* FISH *

In nature, there are many strange and unexplained things for a rationalist; they give him no peace constantly torment the wretch. A person with a poetic perception of the world doesn't suffer such anomalies. However, sometimes he still comes up with their own, creating a mystical aura around the most common and everyday phenomena. Who is correct? We shall sort out later, as the saying goes, "when the she-cat will be the tom-cat." (Incidentally, cats confirm the existence of natural oddities. Striking is, for example, their similarity with humans. In what? At least in cleanliness for good measure. Or in the cat's "sniffing" abilities. These animals can compare with our culinary pickiness: a spoiled cat will not eat frozen meat, stale milk, or rotten fish. It must eat all the fresh. All of his inveterate laziness suddenly disappears when the hostess  comes in with a pail of milk or a fisherman with a fresh catch.)
 The smell of the lake and reed, fog, and greenery a fisherman brings into the house, along with the fish. The fisherman tries to get home in time for the cakes in the mornings. If he returned in the evening, immediately would be arranged a ring on the perch (two set at the edge of the brick, between the burning splinter, on the top pan or large saucepan).
"A soup by name "solyanka" is prepared in different Northern locations in different ways, but always with fish and eggs are beaten in milk. Onion, salt, pepper, bay leaf made it an exquisite, even an aristocratic dish on the peasant table. A quite another matter was a fish soup "ukha." We do not have to explain it because fish soup and fishing have always been lucky in Russian literature. Remember to start at least from the Chekhov story "The Burbot," or better yet Gogol's Rooster, which is entangled in the rigging, yelling to Tchichikov straight out of the water: "Come here! To us! "
    Try to throw off these episodes' satirical foam. It is almost impossible to read the same "Burbot" in a serious vein. It will bare the eternal interest to the poetry of water, fire, grass. This poetry condenses at a fishing campfire like a double or triple fish soup, which satiates even the hungriest and tired man after a dozen of spoons.
 Imagine the height of the haymaking season when every bone aches from fatigue and when there is nothing more precious than a comforting, healthy sleep. But someone accidentally voiced an idea. Silent types in a moment become talkative, old become young. Fatigue is gone. And now they drag from nowhere the fishnet and as soon as they reach the river, throw off clothes quickly, and even there is still fog start fishing.
    The same passion, accumulating from the evening in a child's soul, wakes a sweet sleeping boy in the dewy dawn and hurrying him along with the morning herd of fishermen toward a river or lake.
    The fish is boiled, roasted, baked, dried, salted and cured. A real fisherman would make the double-boiled fish soup: when into the broth, cooked with small fish (ruffs, perches, sunfish) were put a valuable fish (pike, perch, burbot, and bream) and boiled again. Bream, pickerel, pike baked in rye dough, the master would open up and always bone by the bone analyzed the fish's head, with a pike head trying to find the ivory cross. The head of large bream from soup served up in a sign of honour to the guest, but not everyone can deal with it. An inept eater could throw out the most delicious - the brain and the tongue.
Dried fish was cooked during the fasts, on the road and during the haymaking, after crumbling it and finely rubbing in the palms. The big fish was usually salted. Many people love the pies fish salted with a "gamy" scent, preferring it to fresh fish. Salty roe was delicious, for example, roe from pike, burbot, and roach. Fresh roe was mixed with milk and put in a hot oven. Fish pies were often baked with milk, and fresh roe was also used for the burbot's liver.