Whether it’s learning to make bacon ice cream, sampling lamb from the Kalmyk steppes or rustling up paella a la russe, Muscovites have embraced all things foodie in a gastronomic revolution.
Hard to find just a few years ago as Russia remained burdened by the Soviet Union’s gastronomic legacy, medium-priced restaurants that use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients have now become the hot new trend. Magazines aimed at the upwardly mobile publish cooking columns and the middle-classes are discovering the joys of the dinner party.
The monthly Afisha Food magazine has spearheaded the trend and last weekend it packed crowds into a central Moscow park for a food festival that was the first of its kind in Russia.
Photo: AFP
About 10,000 people flocked to the historic riverside Gorky Park, not dissuaded by the 600 ruble (US$21) ticket price, as 40 restaurants presented special menus, chefs held master-classes and farmers sold home-grown produce.
Young couples with children in pushchairs and groups of friends happily queued for two hours to buy pork cooked sous-vide (sealed in a vacuum) and charcoal smoked, or chicken ragout with cherries and coriander.
“There has been an evolution in the way the middle classes see food. After 70 years in a gastronomic ghetto, we all tried out exotic dishes. And now we are looking for a happy medium,” said Alexei Zimin, the editor of Afisha Food, a food columnist for the Kommersant daily and the co-owner of Ragout restaurant.
“Cooking has become a big topic in the media. A huge amount of information has appeared on the subject,” he said.
On stage, in front of several hundred spectators, he reveals some tricks of the trade: For example, prawns with rosemary need to be sauted three times to ensure they are cooked through and juicy.
Ragout chef Ilya Shalev demonstrates how to make some unusual desserts, turning bacon into ice cream — as in the famed dish by British celebrity molecular chef Heston Blumenthal — and making salty caramel sauce as an accompaniment.
New Yorker Isaac Correa came to Moscow in 2003 and owns numerous restaurants serving innovative US-style food. He serves his ice cream in a cocktail with Pepsi and mozzarella with watermelon.
“People have become more knowledgeable. People read, people see, people travel,” Correa said. “Now they want to go to the restaurant not just to get a meal. They want to share different experiences.”
The chef of Delicatessen restaurant, Ivan Shishkin, shows how to make a paella, Russian style, with spelt — a kind of ancient wheat increasingly back in vogue and only grown in a few Russian regions — and wild chanterelle mushrooms.
He says that he is on a mission to create the savory flavor of umami, the fifth basic taste, identified by the Japanese, using local produce.
“I am looking forward to the time for pickling apples so I can use them to season fish instead of miso,” a highly salty Japanese seasoning, he says.
While Shishkin says he tries to use locally grown produce as much as possible, such as the spelt in the paella, he acknowledges that it would be impossible to rely on them entirely.
“That would make the menu too expensive and I want to stay within reasonable limits so that ordinary people like us can come to my restaurant,” he says.
The farmers’ market displays lamb from the southern Kalmykia region, yellow cherry jam from Dagestan in the Caucasus and natural yoghurt from the Moscow region, at high prices that put off some visitors.
Yulia Fateyeva, a mother of three, stocks up on cheese, saying that she does not even look at the price and “adores farm produce.”
Although Marina Davydova says that “everything is unaffordable.”
“I would be happy to buy farm produce if it was at the price you see at markets in Paris or Nice,” she said.
The founder of Lavkalavka, an Internet store that sells fresh farm produce, Boris Akimov, says that such high prices are unavoidable.
“I would also like this to cost less, but it’s not so simple. In France, this culture has been around for 500 years. In our country, we only started 20 years ago,” he said. “During the Soviet era, farmers were eliminated [in collectivization] and their land was ravaged with chemicals.”
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure