A Northern way of life like a person (unless he is an orphan) had in Nature relatives and good acquaintances: some were very close, others more distant. For example, of all of the domesticated grains closest to the people's lives, of course, was the rye, not in vain called mother, nurse.
Among the trees, it is the birch tree, sung in songs, and among the mushrooms, of course, is the saffron milk cup mushroom. None of the mushrooms could compete with it, as the saffron cap, like fish, can be cooked, pickled, baked in a pie, and even slightly salted could be consumed raw.
In the year of the plentiful mushrooms, people salted mushrooms in tubs, ate with potatoes and pancakes, cooked until the haymaking time. Still, the soup of salted mushrooms or dried butter mushrooms fell behind meat, fish and other soups. Although, perhaps, it was because of the low-cost, accessible to any sluggard, probably because it quickly becomes boring.
If it was a poor harvest of saffron cup mushrooms, then you could pick up milk caps or tops, but if there was no even such, then at least some mushrooms appear in the autumn.
For drying in abundance procured Slippery Jack mushrooms (boletus didn't grow everywhere). In the midst of the summer, they were picked up for frying, the brown skin skinned, and they were sautéed in the saucepan. "No, so precious are the mushrooms as the condiment,s" - the saying goes. We dried them in the warm oven, then strung them on a thread, hung them under the ceiling, or dumped them into a wooden box. Unfortunately, the aroma of these mushrooms was not recognized and loved by everyone, as not everyone could freely at any time walk in the pasture with a mushroom basket.
Gathered mushrooms children, the elderly and disabled, the rest have done so only in passing, by fits and starts, and sometimes in secret. The same can be said about gathering berries, forest angelica, sorrel, and gathering of birch sap. Everything depended on what time was berries ripened and whether people got under the roof grain and flax, whether were done stacks of hay.
Even in the late autumn for women was hard to find time to go pick cranberries, without which northern life is unthinkable. First, gathered cranberries were rolled in the sieve, like peas, discarding the remains of moss and other impurities. Then, for the winter, they were frozen. Brought in from the frost, berries were chattering like pebbles. Finally, they were cooked as jelly and used in drinks, pressed for a meal with pancakes.
In autumn, cranberries were added to coleslaw, into hot tea. We ate it, of course, just like that. With the abundance of cranberries, sometimes successfully competed for lingberries. This is the most esteemed berry in the northern Russian national cuisine. It was soaked (like apples in central Russia) but more often steamed. In steamed lingberries, many poured wort, so it was preserved better. People ate pancakes with lingberries, with oatmeal, porridge-welded, in milk, put berries into tea, made a drink from it and just regaled "over" after meals.
Women after childbirth and convalescent patients always somehow wanted lingberries.
Except for the under-snow cranberries, the first berries in the forest were wild strawberries after the winter. It is difficult to imagine how many people were brought up with these very early, the brightest, reddest, and most fragrant, sweetest berries! Yes, "brought up," because education is most important in early childhood.
The first spring of childhood, when you were first admitted into the warm, sunny forest mysteriously rustling, the most memorable, and the first berries of spring is always the wild strawberry.
And suppose there is a berry of infancy and early childhood. In that case, it certainly is wild strawberries, connected with it even children grief, anguish waiting for mother, who walks from the haymaking, always plucked a bush with the first half-white berries. The strawberries have always been the instigator of the first fear experienced by a little child lost in the woods. The first of jubilation and immense happy relief because the gloomy, strange, rustling pine trees suddenly turn to the other side become familiar again. The smell and aroma of strawberries were born even from a half dozen ripe berries; it grew even more potent at home.
And as you do not want to give away these berries to a younger not yet capable of walking sister, as you want to eat them yourself! But here they are, these red droplets, divided equally, and the first drop of uplifting altruism washes from a child's soul the rest of resentment and animal greed. From now on, a child picking berries will never forget the young, not anticipating the sweetness of berries, but the joy of giving, the joy of generous patronage and a sense of pity for the younger, defenceless being.
And how dear his father's encouragement, how good to see that milk with the berries collected by you the whole family drinks during the meal. The next day the little novice altruists do stop neither heat nor mosquitoes nor machinations of peers. He will rush back to pick up strawberries...
Among the unpopular berries was the tart stone berry, the most available and growing in mid and late summer. The year abundant in the ash tree berries considered somehow a harbinger of fires, perhaps because the forest was indeed here and there blazed a silent flame of orange berries. Frozen, collected in autumn, ash tree berries hanging in clusters in attics were brought into the hut and adults. Its sudden transformation from bitter to sweet seemed inexplicable. Among the marsh berries, blueberries were the most hated. They cannot be dried, and all are watery and were collected only when there were no bilberries.
The same dalliance felt toward red currants. Alone among berries stand out the cloudberry, which is somewhat noble, not similar to any other, with a fantastic honey taste. The taste of this berry varies greatly depending on the degree of ripeness. The ripeness of collected cloudberry changes in a few hours. It quickly becomes soft, amber-yellow from white, hard and crunched.
Raspberries and black currants berries were collected for sweets and dried for medicinal purposes and elderberry. Elderberry, however, very rarely survived until such a moment. Adolescent boys hung on the trees on holidays as the thrushes for hours. Very rare, but the most delicious berries were now disappeared arbutus berry.
Asked what would she have cooked on the non-fast day, Anfisa Ivanovna replied: "The cabbage soup ("size") was not called soup because the onions and potatoes are not added to the cabbage."
Usually, it had a piece of meat and cabbage and even oatmeal cereal." Then, after the cabbage soup followed potato pancakes, or fried potatoes with bacon bits, sprinkled with grain, to be satiated, people ate yogurt, sometimes curds in milk, or in the same yogurt.
Many kinds of porridge were cooked in milk from different cereals, egg omelets prepared as potato pancakes, and oatmeal cereals mixed with sour milk and drenched with fresh milk, which is called "with glaze." On a weekday, the oat crepes or barley pancakes and pies were made with 3 kinds of flours.
When asked about cooking during Lent, mother responded by saying: "Pea was cooked densely or cabbage soup with oatmeal cereal, potatoes eaten with linseed oil. And if the pea soup or cereal came out too watery, then it was converted into a "cracker soup," crushed rye crackers into the soup. And when the peas with barley were prepared, barley was soaked and pounded raw in a mortar, with removed shells. Also, the onion was cooked with cranberries.
People ate steamed rutabagas, fermented cabbage and potatoes, peas jelly and oatmeal pudding with linseed oil, fish soup, black radish with kvas, soup with saffron milk cap mushrooms or dried mushrooms. Speaking of the peasant (and not just a peasant) Northern cuisine, one should not forget about the unique features of the Russian stove. The oven, after all, coals and ashes swept away, did not boil the food, did not fry, but slowly steamed and heated, preserving the taste, aroma and other properties of the product.
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