Soviet Hiking Recipes

Editor's Note

This is a field collection by Irina Tereshkina - hiking recipes with a strong "flavor" of Soviet tourism: alcoholic tinctures, dishes for the cauldron and fish soup. A rather specific set of products for a modern reader (fish from the White Sea), but I was interested in reading it at least from an ethnographic point of view.

Rhodiola rosea

Rhodiola rosea (golden root). Rhodiola rosea (hereinafter referred to as RR) gives a pink colour only when freshly dug and soaked briefly (after three to four weeks the brine darkens). According to the handbook "Medicinal Plants", RR has a clearly tonic and general strengthening effect, similar to ginseng but less toxic. For medicinal purposes 40- and 70-percent alcohol infusions are used (in our case only the 40-percent). Given the clearly non-medical use of the tincture, it should be noted that with unrestrained consumption the drink can cause insomnia, mild deafness (blocked ears) and colour shifts. For a long time outside an alcohol solution RR keeps in dried form, almost without losing its medicinal properties. Medicinal concentration: finely chopped root is packed into a bottle to the top and covered with 40-degree brine; after two weeks of simmering it can be taken (once the brine is drunk, you can refill about five more times: the aroma remains; as for medicinal properties, I am not sure). At home I strongly advise against taking the concentrate by the glass: the tone can rise so far that an ambulance will be needed to put it down (the same one that is 03), especially for people with heart trouble (RR seems to raise blood pressure a lot). Still, a small addition of RR brine to vodka drinks in the evening effectively takes the edge off a morning hangover. Especially successful is a mix of brines: RR, pine-nut tincture, tincture on walnut partitions, Eleutherococcus tincture, Manchurian aralia tincture. The ingredients are mixed and diluted with vodka (or a 40% alcohol solution) to a pleasant-tasting consistency. A drink stronger than 40% is strictly not recommended.

Here are my options for preparing and infusing RR. The freshly dug root must be washed in cold water, cleaned of thin rootlets, corked-over and rotten patches, and cut into small slices (like carrots for soup). Now you can either throw it straight into vodka or 70% alcohol, or dry it in the warmth but out of direct sun, and then infuse it. Fill the bottle about one-third with chopped root. It is not recommended to dry rhizomes that have not been finely chopped: the root turns into a cork, and there is no use in it. If after digging the root you still have to walk or ride for a couple of days, do not put it in a plastic bag: it spoils. Better wrap it in a rag.

About alcohol

If the drinking qualities of the spirit you brought do not satisfy the crew, you can try to purify it with activated charcoal. You need a lot of charcoal, and the stocks the doctor packed for people with stomach trouble will not save you. To make activated charcoal we take a birch log and burn it until stable coals form, set a container of water next to it and dump the hot coals into that water (simpler: shove the log into the water, pull it out, scrape off the top charcoal layer, repeat until you have enough sorbent). Acceptable cleaning quality comes at 1/4 bottle of charcoal per bottle of solution (solution, not spirit); cleaning time is a day, with periodic shaking. The mixture is cleared of charcoal dust through whatever filter is at hand and served (even passed through a rag it has a black tint, for which on our collective farm it was named "chernushka"). I tested this trick myself more than once, starting in '91, when thanks to perestroika a sailor was distilling spirit from free ethyl acetate but did not have time to clean it properly. The first attempt to drink it recalled the well-known slogan: "tomorrow's hangover - today!"

In fact the packing list should include Polyphepan. Far more effective than charcoal, and it does not stain the spirit. By the way, seriously, it is worth actually taking it in the first-aid kit. It helps very well in any food poisoning as a super-powerful adsorbent. Of course, eating it is like chewing peat. But it helps very well.

Smurdyuk (Tuvan) - spirit with water, in taste almost indistinguishable from shop vodka. When mixing spirit and water you must pour the spirit into the water and never the other way round. After mixing, add a few crystals of table salt per litre of drink, sugar on the tip of a knife and citric acid on the tip of a knife. Be careful with the salt: if you overdo it, you will notice. A slight excess of sugar and citric acid is not so obvious. After these are added, a chemical reaction is noticeable. When it finishes, our drink needs to stand 1 hour in a cold place.

Drinks

The best extracting properties for alcohol tinctures belong to 70% spirit. Drinking THIS is, of course, not very pleasant. It should be diluted to ~40%.

In our company two kinds of tincture are very popular: on pine-nut shells, and "ink", a tincture on bilberry. The nutshell tincture is interesting because it infuses very quickly and has a handsome coffee colour. "Ink" is named for the characteristic colour of the finished product.

"Zukovka" - spirit diluted with river water with Zukko powder added for taste and colour. "Pongomovka" - spirit with boiled water and lemon peels, about 50 degrees. "Charyshevka" - simply spirit with water from the Charysh.

"Bouquet of Spring." Made only in spring - from swollen blackcurrant buds that have not yet begun to open. A glass of buds, 3 glasses of 70% spirit. Infuse from 1 to 3 days, do not keep it longer. Add nothing. Before use, filter and dilute to the strength you want. Do not squeeze the buds - what is left in them is left.

"Nesmeyanovka." Ingredients: a glass of cranberries, a glass of sugar, a glass of spirit. Mash the cranberries thoroughly with the sugar, pour in the spirit, close tightly and infuse at least 2 weeks. Better a month, and better by the radiator. Then filter and squeeze the cranberry mash. You get a slightly cloudy liquid of a very beautiful colour. For clarifying, filtration or centrifuging may be recommended. Or you can just let it settle and pour off the clear top. Taste and dilute to taste. "Nesmeyanovka" has a characteristic feature: it goes down very easily, but the effect is very strong. Thanks to the extra sugar it is especially prized by the ladies.

I believe the term for getting thoroughly pickled came from consuming the next product. Whole cranberries are covered with good spirit (good meaning ethyl and clean). It infuses for a month. More precisely, at least a month - equilibrium arrives, and after that the system does not change. The cranberries swell and become sprawling. Before use the liquid fraction is poured off; you can dilute it (neat it is about 50 percent) and add sugar to taste. Served as a drink. The berries are dusted with powdered sugar and served as a snack. Non-drinkers or light drinkers pile onto the berries, and the effect exceeds all expectations.

"Coffee liqueur." This liquid has many virtues, but two of them are especially relevant on a hike: 1) speed of preparation: once the fire is going, the process takes half an hour; 2) good "drinkability" - I have not yet met a single person who disliked the liqueur. Take 1 litre of spirit, dilute with 1 l of water, set aside for a while. 5 glasses of water in a pot plus 3 tbsp sugar, bring to a boil, take off the heat, add 6-7 tablespoons of any instant coffee (even Pele), stir well, then pour into the diluted spirit, cool, consume. Certain aesthetes squeeze a couple of lemons; if there is time to infuse, they throw those lemons into the pot of liqueur.

Cocktail "Despair". A half-litre mug of river water, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, two centimetres of Zhemchug ("Pearls") toothpaste (better take domestic paste; imported stuff lathers hard), three lumps of sugar, and spirit - whatever is left at the bottom of the empty bottle. Everything is mixed thoroughly under the quartermaster's watchful eye.

Lemon (lime) is dried in a dark, ventilated place for about 4 months (more is fine). Then with a heavy object (a hammer, for example) the said fruit is smashed and put into a container of spirit (clean medical). After some time (more than 3 days) this infusion is carried on the trip, where it is diluted with camp water to the degree optimal for the team. Sugar and black pepper to taste.

A litre of spirit to a litre of any cherry juice, one to one.

"Grog" - spirit with hot tea and sugar.

"Baileys" - spirit with Nesquik (if there is no Nesquik, cocoa + condensed milk will do).

We dilute spirit (vodka) with last year's lingonberries, previously crushed in a little water. The recipe is especially useful when there are no fresh berries yet (but you can find plenty of old ones).

Spirit diluted with (cold) Ginger&Cinnamon tea. Usually nobody drinks these sachets on their own, so they are left over, and with spirit they go down a storm. Especially when, as the drink dwindles, ONLY spirit is added to it.

"Black Captain." Instant coffee, cinnamon, vanilla (to taste). Sugar (again to taste). Spirit. Hot water. Strength about 20°, working temperature around 60 deg. Celsius. If it is not drunk at once, it is warmed in a kan.

Food

Once we lost some of the food on a trip, and a good share of what was lost was stew and buckwheat. We had to improvise with what was left and make heavy use of forage. Plenty of sorrel and nettle went into the soup. We fried wild garlic. Rice went very well with mushrooms. But the pinnacle of culinary art was a dish called "mai-shabak". That is boiled noodles with canned "Caspian sprat in tomato". The dish took its name from the cans, which came from Kazakhstan, and on the label in Russian letters it said "mai-shabak". You could eat THIS only by chasing it with garlic and wild garlic.

Seaweed is marinated and served with sunflower oil.

Even plain pasta can be cooked in different ways: boil it until it dissolves in the water; blow it out and rinse first; fry the dry pasta, then boil; soak in water, then shape cakes from the mass and fry over the fire (you can make sausages and wind them on a stick).

When only lard and sugar are left, the first is sprinkled with the second. It is called "let fats burn in the fire of carbohydrates".

"Irish soup" - soup from Podravka borscht, assorted "hot mugs", Maggi and a packet of Mivina (Korean noodles).

Marinated mushrooms. Boil the mushrooms (not long, about fifteen minutes after the water boils) with salt; if you have them, add peppercorns and bay leaf. Drain the water, let the mushrooms cool, dump them into a special container - a plastic bottle or a plastic box with a tight lid. Add essence drop by drop. Garlic too (better chopped coarse), onion (a little), blackcurrant leaves (bruise them slightly). If you manage to marinate at lunch, you can already eat them at dinner.

Do not scald saffron milk caps. Wash, salt, add vinegar, a little vegetable oil, onion. The saffron milk caps take on a whitish colour. Ready in 15-30 minutes. The same with russula, but somehow they are not great - they taste bitter.

Dried diced potatoes and dried carrots can be cooked in a microwave.

Julienne. Pour vegetable oil into the bottom of the pot (with a generous hand). Chop the mushrooms, preferably small, and throw them into the hot oil for 20-30 minutes. Salt. Stir often, or they will burn. Dilute powdered milk with water to the consistency of thin sour cream, pour into the pot. Add flour - a couple of tablespoons, and if you have it - finely chopped cheese. All this should bubble another 10-15 minutes. Finely shredded onion goes in with the mushrooms. But if you fry the chopped onion separately and throw it into the pot right after the "sour cream" is poured in, the julienne will taste better. You can add mustard for heat. Julienne can be eaten hot or cold - spooned onto bread.

Fish

"Paella a mariscada." This is done at the sea, in our case on the White Sea. Take rice, the ratio is: 1 mug of rice to 2 mugs of boiling water (that makes two portions; for a team you need more, accordingly). The rice cooks on a small fire; while it bubbles, mussels are gathered. Onion is fried in sunflower oil (not too hard), chopped garlic is added (a lot!), all this is sprinkled with seasoning, parsley is best, and almost at once freshly gathered mussels are tipped into the same pan, still in their shells. As soon as the shells open a little, everything is dumped into the pot of rice and stirred. The whole trick is that when the mussels open they give juice, and the rice soaks in that juice. You have to eat this at once! Eating mussels is simple: clamp the shell in your fist and fork out the meat. In camp you can use a finger. And then the shell is licked thoroughly. You can also add finely cut fish (fillet) - before the mussels. Shrimp too. And in general, the more seafood, the better.

Zander and perch are best stewed whole, as they are - with gills and all the rest. If the skin is intact, the gills and gall bladder stay intact too. They have to be removed carefully at the table. It is done like this: you open the fish along the spine, unfold it like a book, all the guts stay in a compact heap. You take them out and eat the rest, using the skin as a plate.

Sashimi from fresh grayling. Take wasabi, dilute it with soy sauce (one to three), and dip fillet of freshly caught grayling into that mash.

Fish he (hoe). Cut fillets from freshly caught fish (picking out the bones will drive you mad), sprinkle with pepper and spices to taste and marinate in vinegar (6%) for two to three hours.

Taimen with bazhe sauce. The walnut (ground) will have to be brought from home. Take a taimen, gut it, rip the gills out by the roots, sprinkle with salt, a little red pepper, wrap in foil and bury in the coals. Take walnut (I speak like Georgians, in the singular), ground in a mincer (about 300 grams shelled). Dilute with water to the consistency of rather thin sour cream. Gradually add khmeli-suneli, crushed (must be crushed, and with salt!) garlic and a tablespoon of vinegar (or even better - pomegranate juice). The sauce should taste harmonious, that is, if you feel the garlic standing out strongly, you need to add khmeli-suneli. The fish is taken from the coals, unwrapped and cooled. Then pieces are broken off, put in a bowl and poured generously with sauce. The bowl is secretly set under a bush and stands there about an hour (so the fish soaks in the sauce), after which you can eat.

Grayling under marinade. Take the grayling; the loafing contingent gets a sniff; your own hands must stay clean throughout the procedure below. By cutting, the head, guts, fins and scales, if any, are removed. Then the carcass is cut into pieces, salted, poured with vegetable oil in the amount needed so the pieces are covered with an oil film; vinegar, bay leaf, peppercorns and chopped onion are added in small amounts. A few stones must go on top for weight, 3-4 kilograms. Then the kan with this product is hidden in a secluded spot, and a reliable guard is certainly posted. After at least an hour, better two, the container is brought into the light of day, beer is poured and...

Nonsense. Freshly landed grayling is gutted, the fillet is sliced thin into an enamel mug or bowl, sprinkled with salt and just a little ground pepper. After 15-20 minutes, with vodka from a flask.

Fish soup. Small fry, if any, without gutting or cleaning, plus the heads and spines of large and noble fish (if they appeared in the process) - into a gauze, and boil in boiling water until they fall apart into mush. Then throw them out. Rinse the gauze and use it again. Though you need not throw out pike heads: you can suck the jaws. Large perch are lazy to scale, so just gut them, again into gauze (it should be bigger) and boil there until done. That is, so they do not fall to mush, but are not raw either. Salt the water first. Take them out, dump them from the gauze onto the kan lid, let those who want deal with them. Now cook the soup on the broth you have. A peeled onion, bay leaf, pepper, other spices - to taste. Millet. Dried diced potatoes (not to be confused with mash). A little dried carrot. And then to taste, whatever turns up. Pasta is fine too. And into the same pot, about ten minutes before it is ready, pieces of gutted and cleaned pike carcass. Or other fish of similar standing, if it is being caught.

Fried fish. Pike. Gut a large or not-too-small pike, clean, cut, fry on a sheet in sunflower oil, rolled in something. Traditionally - in flour or semolina; it also rolls well in mashed potato. You can fry on kan lids, or on a baking sheet or pan brought specially.

Baked fish. Perch, pike. Gut not-too-small fish ("palm-sized" and up), clean them (or don't, if you are lazy). Stuff a ring of onion, pepper, cloves, other spices to taste into the belly. Salt. Wrap in foil. Thoroughly. Shove into the fire coals. After a while take it out and rejoice.

"Lazy" fish. Open pike, perch, whichever is larger, and gut from the back. With the spine pulled out and the head cut off (that is where they come from for the ukha). Salt, spread with a stick inserted across. Hang by the fire, or on a fire hook. Not in the flames, but in the warmth. And let it hang. Several hours. If it did not finish hanging at one camp, take it to the next and hang it there. Sooner or later it will be ready (just do not let it dry to a boot sole). You get something between baked and hot-smoked.

Salted-dried-natural fish. This is grayling and the little red one; pike is fine too. Again gut from the back, cut out the spine with the head (and into the ukha). Salt, fold the carcass, put it somewhere, hold an hour or two (even a walking day is fine...) Then take it out, spread it. Hang in the shade, in a breeze, covered with gauze so flies do not land. Alternate like that until eaten - it lies somewhere, then it hangs... Depending on circumstances.

Fish Karelian-style. You clean small fish (bleak, vendace, roach, little perch) lazily - guts only. Into a pan (or a kan) you pour a little sunflower oil. You lay a layer of small fry. On top, potatoes sliced (dried ones would probably work, you just have to soak them first). On top of that, onion cut into rings. And several layers like that, while the fish lasts. Sprinkle each layer with salt (to taste) and coarse black pepper (better crush the peppercorns between stones); ground pepper will do, though. Pour water up to the top layer, but not over it. And languish it until the potatoes are done.

Smoked fish. Fish (preferably not very large) is cleaned, salted, peppered. Smoke the fish over smouldering coals, adding young willow twigs with leaves. Smoking temperature: a hand barely endures it; time 2-3 hours. Better not overdo the willow, or the fish will taste bitter. Result: boiled-smoked fish of a golden colour.

It is convenient to smoke fish on fairly thick rods or a grate. The rods are threaded through the fish's mouth and near the tail fin, then the fish is tied tightly to the rod along its whole length with strong cotton thread, because when done it may fall off into the coals. Before eating, the thread is removed; eat together with the golden skin.

Notes

"Never boil a rag in the ukha!" Better to pour off the broth - well, we will lose half a litre of it - there is a hell of a lot of fish anyway, it was not hauled in on anyone's back.

Perch scales reasonably well while it is still alive. The longer the fish has been dead, the worse it scales; for perch this is especially true. At least one cleaned 400-gram fish per eater - it turns out very festive.

For ukha: fish + its roe, if any, + onion + spices + one carrot at most, and nothing else is needed. It comes out clear, tasty and quite nourishing. And from potatoes, millet and so on you can cook separate dishes.

Siberian ukha: a full pot of fish, peppercorns, bay leaf, water - until the pot is filled between the fish. Cook. Drink the broth, eat the fish. You can do the same with trout if the pickled trout has already worn you out, or you want to feed small sailors who cannot be given pickled fish. You need less trout, no need to pack the pot - 300 grams per eater is plenty, the broth is amazingly tender but fatty; DO NOT OVERCOOK the fish!

Fried fish. Make fillet. Two cuts along the spine with a very sharp knife until it stops at the base of the ribs, then gently along the ribs, going around the fins. In the two huge pieces of fish meat you get there are still longitudinal fork-shaped bones, but they no longer bother you when eating - they stick out of the fried fillet pieces and are easy to pull. From the spines, fins and heads cook ukha.

Collected by Iryna Tereshkina