Karelia is the land of lakes and rivers. This affects the national cuisine. Its basis is freshwater fish and meat of wild animals. Supplement her gifts of the forest. These are mushrooms and berries, various wild herbs and nuts. But nevertheless, the central place in Karelian cuisine is occupied by fish. Of course, to try the dishes in their original performance, you need to visit this amazing land. But you can try to do something similar at home.
Subtleties of Karelian cuisine
There is a huge quantity of fish dishes. Every housewife knows at least ten ways to prepare a catch. Fish is boiled, dried, salted and even fermented. Its taste in ready-made dishes is emphasized by mushrooms and berries: wild strawberries, blueberries, blueberries and cloudberries. But wheat flour is practically not used here. It is successfully replaced by rye and barley.
Karelian cuisine is characterized in that it almost completely excludes dishes from dairy products. Of course, today the borders of national cuisine are greatly erased, but we are talking about traditions. Special is the heat treatment of products. There is no concept of frying. What we consider fried is boiled in oil for them.
Aboriginal dishes
Speaking of Karelian cuisine, one cannot but remember the ear. This simple fish soup is cooked in different variations almost every day. This is often the ear of several varieties of fish, sometimes with the addition of cream or milk. Various cereals are also characteristic of the Karelian table. Hostesses cook barley and pea, oat and millet porridge here. But the highlight of the table is bearberry. It is usually eaten with berries. Dishes of Karelian cuisine are simple, but at the same time they are tasty and healthy.
Vegetables are often used as a side dish. This is turnip and radish, zucchini and cabbage, potatoes and onions. As a rule, they are stewed or boiled. Traditionally, they were languished in the stoves in the villages, so that the vegetables turned out tender and crumbly.
desserts
Karelian national cuisine is an example of a healthy diet. It is still not customary to eat sweets here. But each family in large quantities harvests lingonberries and cranberries. The berries are served in tea in crushed form, used as a filling for pies. Beautiful jelly is made from them. Harvested dried blueberries and raspberries. It is usually used for medicinal purposes. The inhabitants of this amazing country have a lot to learn. Favorite drink is tea. It is usually drunk with baked milk. Often, tea is an infusion of flowers of St. John's wort, leaves and stems of raspberries.
Cooking features
Surely the recipes were interested in recipes of the Karelian cuisine, so now we will go directly to their consideration. In the process of exploring the traditional dishes of Karelians, you notice one more characteristic feature - this is the almost complete absence of second courses. They are replaced by simple pies from unleavened dough. Usually they are cooked with the same fish. It is put in the filling, without first having been cleaned, that is, together with the scales.
So, the first dish that needs to be paid tribute is, of course, the ear. It is prepared from a wide variety of fish, but it is best to choose fatty varieties. Sliced โโpotatoes and onions are placed in boiling water. When the water boils, gutted and washed fish falls into it. It is recommended to cut off the head of a roach so that the ear does not bitter. Before the end of cooking, bay leaf and black pepper are added. Traditionally, a little rye flour was jabbed into a hot ear. In some places, the finished soup was flavored with a raw egg.
Chowder
For each day, fish soup was prepared from the simplest and most affordable products. But this dish may be worthy of a festive table. Considering the recipes of the Karelian cuisine (you can see photos of some of them in the article), one cannot but pay attention to the trout ear with cream. This is actually a red fish in a creamy sauce, which is served in restaurants as a gourmet dish.
You will need:
- Fresh trout - 400 g.
- Potatoes - 3-4 tubers.
- Carrots, onions - 1 pc.
- Cream - 1 cup.
- Spice.
Cooking time does not exceed 30 minutes, so you can start cooking just before lunch. The fish must be washed thoroughly and divided into portions, cut the potatoes into cubes. Pour 1.5 liters of water into the pan and put the potatoes to boil. Separately, fry the onions and carrots in butter. 10 minutes after boiling potatoes, put the fish, and after another 7 minutes, fry. The potato is ready, now add cream and spices, bring to a boil and let stand for another 5 minutes.
Fishermen
There are pies in the Karelian cuisine. Moreover, such that just drool. Of course, for the filling, you need to take the pitted fillet so that later you do not have to pull them out of the finished pie. In fact, this is a chicken tree, only instead of a bird there is a fish. It is prepared from yeast dough, because fresh is too fragile, and during baking all the juice will run away. To prepare you will need:
- Flour - 350 g.
- Water - 250 ml.
- Vegetable oil - 2 tablespoons.
- Butter - 50 g.
- Dry yeast - 2 teaspoons.
- Sugar - 1 tablespoon.
- For the filling, you need 700 g of fish and a little onion.
First of all, you need to cook the dough. To do this, fill the yeast with warm water and leave for 10 minutes. Add all other ingredients and knead soft dough. While it is suitable, you can do the filling. To do this, fish fillet must be salt and pepper to taste. Onions cut into half rings. If you use green, then it needs to be finely chopped.
Divide the finished dough into 8 parts. Roll each of them into a cake and lay out a piece of fish in the middle. Above is onion and a piece of butter. Now roll up with an envelope and make a puncture with a fork, and you also need to grease the surface with an egg. Bake them at a temperature of 200 degrees until golden brown. After that, grease with butter.
Gates
This is one of the most famous national dishes. To prepare the dough, a glass of yogurt or kefir is poured into a bowl and a little salt is added. After that, they begin to gradually add flour to make a soft dough. It is recommended to take rye flour, and if it is not, then take wheat flour, but add brown bread crusts soaked in water.
It was these pies that became the symbol of Karelian cuisine. Wickets can be prepared with different fillings. It can be milk porridge or mashed potatoes. Cottage cheese is also suitable. The dough needs to be rolled into a tourniquet and cut into pieces. Each of them is slightly rolled out and stretched out by hand. The edges need to be bent and greased liberally with salted sour cream mixed with raw yolk. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes and grease liberally with hot butter.
Karelian Roast
As we have already said, fish is traditionally used more often in Karelia. But the abundance of forests and game simply obliges to cook meat dishes. Karelian roast is prepared from several types of meat. Of course, in urban conditions it is difficult to find an elk, a bear or forest game. Therefore, let's simplify the task a bit:
- Pork Belly - 250 g
- Beef - 250 g.
- Lamb shoulder - 250 g.
- Onions - 100 g.
- Bay leaf and spices.
Dice the meat and fry until golden brown. After this, the oven needs to be heated to 90 degrees and lay in layers in the goose mullet, first lamb, then beef and pork. Pour boiling water over it so that it covers the meat, and set it to simmer for 6-8 hours. It is very important to do this at a moderate temperature. The meat should not boil, then the dish will turn out to be surprisingly tasty and very tender.
Blueberry pie
Sweet pies with berries in Karelia are baked less often, but all the same, you need to pay attention to these recipes. Traditionally, such pies were made on the holiday of Macovei, for seeing off the summer. The dough is used sour, yeast. Suitable and such as a fisherman. If you want more rich pastries, add an egg to the recipe and replace the water with milk. You can replace your favorite yeast dough, it will turn out very tasty anyway.
The most important thing is fresh blueberries for the filling. For hostesses-carriages this was not difficult, but today we often sell blueberries only frozen. But she is perfect. You just need to grind it with sugar. The approached dough is rolled out a centimeter thick and laid out on a baking sheet. On top of it are berries rubbed with sugar. So that the juice does not flow out of the cake, it needs to be slightly sprinkled with potato starch. Or put a spoonful of starch directly to the berry.
This cake is very tasty with shortcrust pastry. To prepare it, you need to chop 200 g of cream margarine with 2 cups of flour, add 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 yolks and 1 protein. Quickly roll into a ball and put in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Kissel berry
It can be prepared at any time of the year using fresh or frozen berries. In the season, Karelians harvested a lot of wild berries and then, until spring, they ate amazing jelly. The cooking method is simple, it is available even to a novice cook. For this, the berries need to be sorted, washed and combined with sugar, without grinding. Proportions are selected individually. For 1 glass of berries, you need to take 3 glasses of water.
Once the water boils, lay the berry and add sugar to taste. Separately, in a cup, dilute 2 tablespoons of starch with cold water and pour into a saucepan in a thin stream. Boil - and you can remove from the heat. It turns out jelly of medium density. It can be changed by reducing or increasing the amount of gelling component.
Today we told you about Karelian cuisine. Recipes (with photos of some dishes could be found above) will allow you to diversify the table and surprise your relatives with delicious dishes.