Russian Pancakes and Indian Coffee
Hey, those sound good together
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More Food Reading:
So many cultures came up with fish sauce, including ancient Rome. It was called garum and it’s gaining a bigger fanbase than it’s had in about 1,000 years as producers start making it commercially again across the northern Mediterranean. It’s interesting, but because of how the world moves, the fish sauce that eventually morphed into ketchup came all the way from SE Asia. Garum just kept to itself more!
India’s Beloved Coffee Culture Is Little-Known Internationally
India is known as a nation of tea drinkers, but in truth, coffee is the caffeinated beverage of choice in the southern part of the country. And there is only one way to make coffee in southern India: in a cylindrical brass filter, with coffee grounds, some ground chicory, and hot water to brew a dark, rich, aromatic “decoction.” Add to this milk and an unreasonable amount of sugar and boil until the milk scalds, and you’ll get what is known as “filter kaapi.” Served in a small brass tumbler with a dabara (bowl), between which the coffee is transferred till it cools, kaapi is a drink of comfort and ceremony.
The story of how coffee came to India in the 17th century is shrouded in myth and controversy. It is said that a Sufi saint, Baba Budan, went on pilgrimage to Mecca and stopped at Mokha, Yemen where he had his first taste of coffee. Enamored of the brew, he smuggled seven green beans in his beard (or his navel, depending on the source you reference) and planted them in the hills of the southwestern state of Karnataka. It became a colonial plantation crop, like tea, and very slowly spread further south, to Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where it took centuries to assimilate into the Indian way of life in the nineteenth century. Even then, with popular warnings of how this foreign drink was a threat to one’s health and culture, it was taboo.
The conservative, dominant castes thought the drink “modern” and “western,” despite India’s earliest coffee houses being established in the late 1700s. Till as late as the 1920s this concern propagated. In 1921, a correspondent for Gandhi’s weekly paper, Young Indian, wrote: “Brahman women have become addicted to [...] western vices. They drink coffee not less than three times a day and consider it fashionable to drink more.”
Eventually, the habit caught on. Dominant castes, worried about tainting their “purity” through shared cups in cafés, drank out of the wide-rimmed brass tumblers prevalent today, never touching their lips to the vessel. Why chicory - sometimes up to 30 percent of a decoction - became a traditional part of kaapi brew may have had to do with its anti-inflammatory properties described in Ayurveda. It does add nuttiness and color (and stretches the coffee economically).
Most homes today have their own coffee-to-chicory ratio. The next time you polish off a dosa, order a kaapi alongside it.
More reading: Champagne From Champagne, Mohka From Mokha
Why Blinis Taste of Russia
By Tatiana Claudy
A blini is a symbol of the Sun, warm days, bountiful harvests, agreeable marriages and healthy children. -Alexander Kuprin
In Russia there is a ton of symbolism surrounding the little, unassuming blini. This pancake has been a vital element of folk and religious traditions for over a millennium.
Blinis were known in Russia by the 9th century, possibly introduced by the Vikings. (Some believe that the “discovery” of blinis was due to an accident: a cook forgot an oatmeal kissel on the stove and it turned into a pancake. These types of myths do persist in all cultures.)
Originally, blinis were used strictly as a ceremonial food at funerals or as offerings to Jarilo, the Old Slavic god of the springtime. After the Christianization of Russia at the end of the 10th century, blinis became a part of the folk festival Maslenitsa (Butter Week), celebrated before Lent. Russian proverbs also prove the essential role of blinis in the culture: “Even the most cold-hearted person loves hot blinis;” “Maslenitsa is not Maslenitsa without blinis.”
Making this dish used to resemble a sacred rite: women mixed the ingredients near creeks or lakes, then added yeast and let the dough rise several times. They baked blinis only in small cast iron skillets polished with salt; some used lard instead of butter. To avoid misfortune, people never cut blinis, instead eating them whole with their hands.
The simple food eventually found its way to the menus of the nobility. Blinis were served at the wedding feast of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In his novel in verses “Evgeny Onegin,” Aleksandr Pushkin, the greatest Russian poet, described the life of country aristocrats:
They saved, in life, void troubles and fears,
Traditions of sweet ancient days;
Had, for fat weeks before the Easters,
The Russian, richly oiled pancakes
Cookbooks published in the Russian Empire reveal popular recipes of this dish, such as “red blinis” from buckwheat flour. Usually people ate piles of blinis at once, spreading on them butter, honey, jam, sour cream, caviar, or smoked salmon.
In the 19th century Anton Chekov wrote “While many ancient customs disappear, blinis occupy the same strong position in the ‘Russian repertoire’ as a thousand years ago … There is no end in sight for them in the future.” He’s still right.
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