelmeni, the Russian version of ravioli
- Kotlety, ground meat patties, served with mashed potatoes on the side.
- Pirozhki, baked pastries stuffed with meat
You can see the pictures of the cooking class and commentary on my Picasa stream.
After the cooking class we had a tour of the hotel itself. The executive suites were stunning; the standard rooms decent (though smaller than I might like). Then we toured the restaurants and bars of the place. They had a lovely pool. The air in the pool room is heated to 28°C, and the water in the pool is 2°C cooler. Then there is a work-out room. They were proud to say that Julio Iglesias (and a crowd of other famous folks that I can't remember) had also stayed there.
After that we had some free time, and then we had a Jazz concert at a local museum. One busy day...
This entry was posted on August 9th, 2012 at 11:30:55 pm by Don and is filed under Food.
2 comments
More Salad, is that a seasonal thing?
Don responds: Green salads are not a major item in Russia. “Salad” often means a bunch of chopped boiled meat bound together with mayo.
I just have to comment about the modernizations in the former Soviet Union. (Even “the former Soviet Union” phrase itself seems out dated) I just can’t get over how modern things have become with consumer goods and services; things that I couldn’t dream of in 1988 would ever arrive. To see a Russian professional kitchen tricked out like Bobby Flay, to see the Russian TV’s version of “America’s Got Talent” to click into a Russian radio talk show stream and hear the casual talk you’d never hear back in Soviet days (the hosts jocularly ripping on the French stereotypes, for example). I wonder what are the reflections on the Soviet days? The 30 and younger crowd probably are greatly separated from the 40 and up. But, that’s just speculation. I don’t know.
Don responds: You are precisely correct. The under-30s have a great lack of knowledge about the Soviet period. Very soon the younger people (under-20s) won’t have a clear memory of the economic crises of the 90s. They also have an almost complete lack of fear as well, which of course is an excellent development.
