Meal 80. Russian salty soup (rassolnik), cabbage pancakes (kapustniye oladyie) and oat dessert (kisil)

Nelly with all the ingredients for the salty soup and cabbage pancakes prepped

Nelly is not quite aware how significant this meal is for me, as the original idea of this project was to travel ‘Around the World in Eighty Meals’ and she is number 80! It has been 17 years since I started the trip with a Dutch meal made by my own mother. After an initial head start of 46 meals in the first two years, with some nice publicity in Dutch newspapers, it has continued with a few (long) stops and starts.

The plump pearl barley ('pitted' like with cooked rice)

Luckily, Nelly has taken her task of thinking out a ‘traditional’ meal quite seriously. I would even say, more seriously than any other host! She describes in detail the type of ingredients Russians from her region (St. Petersburg) would have had access to historically. Only very occasionally will she make exceptions for ‘modern’ components like tomato paste or paprika powder. These only arrived after these ingredients were brought over from the Americas. We laugh about how this way of thinking would mean that pizza and pasta with tomato sauce would not be truly Italian, and potato stamppot not truly Dutch!

 

The cabbage pancakes crisping up in the hot oil

 

We start with rassolnik, ‘the salty soup’, which is supposed to be excellent if you are suffering from a hangover, in combination with a coffee. We start by toasting pearl barley, ‘the food of the gods’ according to Nelly, called perlovka in Russian. It is quite popular also in more modern dishes, like a variation of risotto wittily name perlotto (actually called orzotto in Italian). The toasting releases a lovely nutty aroma and gives the grains a golden-brown hue. Afterwards, we add boiling water and keep it on low heat till the perlovka becomes plump and chewy. The other ingredients are carrot, onion, garlic, salted pickles and a bit of the brine - crucial for this salty soup! Chopped parsley is added at the very end. It is a perfect savoury winter soup, even if you did not go drinking the night before! 

 

Nelly serving the salty soup

For the side dish, cabbage pancakes, or kapustniye oladyie, Nelly cannot stop herself from snacking on the crunchy raw leaves. She closes her eyes and almost hums with pleasure, she loves it so much. However, when it is boiling, she makes sure to cover the pot, as even she admits that "nobody loves the smell of boiling cabbage!" The pancakes remind me a bit of the latkes my father used to make (as well as the Belarusian host), except using cabbage instead of potatoes, and no egg. Nelly mentions that a lot of traditional Russian foods are actually vegan, as the Orthodox Russian church involves ‘fasting’ (no animal products) almost half of the year. Surprisingly similar to Ethiopian cuisine, which has a lot of vegan dishes for the exact same reason!

 

Cabbage pancakes with cream and parsley as garnish

 

Desert is an oat ‘crème’ called ovyosani kisil. It is made by soaking oats in water, blitzing them with a mixer, then straining this mixture through a sieve. Chopped hazelnuts and strawberries are added for a hint of sweetness. Nelly has even prepared fresh oat milk above the Arctic Circle, during a field trip where she taught English to biology students at a research station. She is a very entertaining host, as every ingredient has a story, and she herself has had an interesting and international life. She grew up in the Soviet Union, but because both her parents were diplomats posted abroad, she moved with them during their posts in Mongolia and Cuba as a child, and visited her parents in India. This exposed her to tropical fruits and other dishes not available in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). Apart from exposure to new foods, Nelly even remembers standing in the burning heat for 45 minutes as a ‘young pioneer’, waiting for Fidel Castro to turn up to give a speech! 

 

Rassolnik, or salty soup