Edit] Minority cuisines

Belarusian potato babka

Belarusian cuisine owes much to Jewish cooking. In the 19th century Jewish influence was especially noticeable in bringing in potato dishes of German origin, such as babka. This was a two-way gastronomic street, for the famous bulbe latkes, the potato pancakes of the East European Jews, may have been borrowed from the Belarusian draniki.

Another important minority ethnic group which influenced Belarusian cuisine were the Lipka Tatars, whose Tatar cuisine was especially strong in various cakes with fillings, mutton and vegetable dishes.

Edit] Potatoes

The potato became so common in 19th century – there are some 300+ dishes recorded in Belarus – that it came to be considered the core of the national cuisine. In the Soviet Union, Belarusians were scornfully called bulbashi.

Edit] Salads

Typical salads are made of a fairly short list of ingredients: endless combinations of boiled beef or chicken, potato, beet, carrot, apple, herring, diced cheese, canned peas and corn, canned fish, ‘crab fingers’, onions and mushrooms, and are generously seasoned with mayonnaise or sunflower oil. One of the most typical local salads is the "Belaya Vezha" salad (named after the Belaya Vezha Forest), which combines boiled chicken meat with fried mushrooms, onions, and pickled cucumbers, mixed with mayonnaise and garnished with chopped hard-boiled egg.^[5] Fresh vegetable salads are also widely available: tomatoes (also mixed with cucumbers) and onions seasoned with sour cream, radishes with dill and sunflower oil (or sourcream) shredded cabbage salad seasoned with sunflower oil or mayonnaise (similar to coleslaw), pickled cabbage with caraway seeds or cranberries with onions seasoned with sunflower oil.

Edit] Fish

Historically, Belarusians had little access to seafood, and this is still evident in the cuisine. The most common sea fish (after herring, which has been the most common appetizer all along the Baltic coast and its vicinity ever since the 14th century) are hake and cod and there are relatively few dishes with such fish. Much more traditional and common are lake fish, notably zander, cooked in endless ways, and carp (especially the famous stuffed carp, the gefilte fisch of Jewish cuisine). Eels, smoked or stuffed, are the specialty of the lake country in the northwestern part of Belarus, adjacent to Latvia and Lithuania.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-23