Edit] Dairy products

Belarusian cuisine

Modern Belarusian cookery is based on old national traditions which have undergone a long historical evolution. But the main methods of traditional Belarusian cuisine are carefully kept by the people.

Common in Belarusian cuisine were dishes from potato which is called among people "the second bread". The Belarusians bring fame to their beloved potato in their verses, songs, dances. There are special potato cafes in the country where you can try various potato dishes. Potato is included into many salads, it is served together with mushrooms, meat; different pirazhki (patties) and baked puddings are made from it. The most popular among the Belarusians are traditional draniki, thick pancakes, prepared from shredded potatoes. A wide spread of potato dishes in Belarusian cuisine can be explained by natural climatic conditions of Belarus which are propitious for growing highly starched and tasty sorts of potatoes.

A lot of place in the diet of the Belarusians belongs to meat and meat products, especially to the pork and salted pork fat. One of the people's proverbs says: "There is no fish more tasty than tench, as well as there is no meat better than pork". The salted pork fat is used slightly smoked and seasoned with onions and garlic. Pyachysta is one of the traditional holiday dishes. This is boiled, stewed or roasted sucking pig, fowl or large chunks of pork or beef. Dishes prepared from meat are usually served together with potatoes or vegetables such as carrot, cabbage, black radish, peas, etc. It is characteristic that many vegetable and meat dishes are prepared in special stoneware pots.

Among dishes from fish the Belarusians prefer yushka, galki and also baked or boiled river-fish without special seasonings. In general, what concerns the most common seasonings such as onions, garlic, parsley, dill, caraway seeds, pepper, they are used very moderately in Belarusian cookery.

The choice Belarusian food are fresh, dried, salted and pickled mushrooms, and also berries such as bilberry, wild strawberries, red whortlberry, raspberries, cranberry and some others.

Of flour dishes the most popular is zacirka. Pieces of specially prepared dough are boiled in water and then poured over with milk or garnished with salted pork fat.

The Belarusians prefer to use whole milk which affected some methods of making yoghurt and the so called klinkovy cottage cheese. In Belarusian cuisine the milk is widely used for mixing in vegetable and flour dishes.

Myadukha, berezavik, kvas, beer are traditional Belarusian drinks.

History

The history of gastronomy in Belarus reveals a highly exotic cuisine. In the early 15th century whole fried aurochs, the ancestor of domestic cattle, from the primeval Belaviezha forest that is now a national preserve, were sent as a gift to the German emperor.^{[ citation needed ]} The records of exports of the candied roots of Sweet Flag (Acorus calamus) to Western Europe date back to the 16th century. First mentioned in an early 17th century political pamphlet, baked goose with green peppers was still a popular dish for November feasts – All Saints and St Martin’s – in the mid-19th century.^{[ citation needed ]}

Aside from its predominantly Ruthenian roots, Belarusian cuisine is very close to Lithuanian and Polish, because of the intermingling of these three peoples first within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (11th-15th centuries) and later within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (16th-17th centuries). Though the Belarusian nobility, like the Polish elite, borrowed much from Italian, German, and French cuisines, this influence hardly made itself felt in the diet of the peasant majority.^{[ citation needed ]} Still, some of the borrowed dishes spread throughout the society, such as lazanki (a mixture of flour dumplings and stewed meat, related to Italian lasagna) and, above all, various dishes made of grated potatoes, typical for German cuisine.

The political upheavals of the 20th century completely wiped out the former privileged classes and many traditional upper and middle class dishes went down the path of oblivion. The very idea of a separate Belarusian cuisine was treated with suspicion. Only after World War II did it occur to the communist authorities that the proclaimed ‘flourishing of national culture’ should also be evident in the cuisine. The only source permitted for such a culinary reconstruction was the heritage of the poorest peasants as of the 1880s, a time when primitive rural lifestyle was already on the wane. Chefs were instructed by the Party to create the new Belarusian cuisine from scratch. Dish names, recipes, "authentic" kitchenware – all were reinvented anew, as though ten centuries of history had never existed. Only the sudden advent of independence in 1991 brought an opportunity to restore these lost traditions, and a great deal still remains to be done here.

Modern Belarusian cuisine is still heavily influenced by its recent Soviet past, and many local restaurants feature Russian or Soviet dishes rather than true specialties of local cuisine. Some Belarusians may have more interest in Italian, Chinese, and Japanese cuisine than with the careful restoration of their own culinary heritage.^{[ citation needed ]} However, draniki (both plain and stuffed), boršč, haladnik, mačanka, zrazy, cold meat rolls, eggs stuffed with mushrooms, halubtsy, fried raw pork sausage and bliny are likely to be found everywhere, as well as sour rye bread.

Edit] Meals

A traditional peasant or merchant's dinner consisted of just two dishes: soup and a main course. A special kind of pot, the sparysh, with two compartments, was used by farmers' children to bring lunch to their father working in the fields. Prior to World War II salads or other zakuski were not very common, and recipes based on Russian models tended to appear in modern Belarusian postwar cookbooks. Fresh white cheese and various kinds of cold meats (usually smoked) were available, however, at least on holidays.

Edit] Cereals

Since wheat does not grow well in a cold and wet climate, Belarusians were always fond of a kind of somewhat sour rye bread, and the most traditional hard drink, the local vodka or harelka (Belarusian: гарэлка), was distilled primarily from a rye malt.

Like other Slavic peoples, Belarusians could boast of a huge variety of bliny (pancakes) of various thickness, plain and filled, made mostly of wheat or buckwheat flour, but also using oatmeal (tsadaviki).

Various kinds of cereal especially barley, oatmeal and buckwheat were common. Belarus was the likely centre of Europe’s buckwheat culture, and dishes made with this healthy grain used to be very popular: various kinds of buns, cakes and dumplings which, except for the well-known "kasha", no longer exist today.

Edit] Vegetables

The main vegetables were cabbage (often made into sauerkraut) and beets, while turnips, swedes, parsnip and carrots both stewed and boiled (with the addition of a small amount of milk) were somewhat less popular. As elsewhere in Europe, legumes were the main source of protein, mainly in the form of kamy (puree of peas or beans with melted lard).

Edit] Soups

The word soup was not known in Belarus until the 18th century when the nobility borrowed it from German, but soup as a type of dish clearly existed centuries earlier. The old word for most traditional Belarusian soups was poli′uka (Belarusian: поліўка), except for those named after the vegetable that was the main ingredient: kapusta (cabbage soup), buraki (beet soup), gryzhanka (swede soup). For a typical poli′uka the major ingredients (fish or mushrooms during fasts) were first boiled with spices; cereals such as barley or millet were boiled in the stock, and then flour blended with water, bread kvass, beet juice or buttermilk was added to the stock. Black poli′uka, made with goose or pork blood, is closely related to the Swedish "black soup" svartsoppa. Offering a matchmaker black poli′uka was the polite way for the bride’s parents to decline a young man’s proposal. Like the Ukrainians, Russians and Poles, Belarusians are fond of borscht, a thick and rich beet and cabbage soup made with grains, potato and meat. Soups are much more authentic, both hot (shchi, boršč, sorrel soup) and especially cold sour soups which provide cooling relief during the hot summer.

The Belarusian khaladnik (Belarusian: халаднiк), a cold borscht made of beets, beet leaves or sorrel and served with sour cream, hard-boiled eggs, and boiled potatoes, has been a popular dish also in Polish and Lithuanian cuisines since the late 18th century.

Edit] Meat

Wrapped palyandvitsa

Sliced palyandvitsa

Meat was in rather scarce supply for most people, and was primarily eaten only on the main Christian holidays. Avid consumers of pork, Belarusians are less partial to mutton and beef. Most common was raw pork sausage – a pig intestine stuffed with minced or chopped meat seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic. Its common name – "finger-stuffed sausage" (Belarusian: каўбаса, «пальцам пханая» or in short пальцоўка) – provided a graphic description of the primitive production technology.^[1] Kishkа (Belarusian: кішка), or kryvyanka (Belarusian: крывянка), was a local blood sausage (Belarusian: крывяная кілбаса) made of pig’s blood and buckwheat grain. Škalondza (Belarusian: шкалондза), or kindziuk (Belarusian: кіндзюк), a particular kind of round sausage made of pig stomach filled with pork minced with spices^[2] – a relative of the Lithuanian skilandis – was known throughout the country. Borrowed from Italian cuisine by nobility in 16th century, cold meat rolls, salcesons and balerons were common to all of society by the 19th century, and are still very popular. Smoked goose breast pauguski (Belarusian: паўгускі), a local Belarusian and Lithuanian delicacy, was once the pride of middle-class cuisine, but no longer exists today.

Veraščaka (Belarusian: верашчака), an 18th century thick meat gravy with pieces of meat and sausage used as a dip or sauce for thick pancakes, is still one of the most popular specialties of Belarusian restaurants today, although it is now generally called mačanka (Belarusian: мачанка, a dip). Also popular are zrazy, chopped pieces of beef rolled into a sausage shape and filled with vegetable, mushroom, eggs, potato etc. Pork dishes are usually fried or stewed, garnished with cheese or mushrooms. Beef steaks are also quite frequent, but mutton, once very popular, is almost entirely limited to Caucasian or Central Asian restaurants, although still quite a few eat it today

Edit] Dumplings

Kalduny, small boiled dumplings related to Russian pelmeni and Italian ravioli, were produced in endless combinations of dough, filling and sauce. Especially popular were kalduny Count Tyshkevich (filled with a mixture of fried local mushrooms and smoked ham). In the late 19th century kalduny began to be made with grated potato rather than with a flour-based dough and, unfortunately, the former huge variety of fillings shrank considerably. Today, kalduny have to struggle vigorously to regain their former popularity, now overtaken by the Russian pelmeni.

edit] Dairy products

The main dairy products include a kind of fresh white cheese (Belarusian: тварог) and sour cream (Belarusian: смятана), which is widely used both in cooking and as a garnish. Only in the mid-19th century was fermented cheese (Belarusian: сыр) borrowed from the Netherlands and Switzerland, and the local version of Edam was very popular for decades in the Russian Empire. Sour butter from the former Dzisna county was proudly exported to England, where it continued to be the most expensive variety up to World War I. Today, however, these traditions have become a thing of the past.

Edit] Beverages

A mug of kvass, a fermented beverage made from black rye or rye bread

Тhe traditional hard drink is vodka or harelka (Belarusian: гарэлка), including varieties made from birch sap (biarozavik, Belarusian: бярозавік) or flavored with forest herbs (zubrovka, Belarusian: зуброўка). Mead and similar alcoholic drinks made of honey and spices were very common up to the 19th century and then more or less disappeared until the latest revival of the national cuisine. A notable example in this group is krambambula (Belarusian: крамбамбуля), vodka diluted with water, mixed with honey, and flavored with spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, red and black pepper). In the 18th century this drink competed with French champagne in Belarus and only wealthy people could afford it. Today it is enjoying a popular revival, as is evident from the appearance of krambambula recipes and histories on the Internet.^[3][4]

Kvass traditionally was and still remains the main local non-alcoholic drink, although it is increasingly made with sugars and artificial flavorings rather than with genuine rye malt and natural flavorings. Kompot is also a relatively popular beverage, normally made of dried or fresh fruit, boiled, and then cooled. Every small town boasts a local variety of mineral water. Belarusians prefer carbonated water.

Тraditional liquid desserts that accompany a meal include saladucha (Belarusian: саладуха), a thick liquid made of rye flour and honey that was popular in the 18th century, and kissel, the traditional jelly drink of Slavic peoples made with the pulp of forest berries and cooked fruits, originally thickened with oatmeal (now replaced by potato starch flour or cornstarch).

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