Was Gogol a Mogul? It turns out not. But on the other hand, he discovered extensive knowledge in Ukrainian and Russian cuisine
The names of "historical" dishes often include the names of great people who had nothing to do with their creation. It got ridiculous: Pompadour cutlets, Richelieu chickens, Radziwill pike perch, Metternich pies, Consomme Nelson. And if we take the times not so distant, then to the point of anecdotal - Suvorov-style meat has nothing to do with the generalissimo, it's just that the restaurant of the Moscow House of Journalists is located on Suvorovsky Boulevard, hence the name of the dish. Or cutlets "Volley of Aurora" - a variant of the cutlet in Kiev (which, in turn, comes from the cutlet de voly), when you press it with a fork, a trickle of oil should squirt out of the breaded cutlet. By the way, in Perm, a dish with a similar effect, something in between a pie and a dumpling, is called “posykunchik” without any historical troubles.
There is often a romantic story behind the name of the dish. The great French chef Escoffier specially created a dessert and named it in honor of the Australian diva, who performed under the pseudonym Melba, the famous dessert “peach melba”. And the dessert “crepe suzette”, so beloved by the French, is the thinnest pancakes that are flambéed at your table on a mixture of Cointreau and Grand Marnier, reminiscent of the actress Comédie Francaise, who for several years had to eat pancakes almost every evening in one of the performances, depicting the incredible pleasure. The owner of a nearby restaurant, out of sympathy for her, came up with a dessert and named her after her.
However, there are many dishes whose names are their real inventors: bechamel sauce (diplomat Marquis de Bechamel), subiz sauce (Princess de Subise), beef stroganoff (Count Stroganov, but in fact his serf chef Ivan Shutov), Guryev porridge (Count Guryev), Morois salad (writer Andre Maurois).
Recipe from the cantor
Nikolai Gogol could become an artist-cook, Konstantin Aksakov believed
After all this, it is tempting to put the eggnog, familiar from childhood, in a number of culinary "historicisms". But it was not there! Nothing to do with Nikolai Vasilyevich. Would he be pleased if he knew that the authorship belongs to the cantor of the synagogue named Gogel, who almost lost his job due to the loss of his voice? So he came up with a recipe for a dish (and not a dessert at all), which helped him regain his voice: “take an egg cheese and cock it in a mug, crumble bread, salt and shake.” And since he was from Mogilev, or there was a synagogue there, - and it turned out to be an eggnog. Or, for the writer's peace of mind, gogel-mogel, as it used to be called.
However, in fairness, let's pay tribute to the gastronomic writer and agree with the opinion of Aksakov, who wrote: "If fate had not made Gogol a great poet, he would certainly have been an artist-cook." Like Alexandre Dumas, perhaps we will add from ourselves. Although Dumas' heroes, with rare exceptions, do not reveal their culinary tastes, and references to dishes are not so often found on the pages of his books, read to holes in childhood. And this is from the encyclopedist of French cuisine, who has no equal and never had among writers. Maybe that's why Dumas collected in the main book of his life, the "Great Culinary Dictionary", all the information that the heroes of his novels were supposed to be carriers of. But they did not, according to the internal decision of the writer, who most likely feared that lengthy descriptions of feasts, dialogues about the history of a particular dish, disputes about the taste advantages of different regions, etc. break the rhythm and plot of the presentation and take his books beyond the genre. With Nikolai Vasilyevich, everything is exactly the opposite. The very description of the food is so bold and detailed that it not only serves as an additional characteristic of the character, but creates, if not the action itself, then its solid foundation.
healing food
To begin with, let us recall the “Old World Landowners”, Pulcheria Ivanovna Tovstogubikha and Afanasy Ivanovich Tovstogub, dear from the school bench.
“The economy of Pulcheria Ivanovna consisted in the incessant unlocking and locking of the pantry, in salting, drying, boiling countless fruits and plants.”
“We sat down to dinner at twelve o’clock. In addition to dishes and gravy boats, there were a lot of pots with smeared lids on the table so that some appetizing product of old delicious cuisine could not run out of steam. But even before dinner, Afanasy Ivanovich had time to taste shortcakes with bacon, seizing an aperitif glass of vodka with "fungi, various dried fish and other things." For dessert, he ate watermelon, and after a couple of hours - dumplings with cherries, jelly, sour milk, "thin uzvara with dried pears." They ate slowly, measuredly, without being distracted. "At dinner, there was usually a conversation about subjects closest to dinner."
The house of Pulcheria Ivanovna "was completely similar to a chemical laboratory." Home-made vodkas infused “for trees and sage”, “for peach pits”, and each of them is also a cure for a host of diseases. What about a bite? Please! Mushrooms with thyme, with cloves, with walnuts, "with currant leaves and nutmeg". The text contains almost complete technological maps, or, more simply, cooking recipes.
“Here are the pies! Those are cheese pies! it's with urda! and here are those that Afanasy Ivanovich loves very much, with cabbage and buckwheat porridge.
Pundiki and curlers
Unlike the old-world landowners, who treated food with reverence and tenderness, Taras Bulba (well, why not a gastronomic surname!) Does not like pickles. This is what Taras shouts to his zhinka: “Don’t need donuts, honey cakes and other pundiks, bring us all the sheep, goat, come on, forty-year-old honeys! Yes, pure foamy gorilka to play and hiss like crazy. It was here that the national flavor manifested itself. If everything is clear with the urda, with which Pulcheria Ivanovna stuffed the pies - this is a type of brynza, fresh sheep's cheese, then we had to tinker with the pundiks. They turned out to be cookies that looked like dry poppy seed cakes. Perhaps the word comes from the English "pudding", but this is just a guess. Medovniki turned out to be a rather banal cake with honey. Nua, then there were also curls - a roll with nuts, and malts, two recipes for preparing which are offered to you.
Offended borscht
And what a savory and sometimes surreal characterization of Ukrainian cuisine we find in "The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich"!
“I won’t mention anything about mnishki in sour cream, or the duck that was served with borscht, or about the turkey with plums and raisins, or about that dish, which looked very much like boots soaked in kvass, or about the sauce that is the old cook's swan song - about the sauce that was served all over with a wine flame, which greatly amused and at the same time frightened the ladies. I won’t talk about these foods, because I like to eat them much more than to talk about them.”
Again gastronomic riddles. Well, it’s easier with bears - it’s something similar to cheesecakes, especially since they are in sour cream. With a duck, it's more difficult. This is a dish of giblets, or entrails, but what it looks like could not be found. You can imagine the taste, and it is undoubtedly pleasant to drink it with borscht, a duck, drink it or seize it. By the way, about borscht. The writer serves utribka to borscht, remembers donuts, but he doesn’t pour borscht for his characters. Shchi without cereals - please, soup in a saucepan from Paris - you are welcome, but the legendary borscht, the star dish of Ukrainian cuisine, which even in the West is found not only in the menu of Slavic restaurants - is not on the pages of Gogol's works. This dish was highly praised by one of the world's greatest chefs, three-star Michelin star Michel Troisgros. And it is Ukrainian, with beets, and not Kuban with cabbage and red only from tomatoes. Gavriil Derzhavin, Alexander Kuprin in The Pit, and Mikhail Bulgakov from Kiev wrote about borscht. But Nikolai Vasilievich for some reason is not. Well, God bless him, with borscht. Let's remember better "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka", when on the night before Christmas dumplings, diving into sour cream, themselves jumped into Patsyuk's mouth ...
Fusion style lunch
After "Mirgorod" (1835), the writer rarely turned to the topic of Ukrainian cuisine, but he describes Russian cuisine in detail in "Dead Souls". Shchi “from the bottom of my heart” at Manilov’s, mushrooms, pies, spinners, quick thinkers, shanishki, pancakes, cakes with all sorts of seasonings and, of course, an unleavened egg pie, most of which Chichikov immediately ate, at Korobochka. And already at Nozdrev, in modern terms, a fusion-style dinner. “It can be seen that the cook was guided more by some kind of inspiration and put the first thing that came to hand: if there was a pepper near him - he poured pepper, if cabbage came across - he popped cabbage, stuffed milk, ham, peas, - in a word, go ahead , it would be hot, but some taste, surely, will come out.
Probably, he called this work “poem" because such juicy descriptions of dinners at Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev and Sobakevich cannot be classified as prosaic, and even the failed meal with Plyushkin, who offered Chichikov spoiled rusks from Easter cake and liquor that his deceased made spouse, can be easily attributed to the genre of classical poetry. So let me disagree with Edmond Rostand, who argued that "poetry is not a couple with gastronomy ..."
Breadcrumbs with cherries Ingredients: 1.5 cups wheat crackers, 1.5 cups sugar, 1 pack (200 g) butter, 1 cup chopped almonds, 8 eggs, 1 lemon, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 cup fresh cherries without seeds (can be replaced with canned cherries, ice cream or jam). Grind crackers and sift through a sieve, beat softened butter until fluffy with sugar, egg yolks and ground almonds, add whipped proteins, grated lemon zest, cinnamon, crackers and cherries (without liquid). Gently knead the dough and put it in a baking dish covered with oiled parchment and sprinkled with breadcrumbs. Bake the cake at 200 O . Pour the finished pie with cherry syrup (cook the cherry juice with sugar over low heat until it thickens).
Apple pickles Ingredients: Flour - 150 g, cream - 120 g, butter - 100 g, sugar - 100 g, apples - 300 g, eggs - 4 pcs. Cream, pounded with sugar, butter, yolks, grated lemon zest mix well, add the sifted flour and knead the batter. Before baking, add a small amount of whipped proteins to the dough. Bake pancakes. Peel apples, finely chop, sprinkle with sugar, add butter and simmer until soft. Stuff pancakes with these apples, roll them into tubes. Place the tubes in pairs (one on top of the other) in a frying pan, pour egg whites whipped with sugar and bake in the oven.
Dumplings Mix cottage cheese, flour and eggs. Let the mass stand for 30-40 minutes, form a sausage and cut into pieces. Boil in salted water until the dumplings float to the top (about 20 minutes), let the water drain, transfer to a wide saucepan, pour over the sour cream and bake in the oven. Boiled dumplings can be fried in lard with cracklings, or simply served with sour cream.
