Belarusian cuisine is considered to be one of the most diverse cuisines in Europe.
First of all I’d like to mention dishes from potato, which is called “the second bread” in Belarus. Potato is at the Belarusian table every season and in any state - fried, boiled, baked, stuffed. Potato is an ingredient for soups, salads and patties. The most popular dishes from potato are draniki, pancakes, babki, kolduny, kletski. The second place in Belarusian national cuisine belongs to meat and meat products, especially to pork and salted pork fat. Belarusians eat a lot of vegetables such as carrots, cabbage, radish, peas, etc. Belarusian national cuisine also offers fresh, dried, salted and pickled mushrooms and various berries.
When speaking about drinks, the specialties of the cuisine are myadovukha, berezavik, kvas. Kholodnik and okroshkaare traditional cold soups. My favourite dish is borscht which is a beet soup served hot or cold, usually with sour cream.
Modern Belarusian cookery is based on old national traditions . Dishes from potatoes are very common in Belarusian cuisine. Potatoes are called «the second bread» in Belarus. There are special potato cafes in the country where you can try various potato dishes. Potatoes are included into many salads, served together with mushrooms, meat; different pirazhki (patties) and baked puddings are made from it. The most popular among the Belarusians are traditional draniki, thick pancakes, prepared from shredded potatoes. A lot of place in the diet of the Belarusians belongs to meat and meat products, especially to the pork and salted pork fat. Belarusians eat fresh, dried, salted and pickled mushrooms, and also berries such as bilberry, wild strawberries, raspberries, cranberry and some others. Zatirka is the most popular of flour dishes. Pieces of specially prepared dough are boiled in water and then poured over with milk . An integral part of any dinner is soup. It can be hot or cold. Belarusians are fond of borscht, a thick and rich beet and cabbage soup made with grains, potato and meat. The Belarusian khaladnik , a cold borscht made of beets, beet leaves and served with sour cream, hard-boiled eggs, and boiled potatoes will be pleasant on a hot summer day. Every possible salads are prepared from cabbage, carrots, beans. Bon appetit!
Do you like cooking?
No, to tell the truth I don’t like cooking. It takes a lot of time and frankly speaking I am not very good at cooking and my dishes are not always tasty.
What questions can you ask a friend who has invited you to a pot-luck party?
What dish shall I bring?
Where will the party take place?
Shall I bring some plates or cups?
Shall I bring some drinks?
Who else is invited to the party?
What questions can you ask a waiter when you are ordering a meal in a café?
What would you recommend me to order?
Have you got any vegetarian dishes?
What is the speciality of your café?
Is this dish rich in calories?
What national dish can you recommend a tourist to taste in Belarus ?
I would recommend to sample “ draniki” To my mind this dish is a speciality of our country, it is delicious. You can also taste borchs and holodnik.
Scientists say that fast food is unhealthy but teenagers can’t stop eating it. What do you think about it?
Personally I try to avoid fast food because it is high in calories but lacking in nutrition. Fast food is high in saturated fat and this type of fat is associated with a greater risk of cancer. What is more, eating a lot of fast food leads to high levels of cholesterol in the blood, which can cause heart diseases. Moreover, if you consume a lot of fast food you are likely to gain weight. So, I think teenagers should make an effort and try to limit the amount of fast food they eat.
Do you personally follow the rules of a healthy way of life? Why(not)? Yes , I personally try to follow the rules of a healthy way of life , I try to avoid junk food ,sweets, soda, eat more vegetables and fruit, have regular meals, spend some time in the open air, and take enough exercise.
Can you tell me how to cook one of your favourite dishes?
Frankly speaking I am not very fond of cooking but I can tell you how to prepare draniki.
First you should peel some potatoes, then you should grate them, add an egg , some flour, some salt, mix everything and make little pancakes on a frying pan . Serve your draniki hot with sour cream or butter. Bon appetite!
5.Most of the families want to have a big kitchen in the flat at the same time they have a meal together less and less often. What do you think about it?
To my mind it, is a pity if a family don’t have time to have a meal together because it could be a very nice tradition when people can become closer, share their experiences, learn more about each other’s lives and enjoy a delicious home-made meal. It also unites a family when the members of the family cook, lay the table, and wash up together. It is a pity in my family we seldom have meals together, we get together on some special occasions such as birthdays, holidays and I wish we could have more meals together.
What cafes would you recommend to visit in your place?
I would recommend you to visit sportcafe Pautina because the food is delicious there, you can eat sushi there, the food is not expensive, and the interior is modern and beautiful.
Do you know many recipes?
To tell the truth I am not fond of cooking , it takes a lot of time, and I am not good at it. So I cannot say that I know a lot of recipes but I think that if I need some recipe I will be able to find it on the Internet.
Сочинение на английском языке Белорусская еда/ Belarusian Food с переводом на русский язык
На английском языке. Belarusian Food
Belarusian cuisine is considered to be one of the most diverse cuisines in Europe. It has been largely influenced by Baltic, Slavic and even partially German cuisines. Traditional dishes of this country mainly consist of vegetables, meats and breads. Today, visitors of Belarus can try peasant cuisine of the countryside as well as the sophisticated dishes for the nobility. A traditional peasant meal has included a soup and a main course. One of the most delicious Belarusian soups is called “khaladnik”. It’s a cold type of borscht, which is mainly eaten in summer. This beetroot soup is eaten with sour cream. Potato is the main ingredient of many dishes. It is known as the second bread of Belarusians. Perhaps, everyone has heard of “draniki”. These are thick pancakes made of shredded potatoes. Meat is also widely used in Belarusian cuisine, especially pork. One of the traditional holiday dishes is called “pyachysta”. It is a delicious stew made of large chunks of pork or beef. Slightly smoked salty pork with onions and garlic is also popular. Most meat dishes in this country are served with potatoes or other vegetables. Historically, Belarus has little access to any type of seafood however there are some special fish-based dishes. For example, “yushka” - a fish soup boiled without any seasonings. In general, seasonings are not very popular in Belarusian cuisine. The most famous hard drink in Belarus is “harelka”. It’s similar to Russian vodka, but can be flavored with birch sap or forest herbs. Other traditional Belarusian drinks include kvass, beer, myadukha, etc. Traditional desserts, that are famous far beyond the country, are sweet pancakes with cottage cheese.
Перевод на русский язык. Белорусская еда
Белорусская кухня считается одной из самых разнообразных кухонь в Европе. На нее в значительной степени повлияли балтийские, славянские и даже частично немецкие кухни. Традиционные блюда этой страны в основном состоят из овощей, мяса и хлеба. Сегодня посетители Беларуси могут попробовать как крестьянскую кухню сельской местности, так и изысканные блюда для дворянства. Традиционная крестьянская еда включала суп и основное блюдо. Один из самых вкусных белорусских супов называется «холодник». Это холодная разновидность борща, которую в основном едят летом. Этот свекольный суп едят со сметаной. Картофель является основным ингредиентом многих блюд. Он известен как второй хлеб белорусов. Возможно, каждый слышал о «драниках». Это оладьи из измельченного картофеля. Мясо также широко используется в белорусской кухне, особенно свинина. Одно из традиционных праздничных блюд называется «пячысты». Это аппетитное тушеное мясо, приготовленное из больших кусков свинины или говядины. Слегка копченая соленая свинина с луком и чесноком также популярна. Большинство мясных блюд в этой стране подаются с картофелем или другими овощами. Исторически сложилось так, что Беларусь имеет ограниченный доступ к любым морепродуктам, однако есть и специальные рыбные блюда. Например, «юшка» - уха, которую готовят без каких-либо приправ. В целом, приправы не очень приветствуются в белорусской кухне. Самый известный крепкий напиток в Беларуси - это «горилка». Она похожа на русскую водку, но может быть приправлена березовым соком или лесными травами. К другим традиционным белорусским напиткам относятся квас, пиво, мядуха и т.д. Традиционный десерт, который известен далеко за пределами страны, это сладкие блинчики с творогом.
Aromatic vereshchaka, roasted juicy meat, home-cooked sausages, golden draniki, cabbage, buckwheat and pumpkin pancakes, lazanka with different layers, trickled pastries, pickles, soups with white mushrooms and herbal and berry liqueurs… the Belarusian cuisine has a lot of dishes that can pleasantly surprise even gourmets.
Here you can find the recipes which will help you cook a dinner in Belarusian style and feel the taste of Belarus’ national cuisine. Cooks from Minsk restaurants share original recipes and their own cooking secrets.
Potato pyzy
This are made from raw potato, bound with cooked potato. They take slightly longer to cook than other dumplings, but have a different flavor and texture that warrants the method. This recipe uses a cooked ground meat filling - a raw meat filling may be used, but the dumplings would take even longer to cook, and there is a danger of the potato mixture disintegrating. You may use other fillings equally successfully.
Potato sausage
Potato kishka appeared in the national cuisine in the 19th with the spread of potato (bulba), which is called "the second bread" in Belarus. The prototype of the potato kishka was even more ancient dish - sausage made from blood and buckwheat stuffed into pork intestine (kryvyanaya kishka). By the way, according to a legend, the influential noble family Kiszka got their name because the founder of the dynasty was very fond of the sausage. There are also recipes of kishka without blood, with cooked pork.
The sausage made from grated potatoes and pork (bacon and/or meat) became very popular among Belarusians as a delicious, affordable and nourishing dish.mixture disintegrating. You may use other fillings equally successfully.
Belarusian salad
This dish was introduced in the diet of Belarusians not so long ago, but it perfectly fits the traditions of the Belarusian cuisine. Salads are based on products, which have long been used in many Belarusian recipes: liver, onion, mushrooms, pickled cucumbers.
Lazanki was introduced into the Belarusian cuisine in the 16th century. The dish consists of pieces of dough made from wheat, buckwheat, or rye flour. Basically speaking, Belarusian lazanki and Italian lasagna come from one family. Belarusian cooks formed squares (triangles) from flattened tough dough, boiled them and pour fried lard with onions on top. During the lent, they put ground poppy seeds or mashed berries into the dough. Lazanki was also baked in pots together with meat or cabbage and stewed with sour cream.
Draniki is one of the most popular and famous dishes of the Belarusian cuisine.
Although there are many similar recipes for potato pancakes in various countries, Belarusian draniki is famous for its rich taste, national culinary secrets and the floury Belarusian potatoes - bulba - with their fluffy, dry texture that is perfect for making potato pancakes.
Floury Belarusian potatoes have great cooking qualities, which makes potato dishes particularly tasty.
Today Belarus is a not a world leader in potato growing, but the country is a leader in per capita production and consumption of potatoes. According to statistics, a Belarusian consumes over 180kg of potatoes per year.
Potatoes are the basis for many dishes in the Belarusian national cuisine; there are plenty of recipes. Traditional Belarusian dishes are now enhanced by new interesting products and sauces; they become healthier while remaining very tasty.
Zrazy
Zrazy - stuffed meat balls - is one of the specialties of the national cuisine. This dish traces its roots back to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The first written record of this dish dates back to the times of the Grand Duke and King Jagailo (15th century).
This savory dish was served to Zhigimont II who was married to Bona Sforza, a representative of the powerful Milanese House of Sforza. The Italian princess liked the Belarusian traditional dish that reminded her of Italian cotoletta alla milanese.
At first zrazy was the food of the nobility, but later it found its way to the table of every Belarusian home. The dish is called differently depending on a region; you might here the names ‘zavivantsy’ or ‘krucheniki’.
Classic zrazy are made from beef. The meet is pounded, folded and rolled with a filling inside. It can be stuffed with mushrooms, liver, vegetables, eggs and cereals.
Mazurka
Another traditional dessert of Belarusian and Polish cuisine is the mazurka. This cake with a rich taste and wonderful aroma is prepared very quickly, and it also has the property of insisting, enriched with taste over time. That is, a day or two after cooking mazurka will become even more fragrant and tastier. As a traditional stuffing for pie, poppy, raisins, nuts are used. However, often poppy is replaced with dried fruits (dried apricots, prunes) to your liking, and you can also experiment with nuts.
Belarusian national cuisine has evolved over the centuries. Belarusian culinary traditions represent a mix of simple recipes used by commoners and a sophisticated cuisine of the nobility, an extensive use of local ingredients and unusual way of cooking.
Old Belarusian recipes have preserved till nowadays, and interest in them amoung county’s visitors is increasing .
In restaurants with national colours you can taste not only Belarusian traditional cuisine but also exquisite dishes that were served up in residences of Belarusian magnates.
The local cuisine can be tasted in farmsteads where the cooking is often unique, common only in particular area with using only fresh farm products.
Here bread is baked according to old recipes and technologies, they cook homemade meat delicacies, cheese from cow or goat"s milk, and sweets from honey, apples and cranberries.
Today many traditional dishes are also popular in home cooking of Belarusians.
The most popular are pork stew (machanka) and vereshchaka, homemade sausages, draniki (thick potato pancakes), kolduny, kletski (dumplings), babka (baked grated potato pie), cold sorrel soup, mushroom soup...
Old Belarusian Cuisine
Belarusian cuisine was formed under the influence of two main factors:
- active farming and extensive use of local produce;
- influences of neighboring countries and migrant settlers
Therefore, Belarusian cuisine is one of the most diverse on the continent. It is similar to the Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish, but it is unique in its own way, hearty and delicious.
In the old days, each social class had its own gastronomic traditions so that Belarusian cuisine was divided into cuisine directions: peasant and bourgeois, shlyakhta and high nobility cuisines.
In Belarusian cuisine local products are widely used:
- vegetables and greens (cabbages, turnips, beets, carrots, parsnips, pumpkins, potatoes, cucumbers, onions and garlic, sorrel, nettle, quinoa, orpine roots)
- pulses (beans, peas, lentils, kidney beans)
- grains (rye, barley, oats, buckwheat)
- mushrooms (pickled, dried, powdered)
- fruit and berries (apples, pears, plums, cherries, currants, bilberries, blueberries, cranberries, raspberries, mountain ash, viburnum, rosehip)
- spices and dressings (caraway, coriander, linseed, horseradish, calamus, mustard, juniper, cherry and oak leaves)
Among them there are famous draniki, kolduny, pyzy, potato sausage, kletski, babka…
For centuries Belarusians consumed limited amounts of meat, as a rule, in special meals in the form of salted and sun-dried products. With time, the meat diet expanded. The most common forms of meat were:
- mutton
- poultry (chicken, duck, goose, turkey)
- game (elk, roe, boar, beaver)
Belarusian cuisine is also rich in fish dishes. As a rule, it is river fish (tench, sturgeon, pike, eelpout, bream, eel, trout, perch, carp). Belarusians cooked with fish yushka, dumplings,also they made salt and smoked fish. Today restaurants serve famous "Pike Perch a la Radziwill."
The most common dairy products were curd cheese (made of cow and goat milk), sour cream, and butter. Milk is a regular ingredient of many Belarusian recipes, including all kinds of soups, porridges, mokanka.
Dishes of Belarusian villagers were always hearty, relatively simple in cooking (many dishes were prepared in the oven over low heat for a long time), but always fresh: chilled or warmed food was not served!
Nobility cuisine was more exquisite, with a big variety of products and spices, including exotic ones, and, of course, with the use of more sophisticated cooking technologies. The nobles had an opportunity to indulge themselves in such dishes as aselk lips in sugared vinegar, stuffed eel, rooster broth...
Peculiarities of Belarusian cuisine
There are special features that distinguish Belarusian cuisine from culinary traditions of many other countries, give it a local color and charm.
For example, the Belarusian cuisine is characterized by quite complicated and lengthy processing of products. It includes such methods as braising, stewing, baking, cooking, blanching and roasting, with alternation of several methods in a single recipe.
In many national dishes various kinds of flour are used - flour of oats, buckwheat, peas, rye and its mixtures.
What is more, flour is not only the main ingredient of some dishes (for example, flat cakes called perepecha, special Belarusian pancakes from various kinds of flour, thick pancakes made of peas) but also it is an additive for thickening ("zakolota" for soups). From old centuries in Belarus dough was mixed without adding yeast.
Belarusian cuisine offers a great variety of dishes with vegetables. Many of them are unique in spite of the Slavonic basis.
For instance, there are soup zhur (lean,milk or meat soup) based on oat water, polivka (thin soup with cereals and vegetables),morkva (carrot soup), gryzhanka (rutabaga soup), garbuzok (pumpkin soup) and other kinds of dishes.
A special pride of the national cuisine is traditional Belarusian bread baked from rye flour, without yeast but with a specially grown leaven. It is a very good product for healthy diet .
Belarusian bread is heavy with a pleasant little sour. In old recipes they used different dressings like caraway seeds, linseeds and sunflower seeds. Sometimes bread was baked on a ‘pillow’ of birch and oak leaves.
Belarusian cuisine today
Modern Belarusian cuisine is eclectic. It has saved and revived the old national recipes, dishes from different countries of the world become popular, too.
Today restaurants offer modern versions of traditional Belarusian dishes which reflect original ideas of chefs and principles of gourmet cuisine taking into account diversity of products and seasonal changes. You will definitely appreciate such delicious dishes as:
- Marinated white mushrooms with vegetable oil, hot potatoes, pieces of toasted wheat bread and leek
- Zhur with eggs, smoked meat and sour cream
- Cutlets from buckwheat and chopped meat (grechaniki) with sour cream and leek sauce
- Draniki with apple and sour-cream sauce
- Meat sauce (vereshchaka) with buckwheat pancakes
- Bigos (a dish with sour cabbage) with smoked meat, mushrooms and prunes
- Pyachisto (large pieces of gammon)
- Pear roasted in honey with spices (a recipe of the Radziwill family)
The main changes of Belarusian cuisine during the 20th century were:
- wheat flour and dishes from it became very popular (for centuries Belarusians used mainly rye flour)
- appearing of salads
But if you are in Belarus, you must taste the national cuisine, dishes that only here can be truly Belarusian.
You will discover how delicious, interesting, and sometimes even exclusive and unpredictable Belarusian cuisine is!
Belarusian desserts
For many centuries honey was the main dessert for Belarusians. Solodukha (malt dough), kulaga (thick beverage made from berries, flour, sugar, and honey), and baked apples also were popular. Among famous recipes there are sweet pancakes with cottage cheese and pears a la Radziwill.
Today the most popular desserts are:
- ice-cream, whipped cream
- cakes
- fruits and berries (apples, pears, bilberry, cranberry, strawberry)
Vodka in Belarus
Vodka (Harelka) is the most popular strong alcoholic beverage in Belarus. It appeared in the late 15th century and gradually became one of the most common types of alcohol. Belarusians drink vodka on holidays and special occasions.