4 and 5 - Stroganoff and Blinis!

With an army (well, a small regiment) of helpers...we ventured out into the foodie world of mushrooms and yeast pancakes.

Modeling our blinis recipe!

Kim and Matt waiting for the stroganoff to be ready!

Ashley learning how to cut onions!

Before I talk about the food though, I'd like to go on a (small) tangent about Russian food. While I was cutting onions last night, I had an epiphany of sorts. Here it is: traditional food actually varies regionally, for specific reasons.

For example, all of the Russian food (so far) has been warm, meaty, and filling. Perfect for a country with such cold weather, harsh environments,and such a long farming history. How about the fact that the food seems relatively spice-less? Could this be because historically, much or the country was relatively poor and couldn't afford to buy exotic spices? I mean, look at a map of Russia. Some places are so far off the grid, it would have taken an extraordinary amount of resources to get anything out there, let alone spices.

Anyway, I do realize that my "epiphany" is elementary, but I guess that's the problem with living in a society where we are fortunate enough to literally eat any kind of food that we want. We can eat Italian, Chinese, Indian, and Thai and never have to think about why the food tastes the way it does, or what religious, social, or nutritious factors have shaped its evolution. I've never thought about why the Chinese eat a lot of rice or why Indian food is often vegetarian.

Anyway, all of this happened while I was chopping the onion for last night's stroganoff, and I stewed on my thoughts for a little while (pun definitely intended).



The stroganoff and the blinis both turned out well - we believe we cooked fairly accurate representations of the meals, but it's always hard to be certain.

The stroganoff tasted delicious, the mushroom sauce was very flavorful, although it came with a side of rubber (AKA overcooked pork, our fault entirely!). Some of the guests added salt (we didn't, out of fear of being "nontraditional") and reported that it heightened the mushroomy-taste.

Almost done!

The blinis were also very good, except for the fact that we substituted oat flour for buckwheat flour (which I'm sure took away a lot of the appeal). They definitely tasted their best when paired with sour cream and a liberal amount of smoked salmon (as suggested in the recipe).

The giraffe wanted some blinis too!

Overall the night was a success and the food was tasty, in its own way. We're still waiting for a Russian meal to fall head-over-heels in love with, but so far the cuisine has been tasty!

:-)