More recently, botvinho was considered a pearlRussian cuisine. Every hostess knew how to cook it. It was by her ability to cook with a botvinia that the culinary abilities of the hostess were judged, which was reflected in the oral folklore - the saying “What is Ustinia, is known to her and the botvinia”.
The word botvinya comes from the word tops.In the old days in Russia, sorrel, young nettles, carrot leaves and beets were used to prepare various dishes, in particular, the botvinia was being prepared, which was eventually forgotten. Now this wonderful dish is appearing on our tables less and less often and has almost completely disappeared due to the high cost, and more due to the fact that the cooking technology of this dish is quite laborious.
The botvinia was served as the first cold dish,or after the first hot. For the botvinia, all the greens were boiled, and then finely finely sliced with a knife and poured with kvass. If the boiled leaves are wiped through a sieve or minced, you get a cream soup, not botvinia.
The complete botvinia recipe which will be describedbelow - an expensive and difficult to prepare dish consisting of three parts: botvini, red or white boiled fish (salmon, stellate sturgeon, sturgeon) and chopped into small pieces of ice, which are periodically added to the botvinia so that it is cold all the time. Therefore, a complete toast is served to one person in three cups with two spoons - for the botvinis and for ice, and one fork, which is taken fish. Only rye bread is served to the botvin.
The fish part of the botvinia consisted of severalvarieties of red or white fish and crayfish or crabs, as well as shrimp. However, few could afford such expensive fish, so sometimes they cooked so-called incomplete botvinia without fish. In some recipes, the composition of the botwiny was simplified.
But such an incomplete botvinia recipe whichcontains the substitution of some products for others or is prepared without fish, is devoid of attractiveness, since the true taste of the dish is distorted and it turns into an ordinary cold summer soup, such as beet soup, a cold recipe. Botvinia is simple and steam. Both types of botvinis are prepared on the basis of kvass, which should be neither sour nor sweet. To make the botton sharp, lemon juice and grated horseradish are added to kvass.
For a simple full Botvini need a liter of breadkvass, a glass of white okvaschen kvass, two glasses of boiled sorrel, a glass of boiled nettle, three young beets with tops, a fresh cucumber, two large spoons of grated horseradish, half a lemon, a teaspoon of mustard, a half cup of green onion, one teaspoon of salt and sugar, a half tablespoons of dill, a pound of fish and four crayfish.
First you need to cook a green mass andadd in it finely chopped green onions, pre-grated with dill and salt, and also finely chopped beetroot. Cut lemon zest from a lemon, grind it in a cup with sugar, add horseradish, mustard and lemon juice to this cup, mix everything and pour into kvass obtained by combining both types of kvass. Now, the kvass base obtained in this way must be combined with the botany mass, add the cucumber, cut it into small cubes, and put everything in the cold for 20 minutes so that the acidic base is well absorbed into the tops.
While botviny insisted, prepare fishits part. To do this, small (50 grams) pieces of different fish of valuable varieties must be boiled for 10 minutes in boiling salted water with spices.
Steamed botvinia recipe which is from simpleBotvini is distinguished by the presence in it of a steamed sourdough, made from leavened ground and flour. Zaparku do in advance, one day before cooking botvini. To make it, rye flour is diluted with water in a small clay pot and put in a preheated oven for 30 minutes.
A well-treated mixture is filtered through a sieve andadd the chopped beetroot to finely chopped tops, put everything in an enamel bowl and pour the leaven over the ground and put on the day to sour. Then zaparku diluted kvass and add other ingredients.
By name it seems like a simple dish, buthow many subtleties! Some hostesses, probably can not even imagine that the recipes with beets can be so complicated and time consuming. Apparently, the complexity of the preparation was the main reason for the fact that such a tasty and healthy dish as botvinia was undeservedly forgotten.
