The travels of the cook

In the second part of this issue: provincial poets (Kursk region).

Russian wives about non -Russian husbands and “my favorite records” with poetess Ekaterina Gorbovskaya (London).

Traditional section "Travel". This time is a story about culinary travel.

Lidia Starodubtseva (cultural historian):

- In travels, a person searches and finds himself. The philosopher gains food for philosophizing, and the culinary specialist enjoys foreign expert cuisine. I was convinced of this, having talked with the speakers of Edcamp Ukraine 2019, an international forum dedicated to education. Among them are the TV presenter, chef, culinary expert Evgeny Klopotenko. He graduated from the French culinary school Le Cordon Bleu, managed to work as a chef in a Mexican restaurant in America and became a co -founder of a private restaurant business in Ukraine.

- My grandmother lived in England. When I was 6 years old, I first went abroad to England. There I began to eat Mozarella, Parmesan, cornflex. I did not understand what kind of food it was, because I could not even appreciate it, but at that moment another, not Soviet food began to lay in my mind. After that, a year later I went to Italy on school exchange, I lived there for a month, a year later I went there again. So I have formed completely different tastes. Even the soup of my childhood is soup with Parlelin and with Parmesan, a bun with paste Cotto. These trips completely changed the course of my life. I had to eat ordinary food, like everyone else: soup, bun, love it all, adore cheesecakes. For me it shifted thanks to travel. Then for 10 years I did not go anywhere, lived as an ordinary life. When I was 18, I went to England again, then to the Czech Republic. In the Czech Republic, we had a camp where I began to understand for the first time that the food was fat, thick, rolls with carawayess. For me, this is for life, a caraway seed, which I did not like then, I hated it even more, because I extracted it from bread, I could not eat Czech bread. After that, five years later, I realized that cumin is a spice that I do not like, but by adding it to the onion soup, I realized that this is a whole revolution, that caraway seeds in the onion soup are revealed, caraway seeds in the goulash simply should be.

Evgeny Klopotenko

When I began to travel to Italy to adults and study it as a whole country, I realized that the Italians are not cool chefs, they are cool farmers in the first place. When I came to the production of balsamic vinegar, I asked: what is the technology? They said: we just take grapes, warm up to a temperature of 73 degrees, then it cools down and that’s it. There, bacteria in the air themselves make balsamic vinegar vinegar. I was in shock, they do nothing. The same thing with Mozarella Buffalo. They say: we do nothing, such tomatoes are growing here and that’s all. They add olive oil and all. I realized that they were cool farmers. They instilled in me a love of products. I opened the restaurant of Ukrainian cuisine and work with beets, with potatoes, with carrots, with cabbage, with these usual things, I began to love them and realized that the beets can not only be cooked, but you can eat raw, and cabbage can be eaten not raw, but baked, the cabbage leaf is more oily, it will highlight the nutmeg aroma. I just rethought the approach to our products due to the fact that I went abroad.

Egg Balut

I had interesting meetings. The first is the balut egg, the Philippine dish, when the duck is 39 days in the egg and should already hatch, then it is removed from the broiler, the duck embryo, you break the egg, you have a duck embryos in your hands, and this embryo can be eaten because it has nothing harmful in it. The meat is unrealistic and unrealistically cool. When I tried this dish, it was very difficult for me to step over myself: to eat an embryo. But when I tried, I opened the whole world. I realized that the food was endless.

In the restaurant, I sell bees, dried bees, we pickle and sell them. I began to try Spanish embryos: fry of acne. I realized that there is nothing wrong with this - these are only our restrictions that do not allow us to completely feel the product. Therefore, through the first rather complicated visual experience, I was freed from food restrictions, now I can create, I can change, I can control food. Now not the food controls me, but I control it. When I make new dishes, I eat them before I prepared them. When they are ready, I am not surprised, because this is exactly what I represented in my head. This is the first gastronomic journey. If we are talking about traveling without leaving home, then you just need to go to the refrigerator or just go to the box where the spices lie and concentrate. Take the same apple that is in the refrigerator, to look at it not like a common apple, but try to find something extraordinary in it. To imagine that this is an apple, for example, which is located in Poland, try to move to some area near Warsaw, to imagine that there are many trees, that it is an apple from there, and for you it is a great honor to eat it. Smell and bite very well, and then you will find yourself in Poland. It is very important to pay attention. 20 seconds of attention to each product, and food will be revealed in a new way.

There are neural connections in your head, you can travel everywhere through them. When I want to imagine myself in Italy or in Spain, I just buy shrimp and white wine for myself, through shrimp and wine, through these beautiful associations I return to Spain and can be constantly there. But it is very important that there is white wine. If I drink red, saturated like Bordeaux, I return to Bordeaux and eat a paste with red burgundy. Nero d'Avola, Sicilian along with Cannoti - this is what always moves me to Sicily. You feel the aroma, and the aroma is always like an anchor, it can return you to the place where you have been.

The market in Italy

Very often I create, buy some products, smell them and return to the past for a couple of seconds, not to the past, but to the place where I was once. This is divine. The same with tastes. I will try Mozarella as for the first time in Turin, in the market where it once spread under my fingers. When I studied in Paris at Le Cordon Bleu, I prepared the first, as cooked before, “Charlotte” from bread with apples, with plums, butter and crumbs. Now that I am cooking any fruits with butter and crumbs at home, I return to this Parisian school for two to three minutes. These tastes are much more lively, much stronger than people think. I want to show the world that you can travel through the taste.

Further in the program: "Provincial poets"

Poets of the Kursk region

Tatyana Krygina : “The village of Foam is the ancestralum of many good people. I have a mother economist. She is poorly treated with verses: this is not seriously, it is not earnings. People lived at the junction of eras, and I found them. There was some strange woman, an old woman. She was the first Komsomol, one of the first. She wrote poetry. This was the first poet whom I saw close. She walked the streets, children followed her, and she read poetry to them. ”

Russian wives about non -Russian husbands: personal experience.

“My favorite records ” with the poetess Ekaterina Gorbovskaya (London).