In most restaurants and cafes, you will be offered just such a
“mixed” semi-European and semi-Crimean cuisine: Greek salad and borscht, pilaf
and kubete.
Kubete / Kubete - a
dish of Krymchak cuisine
This is a special juicy lamb pie with potatoes and onions. In
Krymchak families, kubete is prepared for the holidays. Krymchaks are an
independent people (although sometimes they are referred to as Tatars, Karaites
or Jews). There are very few of them left, but they have their own
language, religion (Judaism) and their own culinary traditions.
So, before, kubete was served hot on the table, without taking
it out of the baking sheet, solemnly. A place was vacated in the middle of
the table, then they sang: “Gelsen, gelsen, kubete, gelsen!” (“Come, come,
kubete, come!”). The hostess put the kubete on the table, and it was the
honorable duty of the men to cut it. First served hot stuffing, and then
cut and served crispy bottom (instead of bread). Now kubete is sometimes
sold in cafes just like meat pies, and this, of course, is not a real Krymchak
pie, but anyway, the combination of meat, potatoes and onions is very tasty!
Dishes from all kinds of
vegetables .
Among the favorite dishes in the Crimea, a special place is
occupied by dishes from green beans, sweet peppers, carrots, potatoes,
cauliflower and, of course, eggplants. In Ukraine and Crimea, eggplants
are sometimes called “blue” eggplants, which is still a mystery to me.
They are fried, cooked with garlic, added to stews, stewed with
beef, lamb or chicken. A good vegetable snack is saute: these are fried
eggplants with tomatoes, carrots, onions and garlic.
Fish and seafood
There are no comrades for the taste and color, but if we talk
about the most delicious and famous Black Sea fish, these are flounder, mullet,
red mullet (although the small Black Sea horse mackerel is also good). For
seafood, try mussels fried with onions and rice. Many do not like mussels
(they say, some strange mollusks), but they have a pleasant marine taste.
But the meat of the rapana mollusk can be quite tough (once we
ourselves bought raw rapanas on the market and began to cook them. We didn’t
succeed: the rapanas looked like rubber bands. But this, of course, does not
mean that in a restaurant you they will serve the same hard rapans). If
you are lying on the beach in the very heat, and you are offered to buy boiled
shrimp, think about it: maybe they have been sold for a long time, and they are
in a plastic bag, and on the street it is +30 in the shade. It's easy to
get sick in the middle of summer!
Lagman is another
interesting dish
Lagman is not a Crimean, but a Sino-Arabian dish, but in Crimea
it has somehow “taken root” and everyone likes it. It's noodles with meat
and gravy. Depending on the type of noodles and gravy used, there are many
varieties of lagman. Sometimes it even looks like a thick spicy soup.
Then the lagman has a deep orange color: it includes bell
peppers, carrots, some potatoes, garlic and pepper. Not surprisingly,
lagman is a very satisfying dish (maybe even too satisfying for the summer),
but it's worth a try.
Chebureks are not such an exotic
dish.
They are also called "chir-chir" and also belong to
the Krymchak cuisine. In Crimea, you can buy them almost everywhere, but
keep in mind that cooking real pasties is an art that is not accessible to
everyone. Pasties should not be crunchy on the teeth or be tough. There
may be only two places in the whole city where pasties are cooked so that they
melt in your mouth. Recently, chebureks with potatoes have appeared, as
well as with cheese. And although many say that this is a hoax, not
pasties - why not try it? Unleavened dough, from which chebureks are made,
goes well with cheese. Or maybe you want to cook pasties yourself (to
practice before going to the Crimea)? Then see the recipe below.
Crimean recipe for chebureks
Dough: 4-5 cups flour, 1.5 tbsp. spoons of sunflower oil, 1
teaspoon of salt, water as needed. Filling: minced meat - lamb or beef
(previously only lamb was used) - 0.5-0.6 kg, 1-2 onions, parsley, salt and
pepper to taste, water to make the minced meat juicy.
Preparation of pasties in the Crimean style: knead a stiff
dough, knead well, cover with a towel, let stand in a warm place (no drafts). Prepare
the filling; finely chop the onion and herbs. Cut the dough into
pieces, as for pies. Roll each piece into a thin rod and, twisting from
both ends in the form of a spiral to the middle, fold the dough like a bagel. Cover
all blanks in a bowl or on a board with a towel. Roll out 8-10 blanks with
a rolling pin in two steps: first into circles with a diameter of 8-9 cm, then
each to a minimum thickness of 15-16 cm.
Put minced meat (a full teaspoon) on one half, close with the
second half, bend the pie in half and fasten the edges well with your fingers. Cut
the cheburek around the circumference with a tyrhol (cutter) or the edge of a
saucer. Spread the prepared chebureks on a towel or on a floured board. Do
not accumulate a lot of blanks before frying, so that the dough does not get
wet from the minced meat. Pasties are fried over low heat in a deep bowl -
a cauldron. Pour sunflower oil into the cauldron so that pasties float on
the surface. Heat the oil until a light haze appears, then carefully
immerse the chebureks (2-3 so that they fit freely on the surface of the oil). Fry,
turning, until golden brown. It is better to turn and remove pasties with
a slotted spoon so that the oil drains. Put the finished chebureks on a
dish. Serve hot.
In addition to chebureks, there is also samsa :
these are special triangular meat pies that are baked in a clay oven (tandoor). Samsa
(like cakes) is an Uzbek dish, but it is also cooked with pleasure in the
Crimea. Some restaurants even began to build tandoors. The tandoor
looks like a large clay pot, to the walls of which flat cakes and samsa are
stuck. The samsa dough is dense, fried - and inside, under a golden crust,
there is a juicy filling.
Let's get sweet?
Honey baklava
Baklava, which is sold along the coast, looks like an intricate
diamond-shaped patty, inserted one into the other and smeared with honey. The
dough is crumbly, thin, like plates.
But this is a "light" version of baklava. And
baklava itself is a very sweet pie with nuts and honey (Baku baklava). It
is soft, crumbly, and if you are a sweet lover, this dish will suit you very
well.
Do you know what jam is made
from in Crimea?
From apricots, strawberries, izyumerik (small Crimean plums),
from quince, dogwood, raspberries. Even rose petals! If you
accidentally come across a restaurant of Ukrainian cuisine somewhere, try
syrniki with raisins and rose jam. This jam all consists
of the most delicate petals and retains the aroma of roses . Maybe
you will be able to try dogwood jam: these are dark red oblong berries that
give the jam a very pleasant sour taste. In addition, dogwood is very good
for health, and jam from it is no worse than raspberry.
In the markets you can find fresh honey (including
honeycomb) and special sweets: figs and nuts in honey. This is a rather
expensive treat, but it looks very beautiful! In a jar of golden honey -
hazelnuts and almonds.
Of course, this is not all that you can try in the Crimea. There
are dozens and hundreds of other delicious things, but space must be left for
your comments!
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