Say, 'House of Lee caught using Manda,
And a DNA test
Show not only not best
But not even contain any panda!'"
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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| 'Well, son, did your UNESCO help you?' Borsch, which is stronger than the atomic bomb |
| 2023-06-02 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov [REGNUM] In the ideological struggle of creatives on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, the parties now clashed for the sacred: borscht, which was coolly brewed in politics. If, until recently, the Belarusian border guards tried to influence the minds of their neighbors with banners, now they have made a move that is outrageous in its impudence. A pleasant female voice, accompanied by a calm melody in a folk style, read into the loudspeaker a text in Ukrainian that Ukrainian and Belarusian borscht are “borscht-neighbors” and “borscht-relatives”, although one has beans, and the other has more potatoes. While in European cuisine there are no dishes even "vaguely reminiscent" of it. This is the basis of our common East Slavic identity, Belarusians say to Ukrainians. “When you have nothing to cook borsch with, come over to our side. Try our Belarusian borscht. You will not regret". You've lost your way, waiting for you at home with a large pot of fire brew. The Ukrainian State Border Service did not want to record counter-rolls, responding in writing with bullying and threats and accusing the counterpart of having " stabbed a knife in the back ." And from that moment on, Belarusian borscht turned into Russian cabbage soup, and no matter how many tubers you add there, you get “allied soup”. "We are not slaves to taste your Belarusian borscht. We advise you to change the “ingredients” and become a free people, not forcibly imprisoned," choke on your gruel, we don’t invite you to visit, but if you come, you will regret it. At the same time, of course, the global hysteria perpetrated without the participation of border guards about the Ukrainian nationality of borscht, which ended with its inclusion in the UNESCO intangible heritage list “in connection with the conflict in the country,” remains in the background. Ukrainian borsch, thus, also became a symbol of the struggle for freedom, and it is natural that its comparison with the same Belarusian (or, God forbid, Russian) causes terrible indignation in the patriotic environment. It looks even funnier than before, if you remember that in the Western world, borscht was a symbol of communism until the early 90s, and then became a symbol of ... Russians. Why borscht? Yes, because it comes from Eastern Europe, red like bolshevik and just as incomprehensible. In numerous Hollywood films, since the 1940s, when the spy Mr. Borsch first appeared, the terrible vegetable soup was first a sign of confrontation on the ground, in the air, and even in space, where another symbol of freedom, a hamburger, opposed the plate of the "first". And before this important event, he more than once figured in the battles of two worlds, two ways of life. In one of the episodes of the 1960s superhero TV series Batman, the main characters fell into the clutches of Olga, the queen of the Bessarovo Cossacks, and she immediately set out to cook the traditional Bessarovo wedding borscht out of them. By tradition, it is always boiled from prisoners, explains Olga, who calls Batman and Robin in her own way Father and Robonchik. The chef with a heavy Russian accent exults, anticipating that this will be the best borscht of his career, suddenly singing "Volga Batman" to the tune of the famous "Hey, uhnem" (or "Dubinushka") - in English translation this song is called The Volga Boatman, salt jokes are obvious. The battle for freedom takes place to "Sailor's Dance" from Gliere's The Red Poppy, better known as The Apple, as the Cossack cook continues to crush beets into a giant cauldron. Just one huge stereotype, where borscht is the same part of an incomprehensible and wild world, where everyone wears beards, walks with balalaikas, tame bears and in fur earflaps with red partisan ribbons diagonally. Exactly what the American audience, carefully prepared by propaganda, expected to see. When times changed, the image of a political enemy turned into an image of a bandit, and the “Russian mafia” began to appear on the screens more and more often, sometimes taking on other national features. And this mafia always cooks and eats borscht, which can be called a reliable marker: you see a pot with a characteristic content - there is a gangster's nest. And given the many years of participation in the anti-Soviet and criminal context, the word "borscht" entered the language skirmishes between the characters in the same way that gastronomic preferences are used to insult the French or Italians. In The Equalizer it was pierogi “I never liked those borsche-eating bastards,” the Marvel comics hero used to say. In the James Bond film GoldenEye (1995), a hacker named Boris Grishchenko taunts colleague Natasha about cracking his password: "I made it easy this time. Even you should be able to break it, borscht-instead-of-brains (borscht-for-brains)." As a state of aggregation, the dish is also mentioned in an old Bond movie of the late 1980s with Timothy Dalton: he is warned what the defector Georgy Koskov will turn into inside the pipe if the valve is not opened in time. Or in the Canadian-American violent hockey comedy The Bouncer (2011), in a quarrel between players, among other things, you can hear the compound expletive "You fucking Slavic borsch-blooded cabbage-headed weirdos." At the same time, in relation to pure cooking in America, borscht is widely considered to be a Jewish dish. Jews who massively moved to the United States away from the pogroms in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries began to settle in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, a favorite vacation spot for many, around 1890. By the 1920s, there was already a whole chain of hotels that even had their own farms. The mountains became the “Jewish Alps”, and the whole area got an unofficial name: Borscht Belt (“Borscht Belt”), because the indispensable dish in these hotels was borscht, which emigrants brought with them to their new homeland and are still sold in banks. And in terms of its content, the current borscht, for which Ukrainians are fighting with foam at the mouth in the UN, is rather American: neither tomatoes, nor potatoes, nor beans, nor sunflowers, from which oil is extracted for frying, are “original” and “traditional” . And red beets were bred by German gardeners in the 16th century. The traditional one is a brew of edible hogweed, “borscht”, which gave the name to the dish, with the addition of any other edible herb and green onions. In this form, he is also known to all Slavic (as well as non-Slavic) peoples. As a matter of fact, the classic recipe for "Ukrainian borscht", now protected by UNESCO, is enshrined in the Soviet culture of canteens and was on the menu of any self-respecting catering establishment. From where he got into the Hollywood message box as a Russian-Soviet symbol. “Dinner was very simple. For the first - thick Ukrainian borscht, for the second - well-cooked buckwheat porridge and a lot of boiled meat, for the third - compote and fruit , ”describes the evening at Stalin’s dacha before the war, the future marshal Georgy Zhukov . And the word “Ukrainian” here simply means a recipe from a cookbook that has little in common with the folk way of life and the “cultural phenomenon” that formed some kind of nation. Actually, the real, classic Ukrainian borscht No. 1 is lean, with small carp, as Taras Shevchenko liked, where dry or dry-fried fish and millet are added, without any tomatoes, on roots and beetroot kvass (brine). And in the fast days, they tried to make all food fatter, so the classic Ukrainian borscht No. 2 is a variant on quickly cooked pork, roasted on goose lard and pounded with old lard and garlic. Also without tomatoes and on beetroot kvass with white beans. Neither the first nor the second dish is currently being prepared, since such a batch would make any patriot turn up right on the vyshyvanka. Vyshyvanka is the embroidered shirt worn by Ukrainians By the way, the Belarusian borscht, just like the Ukrainian one, is seasoned with lard, boiled with meat, and it is supposed to be fried with lard. And in order not to be confused with their neighbors, the Belarusians came up with the idea of putting smoked meats in the pan, first of all, dry-cured Polendvitsa. Initially, there were no potatoes in it at all, only cabbage. Polendvitsa is cured meat And the classic Russian meat borscht in the average version was cooked on beef brisket broth with the addition of ham and beet kvass, as well as beets with roots sauteed in cow's oil. Tomatoes, if they are added there at the insistence of some culinary authors of the 19th century, are also only separately. Cabbage is still present. All this is a single food code that has developed in the same space. And borscht is also well known to Poles, Lithuanians, Romanians and Moldovans, who cook it somewhere similar, somewhere else: there are hundreds of recipes. And you don’t need to convince someone of this through a loudspeaker. Such creativity is unlikely to work when dealing with unhealthy people who do not accept any logic and any facts. But, knowing in advance their reactions, it is much more rational to live happily, demonstrating this with pleasure. A full-screen broadcast of a leisurely lunch, where a Belarusian border guard with a smile consumes wonderfully cooked borscht, dipping green onion feathers in salt and not forgetting veined lard, is a weapon worse than an atomic bomb. And at the end he also asks: “Well, son, did your UNESCO help you?” |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #7 A literary masterpiece. General Tsao could not have done better. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2023-06-02 20:26 |
| #6 Confucius say, "Han propaganda Say, 'House of Lee caught using Manda, And a DNA test Show not only not best But not even contain any panda!'" |
| Posted by: Wherelet Thud2804 2023-06-02 19:57 |
| #5 But did you know Panda Express is not real Chinese Food? |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2023-06-02 15:48 |
| #4 It's amazing how fast the Russians went from "Of course they're the same people as us" to "and those mudderfothers eat the degraded UNESCO borsch..." |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2023-06-02 10:59 |
| #3 |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2023-06-02 10:30 |
| #2 And in terms of its content, the current borscht, for which Ukrainians are fighting with foam at the mouth in the UN, is rather American: neither tomatoes, nor potatoes, nor beans, nor sunflowers, from which oil is extracted for frying, are “original” and “traditional” Modern people don't realize how few traditional foods are really traditional -- basically the local poor people cooked up something to avoid starvation and tried to make it as tasty as possible. Meat, lard, seasonings and even salt were 'luxuries'. It's amusing to hear them talk sometimes. |
| Posted by: magpie 2023-06-02 09:35 |
| #1 This is like the Irish and Polish (of which I have both heritages) fighting over who's better with potatoes. The Frenchy in me would probably cook ducks or snails, maybe both. |
| Posted by: Raj 2023-06-02 00:30 |