Seven recipes for original dishes of the Crimean Tatar cuisine. Top dishes you should definitely try in Crimea

If from the gastronomic impressions after a trip to the Crimea, you only have fat pasties in your memory, boiled shrimp in a bag on the beach and sour wine, then you are terribly unlucky. Because on this peninsula there is certainly something to please the gourmet.

And all why? Yes, because since ancient times, the Crimea was inhabited by a wide variety of peoples with their own culinary traditions, which formed the basis of today's delicious local cuisine. Is it a joke - more than 80 nationalities, and all with their own delicious secrets and special ingredients! As a result of this mixture of traditions in the local cuisine, various culinary achievements of the east and west, north and south are intertwined.

Let's talk about those who left the most significant mark in the cuisine of Crimea.

Tatar cuisine

Or rather Crimean Tatar, since the local Tatars are a separate large group of peoples, which, in addition to a complex history, is also divided by their place of residence into the southern coast, mountain and steppe ethnic groups. Therefore, their cuisine, although officially recognized as an offshoot of the Mediterranean, is initially distinguished by the richness of borrowed traditions and great taste variety. She was greatly influenced by Uzbek cuisine(read the history of the Crimean Tatars, you will find out why this is so).

Speaking of Crimean Tatar kitchen, it is impossible not to mention first of all classic dishes: pilaf and barbecue. The first is prepared with various variations, but always insanely delicious, and its basis is invariably meat with rice, onions with carrots and spices.

What else can you taste traditional from this cuisine on a sunny peninsula? For example, lagman is something like a thick rich lamb soup with noodles and an abundance of vegetables. Or dolma (sarma) - small cabbage rolls in pickled grape leaves. Or shurpa - a strong lamb broth with potatoes and carrots. Or samsa - triangular puff pastry With meat stuffing cooked in a tandoor oven.

Or yantyh - local chebureks fried in a dry frying pan and only then smeared with oil. And be sure to baklava - a national sweet made from puff pastry with nuts and honey - of which there are several varieties.

Finding all this yummy is not difficult in almost any decent cafe or restaurant in Crimea.

Jewish cuisine

To be more precise, not purely Jewish, but Karaim and Krymchak - the cuisine of two small nationalities that have long inhabited the peninsula.

Of these recipes, it is worth dwelling separately on the kubet - once exclusively festive, but now quite everyday dish. However, its taste remains just as wonderful. Imagine a juicy fragrant hot lamb pie with onions and potatoes, with a crispy baked crust ... salivating? That's it!

Of the rest of the Jewish local cuisine, we can mention chir-chir - another analogue of cheburek, which can even be prepared for you with a vegetable filling, and sweet black Jewish bread with garlic. You can taste all this (as well as the traditional raisin buzu drink), for example, in the cave city of Chufut-Kale.

Russian kitchen

Russian cuisine, of course, also could not but leave its mark on the local land - after all, half of the local population is made up of Russians, who first began to appear here back in the Middle Ages, and massively filled the Crimea after it was annexed to the empire in the 18th century.

Okroshka, roasted pig, jellied sturgeon, caviar, dumplings - here the choice is incredible for every taste, from the favorite dishes of the kings to the daily food of the proletarians.

Ukrainian food

Ukrainians have the closest ties with the peninsula since the time of the Crimean Khanate, so Ukrainian food firmly entered the homes of the Crimeans. What is only borscht with garlic and hot donuts worth!

Also try dumplings all kinds of fillings(from cabbage or potatoes to cherries and cottage cheese), fish stewed in sour cream, cheesecakes with raisins, hot pastries.

Greek, Caucasian, Turkish, European…

We will dwell on the rest of the cuisines that left a noticeable mark on the culinary of the Crimea in less detail, mentioning only a couple of dishes from each - there is simply not enough time and energy to describe all the variety of local recipes! So…

The Greeks, who moved to the peninsula from Greece in several waves, left behind, perhaps, one main dish, but almost everyone knows and loves it - this traditional salad from vegetables, olives and unleavened white cheese, seasoned with olive oil.

Armenians, who at one time made up the main population of the south-west of Crimea, can boast of an incredibly hearty beef khash soup and the famous lavash.

Crimeans got khachapuri from Georgians ( cheese pie) and chakhokhbili (a kind of poultry stew). From the Bulgarians - stuffed Bell pepper, from the Turks - oriental sweets, from the Germans - meat strudel and stewed cabbage ...

Guilt

The history of Crimean cuisine, of course, would be incomplete without mentioning the famous local wines. Grapes have been grown in these warm sunny lands since antiquity, winemaking has experienced periods of prosperity and decline. But even today, connoisseurs of fine drinks have something to try in the Crimea. Ordinary wines, vintage, collection; white, red and pink; dry, sweet, fortified, champagne and liquor - it is difficult to even list all the local varieties, not to mention the names. Everyone has “their own” dish, their own subtleties of serving and drinking, which they will be happy to tell you about on excursions to local wineries, of which there are several dozen on the peninsula - the Novy Svet champagne factory, the Yalta Massandra, the state farm-factory "Koktebel", Inkerman vintage wine factory, Simferopol winery... Everything is here: from cognac to champagne, don't get carried away with tasting!

So, we hope that we have convinced you - in Crimea they know how and love to cook! Still don't believe? Come.

The post contains 5 recipes for the Crimean classical cuisine, singer-songwriter - Elena Lagoda, she is a Crimean ethnographer.

1. Karaite pies — favorite dish all Crimeans and in general one of the culinary business cards Crimea. True, they are also very popular in Lithuania, where a fairly large Karaite diaspora lives. In Lithuania they are calledkibinai (or kibins). The Karaite dough is crispy, and the filling is very juicy.

Ingredients

For test:

Flour - 650 g

Butter - 250 g

Water - 200 ml

Egg - 2 pcs. + 1 pc. for surface lubrication

Salt - 0.5 tsp

Sugar - 0.5 tbsp. l.

Vinegar 9% - 1 tbsp. l.

For filling:

Lamb or beef pulp - 600 g

Onion - 2 pcs.

Salt

Ground black pepper

Fat tail fat (if the meat is lean) - 100 g

Cooking method:

1. Sift the flour into a bowl. Chilled butter finely chopped or three on coarse grater and combine with flour, add eggs, salt, sugar and water with vinegar and knead a homogeneous soft dough. You can do without vinegar, but with it the dough becomes more crispy, that is, the effect of puff pastry appears. Wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge for an hour.

Step 1. Knead the dough and put it in the refrigerator for an hour

2 . Traditionally, mutton is used for Karaite pies. The Karaites did not eat pork. Therefore, if you do not like the flavor of lamb, you can replace it with beef. You can adjust the fat content of the meat according to your taste. If you are using lean meat, add some fat tail fat. This will give the filling the juiciness and flavor of lamb.

Finely chop or cut the meat (but do not use a meat grinder, otherwise there will be no juiciness), add chopped onion to it. Salt and pepper the filling, mix thoroughly.

Step 2. Cooking the filling for Karaite pies

3. From the dough we pinch off koloboks the size of a child's fist and roll out thin cakes. We put a tablespoon of the filling on one half and connect the edge. Then we wrap the edge with a pigtail, like a big dumpling. If you don’t know how to do this, go to Google with the request “pigtail on dumplings” or pies and view one of the proposed video options. Usually Google produces a large number of very intelligible short videos.

Step 3. We form pies

4. Sometimes in some literary sources I met a recommendation to make “spouts” for Karaite pies - holes with a pinch for steam to escape. I DO NOT RECOMMEND doing this. Since in this case the juice flows out ugly and remains dripping on the pie, in addition, the filling remains dry, not juicy, and the pie itself does not swell without exposure to steam and remains flat.

5. Before baking, grease the pies with an egg and bake at 200 degrees for about half an hour. Serve hot!!! True, they are also very tasty when cold.

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2. Kashyk-ash - spoon soup

This ancient dish in the Crimea is found among several peoples. Among the Crimean Tatars, kashyk-ash or sometimes another spelling, kash-kash, is translated as spoon soup, among the Krymchaks - syuzme, among the Karaites - hamur-dolma (lit. stuffed dough), among the Azov Greeks who came out of the Crimea - hashikhya. In fact, these are very small dumplings with meat filling. They are served with the broth in which they were cooked. As a rule, curdled milk or natural yogurt and generously sprinkled with herbs. The size of the dumplings spoke of the mastery of the hostess. There should be at least 6-7 in a spoon. I fit 8 and even had more space.

Ingredients

For test:

Water - 200 ml

Egg - 1 pc.

Salt - 1 tsp

Flour - at least 4 stacks, but possibly more (640 g)

Sunflower oil - 1-2 tbsp. l.

For filling:

Beef - 200 g

Lamb - 150 g

Onion - 1 pc.

Ground black pepper

Salt - 1 tsp

For serving:

Greens (onions, dill, parsley) - to taste

Yogurt or sour cream - to taste

Ground black pepper - to taste

Cooking method:

1. From flour, water, eggs and salt, knead a stiff dough. Cover it with a bowl, film or towel and leave for an hour.

Step 1. Knead the tough dough

2 . For minced meat, we pass the meat and onion through a meat grinder. Salt and pepper. The choice of meat was determined by religious views, since the Tatars and Krymchaks do not eat pork. The proportions of beef and lamb can be any.

Step 2. Cooking minced meat

3. On a well-floured surface, roll out small piece test. The fact is that modeling small dumplings takes more time than ordinary dumplings, so the dough can dry out. If you have an assistant in modeling, then you can cut the dough into squares and quickly form dumplings. The dough needs to be rolled out quite thinly, but not too zealous - otherwise the dough soaked from the filling may break through. Squares should be no larger than 3 cm.

Step 3. We make small dumplings

If you are making dumplings without an assistant, then you need to roll out the dough in small portions, cut it into strips, and fold the strips one on top of the other. In this case, the dough should be very steep and dusted with flour so that the layers do not stick together. Strips folded together are easier to cut into equal squares. We stack the finished squares on top of each other - so the dough dries less - and form small dumplings the size of a finger knuckle. Some craftswomen sculpted dumplings the size of a fingernail.

4. We put the finished dumplings on a surface sprinkled with flour and let them dry a little, and then freeze or cook immediately.

Step 3. Put the finished dumplings on a floured surface.

5. We lower the dumplings into the boiled broth or water. Serve kash-kash immediately, without letting the dish cool down. seasoning ground pepper and sprinkle generously with herbs. Optionally, you can fill with sour cream, curdled milk or natural yogurt.

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3. Chebureks

Chebureks are the most popular dish of Crimean cuisine; they are cooked in almost every home. Both my mother and grandmother often cooked pasties, at least once a month - that's for sure. This ancient dish is found among many Crimean peoples under different names. Chebureki is a Crimean Tatar name, while among Krymchaks and Karaites they are called chir-chir (consonant with sizzling oil when frying). Previously, they were prepared only from lamb and fried in lamb fat. Now they are boiled in hot sunflower oil, and in the menu of numerous Crimean pasties, cafes and restaurants, you can often find variations of cheese filling, tomato and even sweet pasties with cottage cheese. And all this is undoubtedly also very tasty.

The dough in chebureks is thin, very tender and slightly crunchy. Hot chebureks are always bubbly, pot-bellied, and when bitten from the filling oozes delicious juice- broth. It goes without saying that they should only be eaten hot, until the juice is absorbed into the dough.

Ingredients:

For test:

Flour - 3.5 stack. (560 g)

Water - 1 stack.

Salt - 1 tsp

For filling:

Onions - 1-2 pcs.

Salt

Greens

Black pepper

Water - about 0.5 stack.

For frying:

Refined sunflower oil - not less than 0.5 l

Cooking method:

1. From water, flour, salt and a small amount vegetable oil knead a pretty stiff dough. You need to knead it until it becomes smooth, elastic and glossy. Cover it with a bowl, film or towel and leave to rest for an hour.

2 . Add salt, a lot of herbs and ground black pepper to the minced meat. Finely chop the onion and, sprinkling a little salt, crush it with your hands so that it becomes softer and not too noticeable in the finished chebureks. Mix the onion with the filling, add water and stir. The consistency of minced meat should be a little liquid, but not too much - so that the filling does not spread, and not thick - so that in ready cheburek she was juicy.

3. We pinch off a ball of dough from the dough and roll out a thin circle with a diameter corresponding to your frying pan or cauldron, in which pasties will be fried. If the dough sticks to the board, lightly dust it with flour, but a little so that the excess flour does not burn in the oil. We spread a tablespoon of the filling on one half of the circle, cover with the second half and close the edge well. Trim the edge of the dough special knife for pasties. Among the Crimean Tatars, it was called chegyr.

4 . Pour a lot of oil into a cauldron or deep frying pan so that the pasties float and do not touch the bottom. We heat it very well, so that when the cheburek is lowered, it boils. Fry pasties until golden brown. It is important that there are no holes in the dough and that the edge is well stuck together, otherwise, when frying, the juice will flow out and the oil will smoke heavily. Turn over and take out the pasties with a slotted spoon.

We serve chebureks right away! Immediately!!!

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4. Yantyki

In fact, yantyki are chebureks fried in a dry frying pan, without oil.. Freshly cooked, they are generously lubricated with butter and covered, from which they become soft and very tasty. The result is a completely different dish from chebureks. It's hard to say which one is tastier, you need to try both!

Ingredients:

For test:

Flour - 3.5 stack. (560 g)

Water - 1 stack.

Vegetable oil - 2 tbsp. l.

Salt - 1 tsp

For filling:

Minced lamb or beef - 200-300 g

Onions - 1-2 pcs.

Salt

Greens

Black pepper

Water - about 0.5 stack.

For lubrication:

Melted or softened butter - 100 g

Cooking method:

All stages of cooking before frying, that is, kneading the dough and preparing the filling are no different from pasties.

Then we take a frying pan, preferably with a thick bottom, preferably cast iron, heat it over medium heat and fry the yantyks without using oil, that is, in a completely dry frying pan. A couple of minutes on one side and the same on the other. If you are not sure that the dough is fried, you can turn the yantyk over again and let it bake for another minute.

Grease the hot yantyks with butter and cover with a lid or a plate so that they steam a little and soften. Serve hot, of course!

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5. Jewish stuffed fish (gefilte fish)

I learned about this dish from my grandmother, who for a long time lived in the same yard Jewish family. The peculiarity of this dish, traditional for the Crimean Jews, is that the whole fish is skinned with a “stocking”, stuffed and then boiled with beets, onions and carrots. Perhaps it is appropriate to mention that in the 20s of the twentieth century. a large number of Jews moved to the Crimea and they even wanted to make the peninsula a Jewish autonomy.

This is a very difficult dish, both in terms of cooking technology and its significance, which is simply huge for Jewish culture. You can translate from Yiddish gefilte fish not only as stuffed fish, but as a filled, rich fish. It is served on Passover and Rosh Hashanah, and it is also ideal for Shabbat, as it does not contain bones when cooked on Friday, which means that the Jewish prohibition of removing bones on the Sabbath day is not violated.

Cold stuffed fish - very tasty dish. It is served differently. Some are served with broth as a cold first course, and some make the broth harden and serve as aspic.

From my friend and colleague Evgeny Melnichenko, who simply prepares gefilte fish with jewelry, I found out the intricacies of cooking. By the way, Eugene is an amazing artist, a master of woodcarving, many of his products are dedicated to Jewish art.

Ingredients

For fish:

Pike or zander - 1.5 kg

Onion - 2-3 pcs.

Matzo - 100 g

Dill - 0.5 bunch.

Raw eggs - 2 pcs.

Boiled eggs, peeled whole (small) - 3 pcs.

Salt - to taste, but a little more than usual

Ground black pepper

For the broth:

Raw beets - 2 pcs.

Raw carrots - 2 pcs.

Onion - 1 pc.

Yellow and red onion peel

Bay leaf - 3-4 pcs.

Black peppercorns

Brown sugar - 0.5 tbsp. l.

Salt - to taste

Water

Cooking method:

1 . First, let's focus on the choice of fish. I consider pike perch to be the ideal fish for this dish, although pike or carp are considered traditional for stuffed fish in the world. Pelengas is also quite suitable.

We clean the fish from scales, take out the gills, cut off all the fins, except for the tail, remove the gill bone, but we try that the head remains attached to the body along the back. Then we pass under the skin with our fingers and separate it from the meat. In the place of the dorsal fin under the skin, we cut the bones with scissors, trying not to damage the skin. So we reach the tail, gradually turning the skin inside out. At the end, with scissors, we separate the ridge from the tail, again, trying not to damage the skin.

2. Before proceeding with the preparation of minced meat, we collect the cut off fins, ridge and scales (we throw out only the gills), pour a liter of water and cook over a very low heat clear broth by lightly salting it. We filter the broth.

3 . Cover the matzo with water and let it soften completely. In supermarkets, you can find many variations of matzo, from classic unleavened to delicious salty with onions, poppy seeds and other fillers.

Finely chop the onion and sauté half in vegetable oil, and leave the other half raw.

The meat is separated from the bones and passed through a meat grinder along with matzah. Add sautéed to minced meat and raw onion, salt, pepper, chopped herbs, two raw eggs. We mix everything.

4. We fill the fish with minced meat, but not too tightly, but so that it takes on a natural shape. Sometimes boiled eggs are put in the middle of the fish so that the fish slices look spectacular in the cut. By the way, I noticed that with eggs inside, the fish retains a more rounded shape when cooked and does not become flat.

5 . Put on the bottom of the pot onion peel, peeled and sliced ​​​​beets and carrots, a whole peeled onion, Bay leaf, peppercorns.

6. Then we lay the fish belly down, back up and pour hot broth. It is not scary if the fish is completely uncovered. Salt the broth well and add a couple of teaspoons of brown sugar. If brown sugar is not available, you can replace it with burnt sugar: hold half a tablespoon of sugar over the fire until it caramelizes and turns light brown. We cook the fish closed lid about two hours, removing the foam at the beginning. We wait for complete cooling and only then we take out the fish, trying so that the head does not come off.

We filter the broth, heat it up and introduce gelatin, according to the instructions. Put the fish on a dish, pour a small amount of jelly, let it harden well and decorate with lemon, beets, herbs.

Fill the stuffed fish with hot broth and cook for about 2 hours.

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Another recipe for chebureks from the book "Karaite cuisine":

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Our blog has already published posts with recipes from seasonal Crimean products and according to the Crimean recipes.

In Crimea, tourists are certainly offered to taste kebab, lagman, chak-chak and parvarda. The correspondent of the portal "" has collected a culinary platter of what you must definitely try while on the peninsula.

True adventurers, going on trips, try to plan everything to the smallest detail. They plan to visit local attractions, go to the most popular and little-known museums, get acquainted with the life and customs of the local population. But acquaintance with an uncharted land will seem incomplete to you if you do not taste the cooking of natives and indigenous peoples. Crimean cuisine not as exotic as, say, the cuisine of Thailand or Vietnam. Here you will not meet scorchingly spicy dishes, which can turn you into a fire-breathing dragon when consumed. You will not find fried water bugs and tree larvae either: the former are not found in our area, and the latter are treacherously few - only birds have enough.

As for the traditional dishes of the Crimean cuisine, it can be noted that they simply do not exist. Yes, you heard right. There is no native Crimean dish, for the sole reason that Crimea, like a flower garden, is replete with a variety of cultures and ethnic groups. The customs of the peoples living on the peninsula are so intertwined that sometimes we don’t even notice how we bring a piece of a different culture into our everyday life, including what we cook. And the hospitable hosts, which are the Crimeans, will not allow themselves to miss the chance to brag to the guests and cook a couple of dishes typical of other ethnic groups.

We try sarma, yantyk and kebab

The most popular and most recognizable in Crimea are dishes of the Crimean Tatar, Greek, Armenian cuisine, which can be found in most restaurants and cafes. It is extremely rare, but there are establishments where guests are treated to the dishes of the ancient Karaites.

In the Crimean Tatar and Karaite cuisine, the primacy is given to three main dishes that are served everywhere: pilaf, shurpa or lagman and shish kebab. To a greater extent, these dishes are typical for the entire Central Asian cuisine, but there are some differences. For example, boiled veal is often used to cook Crimean Tatar pilaf. Barbecue is prepared from any meat, chicken, pork, lamb, beef are used. They also cook barbecue from the liver and even from this delicate product like a fish.

Shurpa became popular on the peninsula in the mid-80s, when the Crimean Tatars began to return from Uzbekistan. They cook it, as in their homeland, at beef broth with the addition of coarsely chopped vegetables and herbs. Lagman is also boiled in meat broth, but in addition to seasonal vegetables, homemade noodles are added to the soup, it looks very appetizing.

From meat dishes it is worth trying sarma and kebab. Sarma is an analogue of cabbage rolls, only a grape leaf acts as a “clothes”. Lyulya, like barbecue, is fried on the grill, but a wooden skewer is used for the base, and the pre-marinated meat is passed through a meat grinder.

Samsa, chebureks and yantyks are no less popular - they can be found everywhere, often in roadside cafes. Golden semi-sun pasties are cooked in in large numbers vegetable oil, and stuffed, traditionally, with meat or cheese, if you wish, you can make a mix. Yantyk is a variation of cheburek, only unlike the first one, it is not deep-fried, but fried in a dry frying pan and smeared with butter when ready. Yantyki are stuffed with minced meat with onions and dill.

In one of the roadside cafes on the way to Alushta, you can taste Greek cheburek. It, like yantyk, is prepared without oil, but is much larger and stuffed with minced meat, slices of tomato, pepper, cheese and fresh herbs. The basis for the preparation of samsa, in the classic recipe, is puff pastry. They stuff the pie with minced meat, often lamb, but they also use veal or poultry. As additives are potatoes or legumes. Real samsa is prepared in a special oven - tandoor.

Enjoy the inhabitants of the Black Sea

Fresh fish is best prepared in Sevastopol and its environs. If time and wallet allow, feel free to charter a small skiff or boat, be sure to check if the price of the trip includes a seafood lunch, and go to the open sea. The brave captain of the pleasure boat and his assistants will tell you the history of the area, which you will not read in any guidebook. And swimming in the purest sea, away from the coast, is incomparable with anything. When it's time for dinner, you will see and smell the Queen Black Sea fish- red mullet. Other inhabitants of the sea: shrimps, mussels, rapana, horse mackerel - carefully cooked, hot and tasty.

Light and fresh Greek salad from sunny Hellas, at the same time, it perfectly took root in our latitudes. Fresh cucumbers and tomatoes with the addition of bell peppers, sweet Yalta onions, olives and tender cheese seasoned with sauce from olive oil with spices and wine vinegar will be an excellent aperitif.

We take chak-chak, baklava and parvarda for tea

A special place in the meal is given to the traditions of tea drinking and kavah. Tea fragrant with Crimean wild herbs or coffee brewed in Kezlev style perfectly harmonizes with local desserts. Honey baklava, chak-chak, brushwood and parvarda are the most popular sweets. Delicate baklava with dried fruits and nuts is baked in the oven and poured with honey. Its analogue is crispy brushwood, on the contrary, it is deep-fried, sprinkled powdered sugar or covered with honey and decorated with nuts.

Parvarda - sugary-sweet sweets are served with tea or coffee and, often, they replace sugar. Another delicacy of the sweet tooth, crispy chak-chak curls, unlike baklava, do not contain nuts, but are richly watered with honey or sugar syrup.

Where to try national cuisine in Crimea?

The cozy coffee-museum "Kezlev kavesi" is located on the territory of one of the sights of sunny Evpatoria - at the main fortress gates of the medieval Kezlev, a wooden bazaar built at the end of the 6th century during the reign of Khan Mengli Giray. The interior of the coffee house is designed in a traditional medieval style. Here, courteous staff will present to your attention a large selection of desserts, teas and coffee brewed according to ancient Karaite traditions. Here you can buy different varieties of Crimean tea.

Where: Evpatoria, st. Karaeva, 13.

In Alupka, the famous shurpa and belyashi with a pleasant Crimean blush are served in a cozy cafe Tatar cuisine- Ethno Kaffe Roomi. The entrance to the cafe is guarded by silent cypress guards, and the interior is decorated with old utensils and paintings.

Where: Alupka, st. Roza Luxembourg, 30

After a walk around the ancient settlement of Chufut-Kale, visiting observation platforms and a monastery in the vicinity of Bakhchisaray, when there will be a lot of impressions, and strength is already at zero, it's great to sit in the Caravanserai Salachik restaurant. The decoration is to match the Bakhchisaray castle, and the cuisine is predominantly Middle Eastern and halal.

Where: Bakhchisaray, st. Basenko, 43

The restaurant "Rybaka's Hut" is located in the Art Bay, right on the seashore. Dishes are predominantly seafood. Here you can taste fried red mullet, seafood soup (mussels, etc.), katrana under the fill, I highly recommend warm salad Seafood longboat - specialty of the house hearty, fresh and very rich and unsurpassed assorted fish from the chef.

Having traveled around the Crimea and tried baklava, many begin to be interested in how to cook it at home. Baklava (or baklava) - considered popular confectionery from puff pastry. The recipe for Turkish baklava is not very complicated. As a rule, baklava has a filling of nuts and is doused with sugar syrup. This dish is popular in Eastern countries, it received wide popularity in the Crimea. For the first time, sweets were mentioned in the 15th century. Since then, baklava has been cooked during every holiday. According to another version...

Having been in the Crimea, you must definitely try the wines of Massandra. In Crimea, there are several areas where simply unique grape varieties are grown. One of these places is called Sunny Valley. It is located near Sudak. It is the only place in the world where grape varieties such as Ekip Kara, Jivat Kara and Effessia are grown. Crimean winemakers make Black Doctor and Black Colonel wines from this grape. Not far from Alushta is the small village of Krasnokamenka, which got its name from the name of the Red Stone. This is the only place where grapes are grown…

Translated from Turkish Turkish Delight means means - pieces of pleasure or happy pieces. This exquisite sweetness is more than half a century old. Previously, only water, sugar, starch and essence from rose petals were used to make Turkish delight. In the 18th century, lokum was a popular sweet in the Sultan's harem. What is Turkish Delight? The form of Turkish Delight can be: cubic (when the sweetness is in the shape of a cube) children's (in the shape of animals) in the form of a roll two-layer sliced ​​whole Arabic (when the delight is in the shape of a parallelepiped) Nowadays, each cook has his own unique …

Dolma (sarma) - meat filling wrapped in young grape leaves. Served with sour cream or fermented milk product yogurt. As a filling, either lamb or beef is most often used, it will be very tasty if you mix these two types of meat together. However, most likely the dish was borrowed from Greek cuisine, which at that time already had rich culinary traditions. Stuffed vegetables were considered a luxurious delicacy, which was prepared only for the elite. The dish was considered difficult for those times, it required special skills of the cook. Harmonious combination vegetables...

How to cook lula kebab? Kebab means "fried meat" in Persian. This dish is especially loved to cook in the Crimea, the recipe came to the peninsula from the Arab countries. Lula kebab is a cutlet fried on a skewer. Traditionally, kebab is made from juicy lamb with addition onion. Lamb is used for cooking very fatty, and a lot of onions are added. In comparison with cutlets, kebab has specific differences - neither eggs nor bread are placed in the dish. But without fail, garlic is generously added to the meat, ...

It is impossible not to fall in love with Crimean pasties. Fragrant, juicy, with a crispy crust - they literally melt in your mouth! You can learn how to make real Crimean chebureks yourself. All you need to do is put in a little effort and get used to it. step by step recipe Crimean chebureks with photo. To prepare Crimean chebureks, we need the following products: 3 cups flour 3/4 cup water 1 egg yolk 150 ml vegetable oil (1/3 tbsp. For making dough, the rest is necessary for frying chebureks) 1 teaspoon of salt (half - for dough, half...

Shurpa, which is very popular in the Crimea, is also known all over the world under other names - chorpa, chorba, shorpo, sorpa. The shurpa recipe is one of the most ancient. It consists of the best and selected products - fresh fatty meat, vegetables and fruits, fragrant spices and greens. Shurpa is prepared in many countries. In Crimea, you can taste this dish in many cafes and restaurants. There are a lot of recipes for making shurpa, we have chosen only the best of them. What ingredients do you need to prepare...

Crimean cuisine - what should you definitely try when traveling around the peninsula? So that you do not get confused with the names of dishes in cafes and restaurants, we will tell you about the most popular dishes in the Crimea. Crimean cuisine - the most popular dishes Kyashik-ash is a soup of very small dumplings stuffed with meat, served with broth, seasoned with curdled milk or yogurt. The size of the dumplings speaks of the mastery of the hostess, in a spoon they should fit 6-7 pieces. Shurpa is a strong mutton broth in which carrots, onions and, in …

Crimean wines– you can’t not try them after visiting the peninsula! For more than 2 thousand years, vineyards have been cultivated on the lands of the peninsula. The berry was grown by Taurians and Greeks, Russians and Tatars, Christians and Muslims. More than 100 local grape varieties were bred, and the volume of wine production in Crimea is comparable to that of Georgia, Italy, Spain and France. About winemaking in Crimea Unary table wines are aged in oak containers for no more than a year. They are intended for everyday use. The wine industry in Crimea unites more than 100 enterprises. The area of ​​Crimean vineyards ...

How to taste wine is a whole ritual, the magic of which lies in certain nuances. Wine tasting is fundamentally different from tasting spirits, which often do not have a pronounced taste and are tasted by smell. Before wine tasting, it is not recommended to consume foods and drinks that leave a long aftertaste and affect the perception of wines. These include menthol candies, chewing gums, coffee, chocolate, spicy dishes. Do not smoke or inhale tobacco smoke. Wine tasting at Massandra Wine tastings at Massandra are served 9 …

Crimean tea is sold everywhere on the peninsula. Many people buy it as a souvenir to bring to their relatives. However, few people know that he is one of the best healers for various diseases. The composition of the Crimean tea includes up to 55 various kinds herbs! A folk saying says: Herbs for Crimean tea are collected in the most beautiful ecologically clean areas of the peninsula. They drink Crimean tea, adding honey or rose petal jam to it to taste. More than 300 species grow in Crimea medicinal herbs applied in folk medicine, …

Already on the street, not far from the oriental coffee houses, you can hear the delicate, charming and unique aroma of coffee brewed on the sand. beautiful girls dressed in national clothes offer to taste coffee on the sand together with oriental sweets- bakhlova, Turkish delight and all kinds of cakes. It is very difficult to refuse such an offer. Many tourists, having visited such an institution in the Crimea at least once, coming next year, definitely visit it again. But why not indulge in an exquisite oriental meal right at home? How to make coffee in the sand...

“To visit the Crimea and not try the Crimean Tatar cuisine is a sin that was not included in the list of mortals because of its obviousness,” one of my acquaintances said, paraphrasing the words of the poet Alexander Karpov. And one cannot but agree with him. Firstly, you can’t try the dishes of the Crimean Tatars anywhere except Crimea, except perhaps for certain places in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where these people were deported after the war. Secondly, this is the most inexpensive and at the same time the highest quality food on the peninsula. And finally, it is so delicious that, having tasted one dish, it is impossible not to try the whole menu.

Tradition and eclecticism

The rich subtropical nature of the Crimea is so densely mixed here with the traditions of the Tatars that the cuisine turned out to be unusually diverse. Here and meat in all forms: fried on open fire and on coals, stewed, boiled, grilled, dried and salted. There are thick soups, and pilafs, manti, dolma, and milk-cheese delights, and pastries that amaze with their variety. In addition, for centuries, the culture of the Crimean Tatars came into contact with the cultures of other peoples, and traditional cuisine took in a lot of them. eating habits. Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasian peoples, Turkey and even Greece influenced it and modified the traditions of cooking certain dishes. One has only to look at the sweets that the Crimean Tatars are now preparing. Next to the traditional airy lace baklava, originally Crimean Tatar, now it is obligatory Baku, Turkish baklava and even chak-chak, characteristic of Kazan Tatars. And miniature yufahash - why not ravioli!

True, even in the Crimea itself, the traditions of the cuisine of the steppe Tatars differ from the passions of those representatives of the people who settled along the Black Sea coast. The former have respect for meat and dairy dishes, while the latter generously flavor their table with fruits and vegetables. To see the Crimean Tatar cuisine in all its glory, the Mir TV and Radio Broadcasting Company correspondent went to the top of Mount Ai-Petri, where over the past 10-15 years a whole village of Crimean Tatars has grown up, who have moved here from the coast and from the steppe part.

To the mountains beyond the peaks of culinary

The main occupation of these people is to treat. From the very morning there is preparation for the reception of guests. Daughter tanned and weather-beaten, people heat wood-burning stoves, heat cauldrons on them, chop vegetables and chop meat. Many do it in strict silence, waving away the camera. “I don’t talk while I work,” one of the chefs explains. “Don’t take it off, you’re distracting me.” Cooking does not like fuss."

Tourists and vacationers climbing the mountain are immediately confronted with an onslaught of touts who vied with each other to praise their restaurant or cafe. If tourist groups come up, then the chef or the owner comes out in person and gives a whole lecture, talking about the dishes and immediately showing them in all their glory. Artistry these people do not hold, and go to every second restaurant. It is customary to cook here right on the street, in huge cauldrons installed in the hole of a wood-burning stove. Aromas of spices mix with the resinous smells of the grove on the heated mountain slopes, and subtly draws wood smoke and honey. They and dried mountain herbs are sold here both from stalls and from cars. Moreover, the owner of any restaurant is ready to gladly bring you golden and amber jars.

I go through the ranks, barking, asking what they are cooking. Find out what they don't have. For some reason, no one cooks kubete - a traditional Crimean Tatar lamb pie. I decide that I will stop where I find such a pie. “Kubeta? No, we cook for ourselves at home, but not here. Tourists don't know what it is. You are the first to ask,” smiling young and older, tanned people. Almost everyone here has smiles sparkling with golden crowns: it’s more beautiful that way. Finally, from a very small cafe an elderly woman is chasing me. “You wanted a cubete? Go, we cooked for ourselves in the morning, but there was a piece left for you. Try it, it's delicious!"

Getting in. Right in the hall, at the far table, on an embroidered towel, a woman in an apron quickly and quickly molds tiny dumplings - the size of a fingernail, no more. The woman's fingers are much larger and it is not clear how they cope so quickly with almost jewelry work.

“This is Yufahash,” explains the owner of the restaurant, Dilyara Asanova. - Our young wife prepares such dumplings on the second day after the wedding. It is believed that this is how she shows her skill and patience. See how tiny they are? To feed a family, one must learn how to cook them very quickly. The smaller the dumplings, the better. On a spoon should fit from 10 to 15 pieces, and even more.

Yufahash

Yufahash means "little meal". To make such dumplings, it is better not to roll out all the dough - it has time to dry out while work is in progress. Having rolled out part of the dough, and cut into tiny squares, the hostess covers part of them with a towel so that they do not wind up. On the rest, she puts a tiny, neat ball of minced meat. Prepare a dozen and sculpt. A quick flick of your fingers creates tiny round envelopes. Then the next ten go to work. Better, of course, sculpt cheerful company, but even one patient hostess can do this work.

For the test, you need to mix 2 eggs, 200 grams of water, a quarter teaspoon of salt. Pour about 0.5 kilograms of flour into a bowl in a slide, make a recess and pour a mixture of water and eggs into this recess. Knead the dough, gradually adding more flour if necessary. It should be tough but soft. We roll the dough into a ball, cover with a napkin and send it to the refrigerator for 40 minutes.

We prepare the filling: we make minced beef, it is good to add a little beef or lamb fat to it. Finely chop the onion with a knife. I use a special grater, and then chop with a knife. The pieces should be millimeter-sized so that at least a piece gets into each tiny dumpling. Mix onion with meat at the rate of one tablespoon of chopped onion per 0.5 kg of beef, add black pepper and salt to taste, a little cold water. Now the minced meat must be thoroughly kneaded and beaten so that it absorbs water. Then the mass turns out to be more plastic and small pieces are separated from it more easily. When pressing on the stuffing, water should not stand out from it. Now thinly roll out the dough and cut it into pieces 1.5 by 1.5 cm or a little more. We make dumplings, put them on a tray in one layer. We store in the refrigerator. In principle, they can be frozen, but we always cook just before eating.

Cooked dumplings are eaten with broth. Diced onion should be fried until golden brown in butter, then add to boiling water at the rate of 2 tablespoons per two-liter saucepan. Salt. Put dumplings into this broth so that it turns out thick soup. Bring to a boil and cook for 2-3 minutes. All. Pour into deep plates and you can enjoy a leisurely meal. It turns out both the first and second dish in one.

Shurpa, Lagman and their variants

There are many dishes in the Crimean Tatar cuisine that look like a very thick soup. Such are shurpa and lagman.

Shurpa(shorba, chorba) - fragrant soup lamb with coarsely chopped vegetables. Sometimes it is cooked with chickpeas. Peas should be soaked 4-5 hours before cooking, or just leave it in water overnight. Shurpa is cooked in a cast-iron cauldron.

Half a glass of sunflower oil is poured into a heated cauldron and pieces of lamb are lowered. The meat should be fried a little, then add 2-3 cloves of finely chopped garlic there. When it turns golden, add water. For 1 kg of lamb, 2.5 liters will be required. It is necessary to bring the broth to a boil, remove the foam and cook for 30-40 minutes. Then add 100 g of chickpeas and cook for another 1 hour.

Peel vegetables: 500 g potatoes, 3 large carrots, 3 onions, 2 bell peppers. Cut the onion into half rings, pepper - into large slices, carrots - into long slices obliquely, tomatoes 2-3 pcs. cut into quarters, chop 1 bunch of parsley. We cut the potatoes into halves, large ones can be into quarters, we put quite small potatoes whole.

When the meat began to separate from the bones, salt and pepper the broth, put the bay leaf. Lay chopped vegetables: carrots, then onions and potatoes, let it boil for 5 minutes, add bell pepper and tomatoes. Just before the end, put the greens and last time bring to a boil. We make sure that every serving is sure to get good piece meat. This is a rather fatty and rich soup, very hearty meal, to which lamb gives a thick and peculiar taste.

I must say that several variants of shurpa are being prepared in the Crimea. The Tatars living in the steppe part cook it without sweet pepper and tomato, and on the coast you can find shurpa with vegetables but without chickpeas, in which they put a lot of different greens and raw onions cut into thin half rings right on the plate. Sometimes raw or pickled onions are served separately with shurpa.

Lagman- this is homemade noodles with a thick meat gravy in which vegetables are boiled.

Cooking noodles. For a test for 250 g of flour, you will need 130 ml of water, 1 teaspoon of salt and 25 g of vegetable oil. After kneading a thick dough, it must be kneaded for 10 minutes, and then covered with a napkin and left for 1 hour. After an hour, you still need to knead the dough, roll it thinly, cut into squares and roll each into a sausage. Dip sausages in sunflower oil and leave to rest for 10 minutes. Then we roll each one and stretch it with a rolling pin on the table so that it becomes even thinner, but does not tear. Roll up again, leave for a while. Then we take the sausage, cut it with a knife to make very thin strips. We unfold them, fold them in half and four times, take them along the edges and slap them on the table so that, when stretched, they become even thinner, turn into threads. We lay these threads on the table, we do the same with all the other blanks.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, dip the noodles into it and immediately stir so that it does not stick together. Cook for 3-5 minutes. Drain the water into a separate bowl. It will come in handy for making the sauce. Add a little vegetable oil to the noodles and mix. Ready noodles can be stored in the refrigerator, put in a bag. In this case, before serving, it must be poured with boiling water.

For gravy at the bottom of the cauldron, not heated to the maximum, we drown the interior mutton fat, cut into pieces. It needs 150 grams. When the fat is melted, we take out the cracklings and throw flat long pieces there lamb pulp, cut across the fibers (as in the basics). Fry until golden brown.

We clean and cut vegetables. For 400 grams of lamb, you will need 3 onions in semicircles, 2 carrots in large strips, 2 potatoes in strips, 400 grams of tomato cubes, 4 sweet peppers in slices, 3 finely chopped garlic cloves, chopped parsley and celery - 100 grams._

When the meat is fried and the juice has evaporated from it, fry the onion in the same place until golden brown, then carrots, bell peppers. We send potatoes next. Salt, add spices: cumin, black pepper and paprika to taste. Mix everything and simmer for 7-10 minutes. Then add the broth left over from cooking the noodles. It must be added so much that the result is not a soup, but a thick vegetable gravy with meat. Cook for a few more minutes. In deep large bowls we lay out the noodles, which must first be scalded with boiling water. Spread the gravy with vegetables and meat on top and serve.

Cheburek, yantyk, samsa

The most famous and widespread dish of the Crimean Tatars is pasties. Che - Borek pie - meat.

Thin pies with meat fried in a large amount of hot oil have become an integral part of the cooking of many Russian housewives, the fame of this dish has spread so widely. In the Crimean Tatar tradition, they are made with minced lamb or half beef and lamb. Another version of the same pies, but fried in a dry frying pan without oil, is called yantyk.

In the Crimean Tatar cuisine, in general, there are a lot of dough products. Both from fresh, and from rich, and from puff.

Absolutely must try the tandoor samsa. This is another mutton pie, very hearty (finely chopped tail fat is chopped there), with coarsely chopped onions and chopped pieces of meat, heavily peppered and flavored with spices. However, now they are preparing a more adapted version, with less pepper and spices.

The same kubete pie that I was looking for and found on Ai-Petri is beautiful. It's closed juicy pie with lamb, potatoes, onions and spices, which is baked in the oven and served, like all lamb dishes, hot. In this cake, Tatar housewives leave a small hole on top. When the cake is browned, 10 minutes before removing it from the oven, a piece is placed in this hole butter and add a few tablespoons of hot meat broth. This trick provides the dish with extraordinary juiciness and tenderness.

The feast does not like fuss

Of course, Crimean Tatars cook both salads and a lot of cereals and bean dishes, which are not found in the menu of restaurants. They don't belong to festive feast, these are dishes for every day that are eaten at home. As true Muslims, the Crimean Tatars do not recognize pork and use only beef, lamb and poultry. They know a lot about meat here! It is not for nothing that the commonly used word kebab comes from the Crimean Tatar “shish lik”, “shish” - spit, “lik” - for, that is, what is intended for the spit. Cooking on charcoal different variants lula kebab.

The real king of the feast is plov. It is cooked here strictly traditional, without dried fruits, as in Uzbekistan, without chickpeas, as in Tajikistan. But with what solemnity they approach its manufacture! This is a whole sacrament that does not tolerate not the slightest liberties. Everything must be done on time, to the nearest second. And the onions will brown exactly to light gold, and the carrots will give juice, but not soften. Under no circumstances should meat be salted. Salt and spices - only when rice is already laid in the dish and boils a little. The author of the dish masterfully maintains exactly the kind of heat in the oven that is needed at every stage, otherwise everything will be spoiled. And no talking during work, so as not to miss the right moment to bookmark the next serving of ingredients.

Crimean Tatars are big fans of tea, including tea infused with herbs. Drink it strong, hot, often adding milk. Tea drinking lasts a long time, and the guest is given water from tiny bowls so that the tea does not have time to cool down, and the hostess constantly showed attention to the guest, adding a fragrant drink. Tea is served with baked goods and honey. This is my favorite sweet.

Most Crimean Tatar restaurants are halal. Alcohol is not sold here. But with all their hearts they love to feed deliciously and know a lot about it. True, in Crimea, for the sake of non-Muslim guests, the hosts usually do not mind if they bring wine with them. Indeed, when meeting with such a varied cuisine, heavily flavored with spices and the chefs' love for their work, how not to raise a toast "for moderation in excesses"!

Tatyana Rubleva