Category: "Food"

Garden produce

July 3rd, 2012

Danila's family's generosity continues: Flyura brought me produce from her garden.

In the back is a squash, which she advised me first to fry up in sunflower oil, then take some garlic, grate it on a fine grater, mix with mayonnaise, and then mix with the fried squash. In front of that is a pattypan squash. To the left are green onions, to the right garlic. To the left again is a standard Russian cucumber, very tasty fresh from the garden, eat 'em like an apple, and on the bottom is a longer low-salt pickle. Low-salt pickles are the ones that first taught me to eat pickles in Russia back in 1986. Since then I've become a pickle-holic. They also brought me some greens and a lot more of both types of pickles.

Me gusta

July 6th, 2012

This is my new favorite cafe in Kazan. It's on the first floor of GUM. I like it because the coffee is good, it's spotlessly clean, and the music isn't so loud that you can't hear each other.

In the early part of the day I come here to read. I've gotten more Russian reading done here in the last two weeks than in the previous two years. And what do I usually order? Usually I order an Americano and a cream sherbet «сливочный шербет».

What, you may ask, is a cream sherbet? It's got nothing to do with ice cream. It's a central Asian dessert, the base of which is caramelized sugar and milk. At first it tastes exactly like a Heath Bar. The white chunks are white chocolate, which somehow don't distract from the Heathiness of it. And then the littler brown bits are raisin slices. Actually, I think it would be better without the raisins, but it's still good enough for me to order over and over.

Banana chocolate cake

July 7th, 2012

Of course, you don't always have to order the same thing. Here is a tort made of layers of chocolate genoise, light chocolate mousse, and covered with a banana layer. Now that banana layer is not made with chemicals. They used real bananas, and the contrast of flavors was glorious.

It's odd. Back in AZ I almost never buy sweets. Heck, even the soda I drink is diet. Here I'm a glucose junkie.

Sour cream cake

July 7th, 2012

Here's a more typical Russian dessert, сметанник ‘sour cream cake.’ Oh, so good. And next to that is кофе три в одном ‘3-in-1 coffee,’ i.e. coffee with creamer and sugar. Lots of the instant coffee in Russia is sold that way.

Barbeque lasagne

July 7th, 2012

The closest mall to my apartment is called Кольцо ‘The Ring.’ You have no idea how weird that sentence is. When I first started coming to Russia, there was no such thing as a mall. The idea that there are now malls with food courts and movie theaters is just bizarre. Of course, these are changes for the better, but they are still so very strange.

The local mall has a food court. You are not allowed to take pictures in the mall. Here is a picture of my favorite food place there. It is called "Barbeque," which sounds so bizarre in Russian, I can hardly express it.

This place is definitely overpriced, but I still like some of the items. One of the items I like here is the lasagne. But it's an odd lasagne. First of all, it has Russian sour cream in it, which of course is superior to every American sour cream I have ever had. But there are none of the typical cheeses you might expect, like mozzarella or parmesan. And the meat is a boringly unspiced groud beef. But somehow it works. And the salad is a Greek salad.