“Light the snow, play the ravines” - this is what people have called the month of April for centuries . The last snow is falling from the fields, the rivers break and take out into the sea winter ice fetters, streams ring. The trees are already touched by a green haze. In a clear spring sky - slender schools of migratory birds. In nature, a holiday comes.
The holiday also comes to man: after a long seven-week fast, the bright Resurrection of Christ comes, Holy Easter.
Easter traditions
Every year Easter falls on different days and months, from March to May. Prepare for Easter in advance. On Maundy Thursday (Quartet), the housewives cleaned the houses, washed and cleaned, baked bread as a sign that he would not be transferred to the house all year. Maundy Thursday is called "clean" not only because of putting things in order. On Pure Thursday, every Orthodox is cleansed spiritually.
On Maundy Thursday, eggs are painted everywhere. This is a family occupation, children with pleasure remove the husks from onions for broth. Easter cakes are baked on Good Friday, and on the night of Great Saturday to Sunday they are consecrated.
Before Easter, it has long been customary to do good deeds: collecting money for the redemption of debtors from imprisonment, transferring alms to prisoners and treats to guard soldiers. The poor bought birds from breeders and set them free.
On Tuesday in the week following Easter, Radonitsa comes from the word "joy." The Sunday of the Lord brings this joy to people, and they are in a hurry to share it with those who left this world. In Radonitsa all Orthodox Russia went to the cemeteries to commemorate the departed. They smashed green colored eggs and then crushed them. They distributed to the poor pastries, cakes, pies, and other dishes from the Easter table. Part of the cooked was brought to the church, where memorial services and mass were served.
Easter treat
In the old days in Russia, throughout the festive Easter week, Easter tables were laid in the houses. They invited guests for them, brought the poor to treat, gathered large families. “Christ is Risen!” - so on this day the Orthodox greet each other.
The symbol of Holy Easter is a colored egg. The consecrated egg at the Easter table is eaten first. Eggs are exchanged with relatives, neighbors, left in the temple.
Colored eggs
Before staining, the eggs must be washed well. Traditionally, hard-boiled eggs are prepared in a decoction based on onion peel or young birch leaves. Depending on the intensity of the onion broth, a beautiful color is obtained, from golden yellow to brown. If you tie parsley leaves to an egg before staining, you will still have nice patterns.
Nowadays, food coloring is more often used. The paint must be dissolved in boiling water, dip hard-boiled eggs into it for several minutes, carefully removed and laid out for drying.
You can dye eggs in flaps and colored threads. A pre-soaked egg is wrapped in silk or wrapped with natural colored thread and boiled.
If there are children in the house - boiled eggs as a base and paint brushes will delight and turn the decoration of the Easter table into a fun and memorable event.
Vegetable oil, if you wipe them with dried eggs, will give a beautiful shine.
Kulich was considered ceremonial bread among the Slavs. The prototype of Kulich is artos, church leavened bread in the shape of a large cylinder. It was customary to distribute it to parishioners on Bright Saturday after the completion of the prayer. There is an opinion that earlier in Russia cakes were baked several times a year before major holidays, and used in rituals and fortune-telling.
Cooking Easter cake for the Easter table you need to deal with bright thoughts and good mood, without rush and fuss.
Kulich
What is needed:
- base: flour (six hundred grams), cream (one and a half glasses), sugar (a couple of glasses), six eggs, butter (two hundred grams), yeast (fifty grams);
- additives: raisins, any nuts, for example, almonds, vanilla, rum, cognac, orange or lemon peel, saffron, cinnamon;
- for decoration: glaze, egg whites beaten with icing sugar, melted chocolate.
How to cook:
- Add one tablespoon of sugar and two hundred grams of flour thrice sifted through a sieve to the yeast diluted with cream. This is a dough, it needs to be placed in a warm place.
- Grind five yolks with sugar. Melt and cool the oil.
- Add oil, yolks, vanilla, salt, chilled and whipped whites with the mixer and the rest of the flour to the dough (which has already increased well in size). Knead the dough and put in heat again to raise.
- Add dough with raisins, candied fruits, any other additives as desired.
- Distribute the resulting mass in pre-oiled forms, where to allow rise. Bake at 180 ° C for 40-60 minutes. Cool and cover with your favorite glaze, as your imagination suggests, and the Easter cake will become the main decoration of the Easter table (photo).
Easter is also called the dish itself, which is made only for the Easter table. Easter is prepared in a special form - a pasochnitsa, resembling a truncated pyramid. On the inside of the form the traditionally carved (Christ is Risen) and a cross, images of flowers, sprouted grains, personifying suffering and resurrection.
In the XVIII century, by order of Prince Vyazemsky, the Church of the Holy Trinity was built in St. Petersburg, nicknamed "Easter Cake and Easter." The temple owes its name to its shape in the form of a rotunda, while the bell tower looks like a pyramidal Easter.
Easter royal choux
Ingredients: fresh fat cottage cheese (half a kilo), egg yolks (three pieces), one glass of sour cream, one hundred grams of butter, one hundred grams of sugar, vanilla, raisins, nuts.
First you need to cook raisins: pour boiling water for half an hour, then dry. Grind the cottage cheese, add the yolks, sour cream, sugar, vanilla, softened butter and whisk until the mass acquires splendor.
Then put on a slow fire and stir, wait until the boiling begins (do not boil). Cool, add nuts, raisins and transfer to the pasochnitsa. For a couple of days, remove under oppression in a cold place. Remove the finished Easter from the mold, transfer to a dish, decorate and transfer to the Easter table (photo).
Another dish is lamb figurines. They were made of sugar and decorated with Easter cakes, the silhouette of a lamb was given to gingerbread cookies. Previously, the menu of the Easter table was without fail a lamb, as a symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Now the easter lamb can be cut, for example, from chilled oil, giving the desired shape with a warm knife or cut out from the dough on a stencil.
According to ancient traditions and customs, an Easter table can count up to 48 dishes, according to the number of days of Lent. In addition to the main attributes of the holiday, on the table there were always salads, snacks, a variety of pastries, jelly and salty.
Mandatory cooking for hostesses was considered meat dishes of the Easter table (recipes with a photo below).
Baked lamb
Products: Leg of a young lamb (about two kilograms), thyme, rosemary, mustard (four tablespoons), honey (one tablespoon), garlic, vegetable oil (a couple of tablespoons), lemon juice (one tablespoon), salt , black pepper.
Wash the lamb, clean and dry. Grate with salt, pepper and pickle for three to twenty hours in a mixture of oil, mustard, honey, lemon juice, garlic, rosemary / thyme leaves. Bake in the oven at a temperature of 100 ° C for three to four hours, covering with foil.
Easter meat ring
You will need minced beef and pork (one kilogram), seven eggs, one onion, garlic (a couple of cloves), mayonnaise (three tablespoons), sunflower oil, salt, dill, parsley, black pepper. Ring baking dish.
Six of the seven eggs to boil hard boiled, remove the shell. In the minced meat, beat the raw egg, the onion fried until golden brown, finely chopped greens, mayonnaise, chopped garlic, pepper, salt and mix. Put half the minced meat in a mold, distribute whole boiled eggs and the second part of the minced meat on top.
Bake, covering the form with foil, 30-40 minutes in the oven at a temperature of 180 ° C. Then gently flip the form, put the ring on a baking sheet and brown until golden brown for another twenty to thirty minutes, pouring meat juice. Garnish with greens.
Stuffed chickens
You need two chicken, two glasses of breadcrumbs for breading, four chicken eggs, half a glass of cream, a little chicken broth, one hundred grams of butter, parsley, salt, pepper.
Chicks wash, dry, salt. Mix two-thirds of crackers, a couple of boiled and chopped eggs, fifty grams of butter, cream, parsley or dill, salt and pepper. Stuff the chickens with this filling and sew up. Dip the carcasses prepared in this way in an egg, roll in breadcrumbs and fry in the oven, turning over. From the finished chickens, remove the threads, put the minced meat in a slide, chopped meat on top.
The abundance of meat is varied and complemented by vegetable salads, which will not only decorate the festive table, but also help replace lean meat with more plentiful.
Potato Salad with Pickled Mushrooms
Salad products: potato tubers (six to seven pieces), pickled mushrooms (two hundred grams), pickled cucumbers (five pieces), onions, green peas (two hundred grams), parsley, dill, vegetable oil, black pepper and salt.
Boiled potatoes, pickled cucumbers, crumble mushrooms into cubes. Onions cut into half rings. Mix all this with green peas, chopped herbs, salt and pepper. Fill a couple of tablespoons of oil.
Festive salad with prunes
Boiled chicken fillet (two hundred grams), steamed prunes (one hundred grams), peeled walnuts (one hundred grams), boiled eggs (two pieces), one fresh cucumber, salt, mayonnaise.
Cut chicken, eggs, cucumber into cubes and mix, add chopped prunes, chopped nuts, salt and mayonnaise.
Easter table recipes have been handed down from generation to generation, from mother to daughter and from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law. Good housewives know many secrets to make the dishes delicious and truly festive. When kneading dough in the house, you can not make loud conversations, make noise, open windows and slam doors.
Fish Pies
Yeast dough, three hundred grams of fish, rice (one glass), eggs (three pieces), butter (one hundred grams), salt, water.
First, prepare the minced rice: add finely chopped boiled eggs to the boiled rice with oil and mix.
Roll out the dough in circles about half a centimeter thick. In the middle of each mug put a small amount of minced rice, on top - boneless fish fillet, a little salt and a small piece of butter. Let stand for fifteen minutes, bake at 200 ° C, grease with oil and transfer to a ceramic dish.
In the church tradition, a beautiful and generous holiday table is a symbol of joy. To decorate the Easter table, they used a snow-white tablecloth, the best services. Decorated with fresh flowers, candles, lace napkins, bird figures (a dove in Christianity represents the image of the Holy Spirit).
Early bird
These are lean buns made from yeast dough. The dough is divided into small pieces in the form of a bundle about twenty centimeters in length. A knot is made of flagella, on the one hand fashioning a bird's head with eyes from raisins, on the other - a tail, incised with a knife. Such larks are baked for half an hour at a temperature of 180 ° C.
Of course, an Easter table is impossible to imagine without desserts and festive drinks. Despite the fact that alcohol is not approved by the Orthodox canons, not a single feast in Russia can do without liquors, tinctures, traditional birch bark and mead.
Petersburg apple pudding
Ten apples, one and a half glasses of sour cream, five eggs, one tablespoon of flour, two large tablespoons of sugar, zest of half a lemon, one glass of jam, thirty grams of butter.
Remove the apples from the core and put in a baking dish. Fill the empty middle with jam. Mix the yolks with sugar, zest, sour cream, flour and proteins, previously whipped. Pour apples with this mixture. Bake at 180 ° C. Serve with chilled milk.
Cranberry Mousse
Semolina (two hundred and fifty grams), cranberries (a couple of glasses), sugar (three to four large spoons), mint leaves.
Boil cranberries with sugar in four glasses of water. Boil a little and strain through a sieve. Put it on the stove again and pour in semolina, stirring until thick. After cooling completely, beat to a lush mousse. Distribute over the bowls and garnish with mint leaves.
Sbiten with wine
Dry wine (one liter), honey (one hundred and fifty grams), cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg.
Heat the wine with the addition of honey, spices and let it brew well for half an hour. Cookies and pies are served at the sbitnu.
In some Russian villages, the setting of the Easter table was supplemented by a dish with sprouted seedlings of oats and parsley stacked on top according to the number of deceased ancestors. After the arrival of Radonitsa, eggs were given for livestock feed, and oats were planted.
Another tradition of the Easter table is a respectful attitude to Easter food. She was credited with miraculous properties and never even left a small piece untidy to block access to rodents. The crushed eggshells were carried to the fields to bring a good harvest.