Original and varied, Russian cuisine is famous for exotic soups, cabbage schi and solyanka, which is made of assorted meats. Russians are great lovers of pelmeni, small Siberian meat pies boiled in broth.
Every housewife of any experience has her own recipes for pies, pickles, and sauerkraut. Even more varied is the choice of recipes for mushrooms, one of the most abundant and nourishing gifts of our woods. They are fried, pickled, salted, boiled and what not.
"No dinner without bread," goes the Russian saying. Wheat loaves have dozens of varieties. As to rye bread, Russians eat more of it than any nation in the world--a peculiarity of the Russian diet.
As the Russian custom has it, a festive table isn't worth this name without a bottle of vodka. Russians are traditionally hearty drinkers:as good whiskey shall come from Scotland, and port from Portugal, so Russian wheat vodka is the world's best. We have an amazing variety to offer, from the clear, colorless Moskovskaya and Stolichnaya to all kinds of bitters with herbs and spices.
Of our folk soft drinks, kvass is the best-known. Made of brown bread or malted rye flour, it goes down best on a sultry summer day. If you add it to chopped-up meat and vegetables, you get okroshka, an exquisite cold soup