Most people are Belarussian but there are also many people from the neighbouring countries as well as Jews and 'Tatars' - Turkic speaking people who live in Europe apparently!
Belarusian food is predominantly based on meat and vegetable dishes seen in all countries in this part of Europe. It has Slavic roots but is also influenced by Polish and Lithuanian food. Dranki is the national dish - a type of potato pancake.
We really struggled to choose recipes this week - while we enjoy trying different foods there was nothing at all which sounded tasty and made us want to cook it. In the end we looked at some other bloggers choices and worked from there.
Finally we decided to make Belarus' Borscht Soup, Kotleta Pokrestyansky, Mushroom stuffed Dranki, and for dessert, Baked apples with honey.
For reasons that will become clear this is a very brief blog. For a start Gary cooked as I was shelling peas - thousands of peas.
A Belarus Borscht differs from a Russian one because it has a lot of chunky vegetables in it.
I'm not a great lover of beetroot but it is a pretty colour.
Bob helpfully guarding the recipes
- we should have left them there and gone out for dinner!!!!
Everything keeps getting pinker and then redder.
The finished dish.
Actually not that bad - Gary liked it enough to eat his and then finish off mine!
Pork chops!!!
Now onto the main course and making the Draniki.
You had to grate the potatoes and combine them with egg, milk and flour.
Then put flattened spoonfuls in the pan and add the mushroom mixture on top then another layer of potato - so the mushroom is sandwiched in the middle.
Flipping them to cook the other side was an interesting experience.
The finished meal.
Ok, I'm struggling to write this now!
We have a freezer full of pork. A friend of ours raised pigs last year and so we have half a pig in our freezer. When Gary went to take out pork chops he spotted some wrapped in brown paper - not from our friends pig! Thinking that that pork needed eating first we decided to use that.
It looked and smelt fine!
Now, as I said, nothing about any of these recipes excited us - but Belarus was the next country on our list and we were prepared to be eating a memorable meal!
It will be a memorable meal!
The meat must have gone off!!!!!
It smelt fine while it was cooking but when we each took our first bite it was immediately apparent that this meat wasn't ok at all!
eeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!! Why can I not get rid of that taste even 4 days laterrrrrrr!
In conclusion - never eat unidentified meat from the depths of the freezer!
And other than the Borshch, I have no idea what Belarusian food tastes like!
Oh yes desert. We never make desert! But luckily this week we did.
Baked apples with honey. So easy to make. Cut out the core and fill with honey and put in the oven to cook while you remove all traces of pork and mushroom product from the house!
Then eat with vanilla ice cream - mmmmmmmmmmmmm!
Oh yes Belarusian drink! 😁
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