Yes. . . We’ve heard it, we know it, we agree: don’t sync our screens with our stomachs. Dietary science suggests that to feed one’s face in front of a flat screen is to . I suggest that dietary science would forgive our occasional lapse. If we asked it, dietary science would probably permit two exceptions. Synchronise snacks with the SBS screen for (a) and (b) the .
We may exempt the Cup in particular for two very sound reasons. First, it’s a marathon event which no competitive viewer can expect to conquer without endurance foods. Second, it’s a global event by which no casual viewer can expect to remain unconquered. Even folks, like me, who forget football’s for four years at a time, find some cause for fascination. And by “some cause”, we chiefly mean “recipes”.
The World Cup does, of course, involve some football, but its greater purpose is to offer a taste of a nation. So many eyes from so many places will simultaneously consume this one spectacle from one part of the world. This is not the customary global TV vision of different people divided by long conflict, but a rare one: different people united briefly by their interest in a ball.
Chicken kiev was created to serve the people. Source: SBS Food
Our global curiosity can roll beyond that ball, to the territory outside that stadium. Our culinary curiosity can draw us to ask: what, apart from football pitches, does this good earth raise for its people to cook and consume? (And the related question: can I have some?)
If you’re looking for the next wave of a New Nordic type, book a ticket.
It’s absolutely vital for those who have never tasted to learn that Russia continues to raise the things that make piroshky. I mean, have you ever popped one of these things in your dumpling hole? If not, correct this immediately. It’s a savoury doughnut, and if there’s a snack more apt than that for our winter nights with the world game, then you may call me Tolstoy. What you may not do, obviously, is (a) deep-fry when distracted by the football, or (b) suppose that the Russian recipe repertoire does not exceed (delicious) dumplings.
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Fried cabbage buns (piroshky)
This is, in fact, the biggest nation-state on earth. Russia has eleven time-zones and a vast range of climates. This has made Russian cuisine diverse. This is a nation with a complex history and present. This has made Russian cuisine quite uniform.
As any SBS Food fan knows, food is a political object. The distribution and production of food are never decided just by the demands of home cooks, but by influences far more powerful than our shopping lists. applied by the US and the EU to Russia in 2014 reduced the availability of many goods. The sanctions were tightened further this year, but not before the nation established a , a new understanding of and hyper-local eating. If you’re looking for the next wave of a type, book a ticket.
But, if you’re looking for a nation which preserves some elements of eating uniformity, do the same. The Russian Revolution, fought in no small part out of mass hunger, produced the Soviet experiment, which in turn produced identical meals.
But, if you’re looking for a nation which preserves some elements of eating uniformity, do the same.
Among the demands of the women of revolution—which we celebrate in Australia as International Women’s Day—was “!” So, for decades in the USSR, a majority of Russians ate most of their meals at state canteens. The menu items were drawn from all over the Republic and, yes, among them was a dish identical to what we in the West know as Chicken Kiev, and another to Beef Stroganoff.
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Best beef stroganoff
Today, cheap dining canteens are recreated to assuage this hunger for the past, high-end work within the margins of local produce and home cooks whose Soviet parents had abandoned the kitchen are exploring in between.
Me? I’m waiting for the piroshky dough to prove. I’ll eat these dumplings with . I’ll forget the offside rule again by morning. I won’t forget to taste the history of a nation.
