Food with Alexey Zimin

Every funhouse has a crying wall. After intercourse, every creature is sad, and the idea of a feast contains the rebound of a hangover. The key question of Russian folk gastronomy, in essence, comes down not to the combination of organic products and noble wines, but to how to drink without consequences.

This question is absurd simply because it contradicts the nature of things: the philosophy of Bacchus and the chemistry of ethanol. Drinking is poisoning, intoxication. Like any, however, active way of understanding the world. But isn’t understanding the world the meaning of human existence?

The old alchemical tradition teaches us to treat hangovers as a reward, not a punishment. Like a defeat that is worth other victories. The abyss has its own height, and it can be seen, it all depends only on the point of observation. In the end, the Australians, if you look at them from Kemerovo, are also like flies on the ceiling, walking upside down.

All of the above, however, does not negate the fact that it is necessary and possible to fight a hangover. After all, in the struggle you will find your right, and all that. And the New Year's weeks are the best time to test the validity of this maxim.

Everyone has their own method. For example, I know one person who on the morning of January 1 does this: he dresses up in a completely fresh terry robe, white as a wedding cake, makes himself a thin milk omelette (beat three eggs with a glass of milk, salt and a pinch of white pepper), takes out refrigerator, a bottle of Polish vodka, fills a glass frozen from the night before, sits in front of the TV and watches morning programs - with their characteristic presenters, hysterically cheerful recitative and bright studios. And the feelings of withdrawal shame and physical aches gradually dissolve under the influence of ice-cold vodka, hot omelet and other people's shamelessness.

Another friend of mine is celebrating the New Year at his cottage in Hereford, on the border with Wales. Hereford is famous for its beef (in British stores it is sold in special boxes with a respectful red Hereford Beef sticker), beer and cider. The daily norm of beer or cider is 4 pints per day, on weekends and holidays the norm increases to 6-8. In Hereford, unlike London, it has not yet become a widespread tradition to sell champagne in pubs instead of beer. But the classic British start to the day - with a mug of porter - has, like everywhere else, undergone a correction. This is part of a government policy that began in the days of Queen Victoria, when in order to wean the proletariat from eating porter for breakfast, lunch and dinner, emergency measures like Fife-o-Clock tea were introduced. Therefore, the tradition of knocking out a wedge with a wedge is treated delicately, like a rope in the house of a hanged man. The main anti-hangover dish is the “Welsh rabbit”. Rabbit is a funny, according to the Welsh, distortion of the English word rarebit, “toast with cheese.” The distortion here is not only linguistic. Welsh rabbit is not just toast with cheese, it is a veiled morning trip to a pub, where beer is both present and not at the same time.

This is how he prepares. The white baguette is cut into thin slices, the slices are greased with butter on both sides and sent to the oven, preheated to 200 degrees, for 3-4 minutes.

During this time, the sauce is prepared in a frying pan. A tablespoon of wheat flour is fried with constant stirring in butter until golden caramel. This is how the thickener is prepared - the French call it "roux". Half a pint of dark beer or cider is poured into the thickener, as well as 100 ml of milk, and everything is whisked into the thickener. A tablespoon of dry mustard, a pinch of ground black pepper and grated cheddar cheese are also added there. This whole company gurgles over low heat for about a minute, after which it is removed from the stove, and when the gurgling subsides, 2 egg yolks are whisked into the sauce.

Crispy baguette slices are taken out of the oven, doused with sauce and eaten. My friend watches BBC news on his laptop at the same time, and the mixture of protein, fat and information hits helps him recover.

In addition to protein and fat, sour and spicy foods have traditionally been effective against withdrawal symptoms. It’s better if all the products are used in one bottle.

Besides, a hangover is not really a thing that takes a person by surprise. They say that a person drinks only once in his life - the rest of the time he hangs over. Forewarned is forearmed.

My Georgian friends think about hangovers in advance. Therefore, in the morning of the previous day, veal bones and meat were boiled over low heat for 3 hours. They use the main part of the broth for immediate culinary needs, and save the meat, which after a long cooking comes off the bones, as well as part of the broth. To slightly warm the veal in the broth in the morning. Strain the broth and season with a mixture of crushed garlic, lemon juice, chopped cilantro, grated ginger and hot green pepper. Pour this sauce over the pieces of meat, let it sit for a while - just long enough so that the broth does not have time to become covered with a thin film of fat that has passed through the sieve - and serve with a glass of vodka. Because like is cured by like, and what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

Alexey Zimin - editor-in-chief of the Afisha-Eda magazine

Through the eyes of a rabbit