We know how white truffles differ from black ones, we prepare Italian prosciutto salad with melon and French soups with white asparagus, we understand oriental cuisine. At the same time, Russian cuisine for most of us is cabbage soup and porridge. Russian cuisine is considered unfashionable, heavy and unhealthy. But this is a terrible delusion. Russian cuisine is interesting, lively, ideal for a balanced diet. Our porcini mushrooms will give one hundred points ahead of any truffle.
Asparagus in Russia 500 years ago there were a dozen varieties, and none of this event did, and Muscovites grew melons in the garden beds near the Kremlin in the 17th century – and they ripened perfectly to the delight and surprise of visiting Europeans. The goal of our MOs-Food project is to convey this to the general public, to re-acquaint people with Russian cuisine – both traditional and adapted to modern conditions, to help bring the undeservedly forgotten Russian cuisine into a trend. We think she absolutely deserves it.
– Where did the idea to create a project dedicated to Russian cuisine come from?
– Neither I nor Masha Zverovich have ever had anything to do with the kitchen as such. Our work is journalism, PR, I have been doing screenwriting for the last eight years, Zverovich has a second degree in psychology. In the broadest sense of the word, we are talking about shows, not bread. And in the kitchen we mainly brew coffee. That is, we cook, of course, but not seriously and mostly in multicooker.
MOs-Food is a completely personal project that was born out of very personal needs. First, I went to the Manish exhibition dedicated to the 800th anniversary of the Romanovs, I wrote about it separately in MN. The exhibition was made on the knee, there is nothing special to stand in line for three or four hours, and the people stood in the meantime.
And so I go to this exhibition, I think why people are bursting here so much, I read all kinds of nonsense at the stands about when they began to grow orchids and pineapples in Russia. Nearby the aunties are discussing the stands. Here – they say, just look! Wow! Pineapples were grown! In Russia! And orchids! And in general, everything with us, it turns out, was cool, where are those Europeans before us!
I listen to them and understand that this is what the people are bursting with. For national pride. Because here people are told how cool everything was with us and that we have something to be proud of. Pineapples, for example. And suddenly I understand that I also want to be proud. Despite the fact that all her life she considered herself a citizen of the world, she was never loaded with the issue of national identity or where the motherland begins.
At the same time, I have a Russian passport, I believe that my home is here in Moscow, I work with the Russian language, write in it for people who read Russian … And I really want to have reasons for national pride and love for the country, in which I live.
Then we came up with an authentic Russian lunch. I have a sister in America. Her husband’s relatives came to visit her and very much asked for a Russian table. The sister calls, says, advise what to cook. We talk to her and understand that we know about the Russian table vodka-pancakes-caviar. Well, also Ukrainian borscht.
Well Olivier. And that’s all offhand. I went to rummage in cookbooks, on the net, and it turned out that the situation in the hospital as a whole is very similar. Italian cuisine, French, even Finnish, God forgive me – as much as you like. From Russian – herring under a fur coat in mayonnaise, this is a heavy legacy of the Soviet Union, and all the same Ukrainian borscht.
Well, looking for information is our profession. As a result, of course, I found for American relatives both duck kale and white fish meat, and a bunch of other things, including old Russian recipes with asparagus and letters from foreign ambassadors, in which they admired the abundance and variety of the 16th century Moscow table. And I realized that Russian cuisine is something that you can not only be proud of, but also need to be proud of. And that we do not know a thing about her. So we started MOs-Food.
Dukun is smart, no doubt about it. But damn it, we live in Russia, a great country where pineapples and orchids were grown. We have excellent national cuisine and excellent domestic nutritionists!
