Lenten dishes are the secrets of monastic food. Apple charlotte with brown bread

DISH RECIPES
RUSSIAN MONASTERIES

BEFORE TASTING

AFTER TASTING

(prayer for weight loss)

"Angel to you for the meal!"

For an appetizer at the top
1. 3 kulebyaki with minced meat




In the fraternal meal for lunch
1. Kulebyaka with porridge
2. Pressed caviar
3. Lightly salted beluga

5. Shchi with fried fish
6. Ear from carp and burbot

8. Fried cabbage

10. Kanpot from apples

1. State benefits

2. Non-working income

3. Donations.

cellarer

Father Hermogenes.

Cold snacks:
- curly vegetable mix,


Snack hot:

Salad:

First course:

Second course:

Dessert:
- ice cream with fruits.
Beverages:

- kvass

- freshly baked bread honey gingerbread, different savory and sweet pastries to choose from.

Recall that in monasteries they do not eat meat very often, in some they do not eat it at all. Therefore, the "spell" "Crucian, crucian, turn into a pig" does not work.

On the great and patronal holidays, the brothers are blessed with a “consolation” - a glass of red wine - French or, at worst, Chilean. And, of course, dishes are being prepared for a special holiday menu.

And here is the breakfast menu of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' on one of the days of April 2011.
Menus of patriarchal nutrition are carefully developed and balanced by nutritionists to maintain the proper energy in the patriarch, which is necessary for the tireless conduct of his enormous spiritual, organizational and representative work.
In the patriarchal menus, all raw materials and ready-made dishes undergo the same check as in the Kremlin kitchen. All dishes on the patriarch's table are the fruit of a long analysis, discussions and endless tastings of culinary experts the highest class, sanitary doctors and nutritionists.
For Patriarch Kirill's indispensable faith in God's mercy and protection is a high spiritual matter, and the work of the patriarchal guard from the FSO and the corresponding doctors and laboratories is a daily earthly matter.

Cold dishes:
Sturgeon caviar with buckwheat pancakes.
Caspian sturgeon, smoked, with galantine from grapes and sweet pepper.
Salmon stroganina with parmesan cheese and avocado mousse.

Snacks:
Pheasant roll.
Calf jelly.
Bunny pate.
pancake pie with blue crabs.

Hot appetizers:
Fried grouse.
Duck liver with rhubarb sauce fresh berries.

Hot fish dishes:
Rainbow trout poached in champagne.

Hot meat dishes:
Smoked duck strudel.
Roe deer back with lingonberry galantine.
Venison grilled.

Sweet foods:
Cake with white chocolate.
Fresh fruits with strawberry galantine.
Baskets with fresh berries in champagne jelly.

NOTE TO THE PATRIARSH BREAKFAST MENU. this morning meal His Holiness Cyril was separated from him by other primates of the Russian Orthodox Church, who also were monastics, who came to see him in the monastic cell in the morning.

The monastery chef is happy to share his recipes vegetable salad with shrimp and fish hodgepodge.

First of all, in order for everything to turn out tasty and pleasing to God, you need to start cooking by reading a prayer. Have you read? Now to business!

Portion salad"Sea freshness"

Lettuce leaves, torn into pieces by hand - this is important.
Cucumber and tomato are cut into large pieces.
To them are added a few sprigs of chopped parsley, a ring of chopped canned pineapple and five shredded king prawns.
All this is seasoned with Provencal mayonnaise and placed in a beautiful slide on a lettuce leaf.
Topped with pine nuts.
For decoration: four shrimp are cut lengthwise and, together with parsley leaves, are stacked around the “slide”.
NOTE. Such a salad, if seasoned lean mayonnaise(recipe see below), you can eat in the post.

Lenten fish hodgepodge"Monastic"

The broth is boiled from the peeled heads and ridges of salmon, pike perch and carp.
Separately, coarsely chopped fish fillet (stellate sturgeon, sturgeon, beluga or other) is cooked until cooked.
Steam blanch the pickled cucumbers.
We pass (shortly stew) tomatoes and onions.
In the prepared strained broth we put pieces of boiled fish, sliced olives, dressings from cucumbers and tomato roast.
We let the hodgepodge brew under the lid for 15 minutes.
Serve with parsley, a slice of lemon, previously peeled, and a spoonful of sour cream.

Rye unleavened bread mixed with hops

Ingredients :
For the test you need: 2 tablespoons of hops (you can buy it at the pharmacy) pour a glass of boiling water.
When the hops swell, add rye flour, add some salt and sugar.
The dough is not elastic, a little stronger than for pancakes, and sticky. So that it does not stick, hands are moistened with water.
The form in which the bread will be baked is greased with oil and fired in the oven for three hours. As a result, the oil turns into a thin film that will not allow the loaf to burn.

Cooking

The dough is laid out in a form, filling it halfway.
Level it with a wet hand, and let it rise in the oven at a temperature of 37 gr. With about two hours, and then baked at a temperature of 220 gr. 1-1.5 hours.
Readiness is checked by squeezing the top and bottom crust: if the crumb between them straightens quickly, the bread is well baked.
After baking, the crust is moistened with water.
hot cut Rye bread no, it has to cool down.
“This kind of bread is not only extremely tasty, but also extremely healthy,” says Alexander Titov, a technologist at St. Daniel's Monastery. - Lowers cholesterol levels in the blood and helps to normalize metabolism. Not only will you not get better from such bread, but on the contrary, you can lose five extra pounds. And most importantly, very well preserved

Monastery pies from lean test

Ingredients :
For 1 kg of flour, 8 grams of yeast are taken, salt - 25 g, sugar - 30 g, warm water - 250 ml, vegetable oil - 150 g (it gives the dough splendor).

Cooking

“Knead the dough well and let it rise for 15-20 minutes,” says monastery cook Nadezhda Grasu. - Divide it into balls of 60 grams. The secret of our delicious branded pies lies in the flour, which is brought from the mill of the Danilovsky Compound in the Ryazan region. And of course, we do everything with prayer, we put a piece of our soul into each pie. After all, dough, like a child, loves warmth.
The fillings can be very diverse, but in the monastery there are eight types: potatoes, cabbage, rice-fish, rice-mushrooms, cottage cheese, jam, cinnamon and poppy seeds. There is another seasonal one - apples. They are also taken from the Ryazan monastery garden.
Each pie has its own shape, with classic cabbage, potatoes - a triangle, cottage cheese - round with a hole in the middle. Fish-rice is a classic with two notches in the center, with mushrooms - the dough is plucked like a “pigtail” dumpling. A pie with jam is rolled up.
With cinnamon mixed with powdered sugar they also roll it up with a roll, make a slit in the center and drag one end into the slit, resulting in a Christmas tree shape. Poppy muffin is rolled up like cinnamon muffin and then folded in half. At the fold, an incision is made to the middle along the folded tube. Then the two parts are parted to the sides, and the dough takes the shape of a heart. By the way, cinnamon and poppy seed buns, before spreading the filling, are smeared with vegetable oil so that it evenly lays down.
Pies are placed on a greased baking sheet and put in the oven to come up at a temperature of 46 gr. C for 15 minutes. Then the oven is heated to 180-200 degrees and baked for 12 minutes.
Wonderful in taste and light for a gentle monastic stomach, pies are ready.

THIS GOURMET MONK CAN LEARN THE ART OF FOOD ANY MOST EXPERIENCED LAID GOURMET
Father Germogen's kitchen
monk of the St. Danilov Stauropegial Monastery

"THE TABLE THAT BEGINS AND ENDS WITH PRAYER WILL NEVER GET SMALL"
(Saint John Chrysostom)

To the Glory of the True Orthodox Lord! Chapter: Russian orthodox cuisine Traditions, prayers, recipes 20th page DISH RECIPES RUSSIAN MONASTERIES PRAYERS BEFORE AND AFTER TASTING FOOD BEFORE TASTING Our Father, Who art in heaven! Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as in heaven and on earth. Give us our daily bread today; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. The eyes of all in Thee, O Lord, trust, and You give them food in good time, You open Your generous hand and fulfill every animal goodwill. AFTER TASTING We thank Thee, Christ our God, for Thou hast satisfied us with Thy earthly blessings; do not deprive us of Your Kingdom of Heaven, but as if in the midst of Your disciples, Thou hast come, Savior, give them peace, come to us and save us. SECRET PRAYER BEFORE EATING FOOD FOR THE UNTEMPTABLE IN DIET (prayer for weight loss) I also pray to You, Lord, deliver me from satiety, voluptuousness and grant me in the peace of my soul to reverently accept Your generous gifts, so that by eating them, I will receive strengthening of my spiritual and bodily strength to serve You, Lord, in the little rest of my life on Earth. Traditional thank you phrase: "Angel to you for the meal!" Monastery meal in the 16th century In Old Russian writing, the degree of reflection different parties life is far from the same, which depended on the social significance of the relevant phenomena of material culture. So, little information about lunch and festive feast townsman or peasant, but the royal and patriarchal table is described quite fully. Let us name the most rich in lexical content published monuments: "The table book of Patriarch Filaret 1623-1624" (Antiquity and novelty. St. Petersburg, 1906 1909. Book 11 - 13); "Patriarch's table in 1691" (Zabelin I.E. Materials for the history, archeology and statistics of Moscow. M., 1884); “Expenditure book of the patriarchal order for dishes served to Patriarch Adrian and persons of various ranks from September 1698 to August 1694 ..” (St. Petersburg, 1890). The all-Russian rite of the monastery meal is fixed. Main source- monastery canteens. In the library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a statute of the Kirillov Monastery of the end of the 16th century (fund 247, No. 4) was found, describing the everyday life of the brethren, more than 20 pages of the manuscript are devoted to the “everyday life of the brethren”. What is interesting about the dining room? Everyday workers painted daytime howls (howls - old Russian word, indicating the time of the meal; see) and the annual cycle of meals for ordinary, mostly fasting days: on these days, the order of monastic life was especially strict and uniformly mandatory. But on the holiday, diversity and contentment were allowed, meat and intoxicating drinks of their own monastic production (Russian monasteries have always been famous for their alcoholic drinks). The monastery meal is a collective ritual. The monks ate twice a day: lunch and dinner, and on some days they ate only once (although this "once" could be very long); for various reasons, it occasionally happened that meals were completely excluded. The main thing was not the quantity of food, but the quality of the dishes: fast or fast, the role of the dish in rituals, the time of eating. The alternation of fasts and meat-eaters was rhythmic: during the week they fasted on Wednesday and Friday, there were four long fasts and three one-day fasts in the year. The table of the Cyrillic monks did not differ much from what they ate in the surrounding villages, but the rules of meals were stricter in the monastery: “... fasting happens - they don’t eat soon.” Almost daily "varivo" and the main first course - shti (shchi): "Vo shteh white cabbage or borscht or sour with garlic or onions, and eggs, two per brother, or broken cows or foxes with 4 brothers, or cows with fish, two brothers, and if there is scrambled eggs, then there are no eggs”; "Shti borscht from the picture." White cabbage soup was made from fresh cabbage, and borscht cabbage soup was made from beets (its old name is borscht). They cooked cabbage soup with rubbing - with seasoning, which was prepared from flour with water or with vegetable oil. The list of second courses was rich, moreover, fish clearly reigned on the table. “The lack of fish is worse than the lack of bread,” they used to say in the Russian North. According to the number of dishes served on the table, lunch (fodder) was average and lunch (fodder) was smaller. If the dinner was average, then three types of fish were served, but if "the food was smaller", two types of fish were served. In the evening, one type of fish was served”: “... after Vespers, fresh fried fish and bream are served.” In addition, they baked fish, and used salted fish. Let's also call the fish dish tavranchuk. "... in frying pans tavranchuk heads of sturgeon or smelt." The monastic dinner included a pea brew made from filtered (shabby) or broken (crushed) peas: “... sometimes we have another brew with butter strained peas and noodles”; and the other is eroch with a bat or porridge. boiled different cereals: dairy, steep, sinful. From donated waxes, juice porridge was obtained - melted juice. In the course were eggs and cucumbers. From dairy products, sluggish cheese is known - this is aged cottage cheese. This name is already mentioned in the Life of Theodosius of the Caves in the 12th century. Of the baked goods, the first place belongs to the pie: they were baked on a hearth, spun in oil, flavored different stuffing: "... howling pies, some with eggs and pepper and others with cheese"; "pies with peas or juice"; “two pies, one with vyaziga and pepper or ak, and the other with peas.” Then came “pancakes with honey”, “roguli and brushwood”, “fraternal kalachi and Volotsk trade kalachi”, “beaten karovai” (from pastry), “korovai with fish”, “quarter kolachi or korovai with turnips or carrots” , “pancakes with butter and onions and others with juice”, “one-wheat pancakes with salt and other sinful pancakes with porridge, the same evening with milk”, “imported white and rye wheat rebakes”. Bread was consumed less frequently than pies. From cookies in everyday life are called foxes. During the fasts, they ate less, and the food was unpretentious: instead of baked bread, they cooked steamed bread - steamed flour made from malt or buckwheat. On the table constantly, except for the days of Great Lent, there was kvass. IN fast days replaced him cabbage pickle or rosol red, i.e. from pickled beets. In addition, they drank unleavened (fresh) milk, boiled (baked) milk, and varenets (fermented baked milk). Let us also mention molasses, satiated (water saturated with honey), jelly known since the time of Kievan Rus: "... jelly with cream, and tomorrow for dinner the same jelly with satiation." The names of the dishes of the monastery meal lived for centuries: porridge, eggs, pie, kvass, cheese, kutia have been known since the 12th century; from the 13th century - milk, beer. For a Russian meal, see the section and pages,. Monastic meal in the 18th - 19th centuries Spaso-Yakovlevsky Monastery The Spaso-Yakovlevsky Monastery had an extensive subsidiary farm, thanks to which the monastery meal was provided with vegetables, fruits and dairy products. In the monastery garden in the XVIII - XIX centuries. grown: vegetables - cucumbers, carrots, beets, rutabaga, horseradish, colored and cabbage, black and steam radish, onions and potatoes (the latter began to be cultivated from the middle of the 19th century); legumes - peas and beans; greens - lettuce, parsley, parsnips and spinach. As you can see, the assortment of vegetables and herbs was quite extensive, and the fact that in the middle of the XIX century. in the monastery there were two gardens, in which, in total, there were about two hundred ridges. At the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, after a radical redevelopment of the territory, a large garden was laid out in the monastery. Only in the first decade of the nineteenth century more than 500 apple trees, 200 cherries, almost 300 plums and many blackcurrant bushes were planted in it. Not surprisingly, the monastery had no shortage of apples and berries. The monastery had a cattle yard, which kept cattle. From here, milk, sour cream and butter were supplied to the monastery table, and meat products were supplied for the meals of the guests and workers of the monastery. Meanwhile, the bulk of food products had to be bought. Judging by the income-expenditure books, most of all they bought flour, cereals and fish. The monastery purchased rye and wheat flour for baking bread. From wheat flour they baked pies and prepared pancakes, made kissels from pea flour and oatmeal. Cereals and stews were cooked from cereals, and they were also used to make fillings for pies. Millet and oatmeal, buckwheat and rice, pearl barley and semolina had the greatest distribution among the varieties of cereals. The use of meat in the monastery was prohibited by charter, but in large quantities various fish dishes. Fish for the monastery meal was caught in the lake by the servants of the monastery, but mostly it was bought from fish merchants. The following varieties are named in the documents: sterlet, sturgeon, beluga, burbot, pike perch, stellate sturgeon, navaga, catfish, tench, bream, pike, ide, crucian carp, perch, ruff and roach. Most expensive varieties fish went for 40-30 kopecks per pound (400 grams), the cheapest - 2-3 kopecks. The monastery bought fish in large quantities, for example, in 1852 about 170 pounds of fresh fish were purchased, in 1875 - more than 100 pounds (1 pood - 16.4 kg). Beluga, stellate sturgeon, pike perch and sturgeon, in addition, were purchased in salted and lightly salted form. Along with fresh and salted fish, the monastery bought red and pressed caviar. Especially a lot pressed caviar was bought in the middle of the 19th century, so, in 1852, more than 10 pounds of it were bought. Huge batches of cucumbers and cabbage were bought from vegetables in late summer - early autumn for pickling for the winter. It is known that the monastic cuisine was distinguished by various mushroom dishes, it is no coincidence that both fresh and dried mushrooms were bought so often. We regularly bought a variety of spices, namely: mustard, pepper, horseradish, vinegar. We also bought spices: cinnamon, vanilla, cloves, Bay leaf; from dried fruits - raisins and prunes. Special mention should be made of drinks. The most common and favorite monastic drink was kvass, for the preparation of which malt was used. Every year the monastery bought dozens of pounds of malt. Honey was bought in large volumes, on the basis of which sbiten and mead were prepared. Traditional Russian drinks in the second half of the 19th century were gradually replaced by tea, which eventually became firmly established in monastic life. Representation of the ceremonial monastic dinner of the middle of the 19th century. allows you to compile a list of dishes that were served at the table on November 27, 1850, the day of the celebration of the memory of the founder of the monastery. “Register of food on the feast of St. James 1850 November 27th For an appetizer at the top 1. 3 kulebyaki with minced meat 2. 2 pike steamed on two dishes 3. Jellied perches with minced meat on two dishes 4. Boiled carp on two dishes 5. Fried bream on two dishes In the fraternal meal for lunch 1. Kulebyaka with porridge 2. Pressed caviar 3. Lightly salted beluga 4. Botvinya with salted fish 5. Shchi with fried fish 6. Ear from carp and burbot 7. Pea sauce with fried fish 8. Fried cabbage 9. Dry bread with jam 10. Kanpot from apples Snack for the white clergy 1. Caviar and white bread on 17 courses 2. Cold head with horseradish and cucumbers on 17 dishes” Since, starting from the middle of the 18th century, the Yakovlev monastery was by no means in poverty, the monastic meal was distinguished both by the quality of the products and the variety of dishes; the monastery itself was famous for its hospitality and hospitality - the food here was very tasty. Means of maintenance of the Spaso-Yakovlevsky monastery Sources of means of maintenance, which at the turn of the XVIII - XIX centuries. According to the method of receiving money, the Yakovlevsky Monastery disposed can be divided into three categories: regular payments, non-salary income and donations. 1. State benefits- money paid from the state treasury. After the reform of 1764, in accordance with the second class assigned to the monastery and taking into account the surplus amount established in 1797, the Yakovlevsky Monastery annually received 2393 rubles. 11 kop. This money at the beginning of each year was issued from the Rostov district treasury. In the monastery, their payment was made twice a year. State money was distributed according to the following items: . on the salary of the rector and brethren - 745 rubles; . for a monastic meal - 340 rubles; . on the salary of ministers - 354 rubles. 60 kopecks; . for economic monastic needs (“for stable expenses and firewood”) - 300 rubles; . “for church needs,” which meant the purchase of six buckets of red “Cahors” wine for preparing communion and eight and a half pounds of whole wheat flour for baking prosphora for the whole year - 53 rubles. 50 kopecks; . for the repair or “repair” of monastic buildings, primarily churches, as well as for the maintenance of the sacristy - 600 rubles. In 1834, the Spaso-Yakovlevsky Monastery was elevated to the status of first-class monasteries, in connection with which regular payments from the treasury amounted to 4,200 rubles. 82 kop. in year. 2. Non-working income is the money earned by the monastery itself. This included funds received from the lease of land plots, hayfields, fisheries and the monastery mill, as well as money received from the sale of monastery cattle, hay, vegetables and fruits. 3. Donations. It is difficult to make an exact account of all donations to the monastery, but it is obvious that there were many of them. The size of donations could be very different - poor pilgrims donated a penny, wealthy pilgrims did not spare tens of thousands of rubles. As a rule, the largest cash deposits were targeted. An illustrative example of this is a donation of 65 thousand rubles. Count Nikolai Petrovich Sheremetev for the construction of the Demetrius Church. Brethren of the Spaso-Yakovlevsky Monastery The main duty of the monastic brethren was the administration of divine services in the monastic churches. In the 19th century, two early and one late liturgies were served daily in the monastery. Between the hieromonks, hierodeacons and church clerks, a certain order of conduct of church services was established - the so-called "sequence", performed during the week. In their free time from “routine services”, the members of the brethren sent “kliros obedience” - during church services they sang behind the kliros. The admission of new members to the brethren of the Yakovlevsky Monastery was carried out only if there were vacancies in the monastery, which appeared after the death, transfer to another monastery, or the retirement of one of the monastics. The tonsure became possible after the end of a trial or "test" lasting two or three years, during which the novice lived in the monastery "to accustom himself to the monastic life." The tonsure was performed on the condition that he "conveyed a respectable life and carefully corrected the entrusted obediences." Reception of novices and their tonsure was carried out with the consent of the Moscow Synodal Office. Reception, transfer and dismissal of monastics were also carried out only with the permission of the Moscow office of the Synod. There were more than enough people who wanted to join the Yakovlev brethren. On a significant part of the petitions for admission to the monastery preserved in the archive, a resolution “refuse for lack of places” was imposed. IN Spaso-Yakovlevsky Monastery there was a cenobitic charter, according to which all the brethren were obliged to attend the daily and evening common meals. Only the sick were allowed to eat in the cells. The rules of the Yakovlevsky hostel were quite strict. Dismissals to the city were allowed only with the permission of the monastic authorities and only in case of real need, limited to the time interval between the afternoon meal and the evening service, that is, from noon to four in the afternoon. monastic cooking recipes Visit to the kitchen of St. Danilov Stauropegial Monastery, Moscow What is the fundamental difference in nutrition between laymen and monks - the former simply love to eat deliciously, the latter do the same, but with a deep charitable meaning and with lofty spiritual intentions. Of course, this great spiritual wisdom is not easily understood by ordinary lay people. Blaming the contemporary atheistic Russian intelligentsia, priest Pavel Florensky spoke of their attitude to food in the following way: “The intellectual does not know how to eat, let alone taste, he doesn’t even know what it means to “taste”, what sacred food means: they don’t “taste” the gift of God, they don’t even eat food, but they “burrow” chemicals. It is likely that many do not clearly understand the importance of food in the life of a Christian. To find out what the clergy will eat for lunch after prayer, on one of the usual working days we go to the patriarchal kitchen of the St. Danilov Stauropegial Monastery. “Welcome,” he greets us cordially. cellarer(head of the monastery table, food supplies and wine cellar) monk Igor and leads to the monastery kitchen. For a place where food is prepared for several hundred people, the room is quite small. The main area is occupied by cast-iron stoves, a brazier and a baking oven. variety of pies and the famous monastery honey cakes. The first fragrance that is felt in the kitchen is the wonderful, sweet smell of freshly baked goods. We found the source of this marvelous aroma cooling on huge baking sheets behind the oven. - And what else do you have, besides bread, today in lunch menu? we are curious. Father Hermogenes. For many years the meal was his monastic obedience. Hieromonk Hermogenes (Ananiev), a resident of the St. Danilov Monastery, served for many years as the cellar of the monastery, that is, he was responsible for the kitchen and meals. Constant prayers, monastic abstinence, and strict observance of fasts bestowed on his guise a special, truly inexplicable divinely inspired Orthodox holiness. Father Hermogenes published a book popular among the people on proper Orthodox nutrition "Father Hermogen's Kitchen", in which he teaches how to cook Orthodox dishes that give true Christian good manners and harmony of the body. Some of his wonderful recipes see below. In the photo: a frame from the video film of Father Hermogenes. The chef of the monastery kindly demonstrates the dishes that God sent to the brothers today for their modest monastic dinner: Cold snacks: - figured vegetable cutting, - painted stuffed pike perch - tender salmon of its own special salting Snack hot: — julienne of fresh forest mushrooms, baked with bechamel sauce Salad: — vegetable with shrimps "Sea freshness" First course: - fish hodgepodge "monastic style" Second course: - salmon steak with tartar sauce Dessert: - ice cream with fruits. Beverages: - branded monastic sea - kvass And, of course, for dinner are served: — freshly baked Tags: cited

Last update: 02/14/2015

Who said that lenten dishes are boring, monotonous, insipid and do not require culinary perseverance from the hostess? The recipes that the sisters of the Novo-Tikhvin Convent kindly shared with the readers of AiF-Ural prove the opposite. Create, experiment, please loved ones. Bon appetit!

Tomato soup with garlic

Photo: One million menus

Lightly fry finely chopped onion in oil. Add tomatoes to it and simmer in a sealed container over low heat. When the tomatoes become soft, add some browned carrots and parsley to them, put rice, pour broth or vegetable broth. Salt, add sugar. Cook for 35 minutes until the rice is cooked through. Rub everything through a sieve, put finely chopped garlic into the soup and boil again.

Rustic sorrel soup

Photo: One million menus

Boil potatoes with whole peeled tubers and cool. Strain the decoction. Cut sorrel leaves, add chopped onion, parsley, vegetable oil, a little broth and simmer for 5-7 minutes.

Boiled potatoes cut into cubes, mix with sorrel, pour hot broth, bring to a boil and cook for a few more minutes. These cabbage soup is especially delicious if cooked in a cast-iron pot in the oven. Put dill greens in ready cabbage soup.

Mushroom broth with pies

Photo: mmenu.com

For the broth:

For the test:

• 1 pack dry yeast
• 600 g flour
• 300 g water
• 20 g sugar
• 35 g vegetable oil
• 30 g margarine
• 10 g salt

dried mushrooms soak in water for an hour, wash, pour boiling water over, chop, put in a saucepan along with roots (1/2 of the total), onions, a bunch of parsley, leeks. Optionally, you can add a spoonful of cumin. Pour in water and boil until the roots become soft. After that, add the fried onions and the fried second part of the roots. Strain the finished broth, serve with green dill and “ears”.

Recipe for "ears": Make lean yeast dough. Prepare minced meat from those mushrooms from which the broth was cooked: finely chop, fry with onions, add salt and pepper to taste. Make small pies, bake in the oven at 150 ° C, serve with the broth.

Dumplings with mushrooms

Photo: mmenu.com

For the test:

For filling:

• 30 g dry porcini mushrooms
• 1 cup steep buckwheat porridge or boiled rice
• 4 tbsp. tablespoons of vegetable oil
• 1 bulb

For decoction::

• 0.5 l water
• 3 bay leaves
• 4-5 black peppercorns
• 2-3 garlic cloves
• 1 st. a spoonful of parsley

To prepare the dough, pour into sunflower oil boiling water, pour flour into this mixture and quickly knead the dough, kneading it well with your hands, and then roll it into a very thin layer without adding flour, since this dough does not stick to the board. To prepare the filling, boil the mushrooms in water. Pour the broth into a separate bowl, and finely chop the mushrooms, fry with onion in oil, mix with porridge and knead well into a homogeneous mass. Cut the rolled dough into small squares or cut out circles with a glass, put the filling on each piece and make dumplings. Grease a baking sheet or frying pan with oil, put dumplings on it in one layer and bake in the oven over moderate heat for 15-20 minutes. Then put the dumplings in a pot, pour hot mushroom broth, salt, add spices and put in the oven for 15 minutes.

jardinière

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You can also use cauliflower, green pea, earthen pears.

Take all products in an equal share, only potatoes and cabbage are three times more. cut everything in small pieces, put in a pot and tightly close the lid so that the vegetables are well pressed. The dish is cooked for about 40 minutes, it is better to salt the dish after it is cooked, as well as add oil to it.

Stewed mushrooms (chanterelles, mushrooms, russula)

Boil the mushrooms in salt water, drain in a colander. Melt the butter (lean) in a saucepan, shift the mushrooms, cover with a lid and simmer over low heat until all the juice has boiled away. Then put chopped greens, stir, put in a deep dish and serve.

Peppers stuffed with vegetables

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For minced meat, chop peeled carrots, onions, celery root, cabbage into strips, sauté in oil, add salt, cool. Cut off the top of each pepper pod in the form of a cap, remove the stem with seeds. Then put the pods in boiling water for 1-2 minutes, put them in a colander, cool and fill with minced meat. Place stuffed pepper pods in one row, pour tomato juice with the remaining minced meat and simmer everything for 20 minutes. Serve chilled. Decorate with greenery.

Lenten cookies with marmalade

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Pour flour into a bowl, add mineral water and sunflower oil. Knead a pretty stiff dough. Ready dough roll out with a rolling pin into a round layer with a diameter of 25-30 cm, a thickness of 3-4 mm. The resulting circle is cut into 12 sectors. Put a piece of marmalade (jam) on the wide part of each sector and wrap the dough with a roll, starting from the wide part. Put the cookies on a baking sheet and put in an oven preheated to 200-220 ºC for 20-25 minutes. Sprinkle the finished cookies with powdered sugar.

Lenten cake

Photo: mmenu.com

Pour carrot juice into a container for making dough, add sugar and pour flour in a slide. In a hill of flour, make a small depression and pour in the slaked lemon juice soda. Stir in the flour and knead the dough. Bake the cake for 20 minutes at a temperature of 150 ºС on a sheet greased with vegetable oil.

Remove the finished cake from the oven and cut across into two parts. Lubricate the lower and upper parts with jam (preferably lemon), put on top of each other and leave overnight. In the morning, grease the top of the cake and the sides with a special fruit jelly cream. Sprinkle generously with powdered sugar mixed with chopped walnuts and garnish with chopped fruit pieces (kiwi, strawberries, canned peaches, oranges) and cranberries.

Fruit cream jelly. 1 st. Dissolve a spoonful of gelatin in 0.5 liters of lemon juice, put on the stove and bring to a boil. Remove from stove, cool to room temperature.

Oil free recipes

Salad of carrots, apples and raisins

Photo: mmenu.com

• 4 carrots
• 3 apples
• 2 tbsp. spoons of raisins
• 1 st. a spoonful of sugar
• 1 st. a spoonful of lemon juice

Sort raisins, wash and soak in boiled water for 25-30 minutes. Cut carrots and apples into thin strips. Combine with raisins, sugar and lemon juice, mix well.

Red beans with walnut sauce

Photo: mmenu.com

• 400 g red canned beans
• 160 g walnuts
• 100 g green cilantro, basil, parsley and mint
• 80 g green onions
• 1 garlic clove
• crushed red pepper to taste

Grind the nuts, add chopped garlic, pepper, salt, chopped cilantro, basil, parsley, mint. Pour a little liquid from the beans into this mixture, add the beans, finely chopped onion and mix. Serve to the table, garnished with sprigs of greenery and sprinkled with chopped nuts.

holodnik

Photo: mmenu.com

• 1-2 boiled beets
• 1 fresh cucumber
• 100 g green onions
• sugar
• dill
• lemon juice or citric acid to taste
• 1 l bread kvass or beetroot broth

Dilute cold kvass or chilled broth, in which beets were boiled, with cold boiled water, add beets and cucumbers cut into thin strips, finely chopped onions, dill, salt, sugar, lemon juice and refrigerate. Serve chilled.

baked potatoes

Photo: mmenu.com

Wash small tubers with a brush young potatoes, put on a baking sheet and put in a heated oven. Remove from oven after 30 minutes and serve. Potatoes can be served with salt, onion or green onion, salted mushrooms, salted cucumbers.

Cranberry mousse

Photo: mmenu.com

• 1 cup cranberries
• 1 cup of sugar
• 3 art. spoons of semolina
• 3 glasses of water

Carefully knead the sorted and washed berries with a crush, put the berry mass on cheesecloth and squeeze out the juice. Put the juice in a cold place, and pour the pomace from the berries with three glasses of water and boil for 5 minutes. Strain the resulting broth and cook semolina porridge with sugar on it. Pour into chilled porridge berry juice and beat with a mixer until fluffy and homogeneous. The mass should increase in volume by 2 times. Divide the mousse into bowls and refrigerate for 1-2 hours. Garnish with berries when serving.

Cherry compote

Photo: mmenu.com

• 500 g cherries
• 2 tbsp. spoons of sugar
• 0.5 l water

Pour sugar with water, bring the solution to a boil. Rinse the cherries, remove the seeds, put in a boiling solution, cook for 2 minutes. Then close the pot with compote with a lid. Put the compote to cool.

Sbiten

Photo: mmenu.com

• 150 g honey
• 150 g sugar
• 1 liter of water
• cinnamon
• carnation
• ginger
• cardamom

Dissolve honey in water granulated sugar. Boil honey-sugar water, add spices to taste and boil again over low heat for 20-30 minutes. Steep covered for 20 minutes, then strain. Ready sbiten warm up, drink hot.

Morse orange

Photo: mmenu.com

• 100 g oranges
• 120 g sugar
• 1 liter of water

Finely chop orange zest, pour over hot water and boil for 5 minutes, and then insist 3-4 hours. After straining, add sugar to the broth. Bring to a boil and cool, pour in the squeezed Orange juice and cool.

lemon mousse

Photo: mmenu.com

• 1 lemon
• 3 glasses of water
• glass of sugar
• 20 g gelatin

Remove the zest from the lemon, pour 2 cups of water, add a glass of sugar, boil, add the lemon juice. Dissolve gelatin in a glass of water; after it swells, dissolve and pour into the lemon broth. Beat the liquid with a mixer on ice until it turns white and thickens. Pour into moulds, let cool.

It so happened that in Russia it was the monasteries that turned out to be the keepers of not only spiritual culture, but also interesting recipes. national cuisine. How to cook the progenitor of hodgepodge and pickle, what is hidden behind the "jelly banks" and on what fine dining from radish, the cook of the church of Metropolitan Hilarion is capable - in the material of RIA Novosti.

kisselnye shores

“The monastery meal has always been considered the standard of tasty, high-quality and at the same time simple food,” says Tatyana Tyshkevich, chef of the Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery. “Cookbooks and cookbooks appeared in Russia only in the 18th century. This can be learned only from monastic sources - "byikhodniks" and Kelar books.

True, the monks did not eat meat. But in those days, fish was a more affordable and common source of protein for the majority of the Russian population.

Foreign travelers in the 15th-16th centuries noted that the Russians ate "more fish than meat and garden greens, that they preferred salted and smoked meat to fresh, as well as almost half-cooked skillfully cooked meat, that they respected cold dishes more than others, and that they seasoned all their dishes excessively. garlic and onion or salt, pepper and vinegar."

In the refectory of the Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery, Tatyana not only cooks for the brethren and pilgrims, but also deals with old Russian recipes. “We have restored the recipe for Moscow kalach and Moscow bagel, bake sourdough sourdough rye bread, and much more,” she says.

Among vintage dishes XV-XVI centuries - "fish hookah", the progenitor of the well-known combined hodgepodge and pickle.

It needs fish (halibut, chum salmon or any other), salted barrel cucumbers, onion, turnip, salt, black ground pepper and dill greens. "Sweat cucumbers, turnips and onions until cooked in the oven, boil the fish, put stewed vegetables in the fish broth, and pieces finished fish sprinkle with dill. You can serve it in a pot," explains Tatyana.

And here is another very popular once in Rus' dish - oatmeal jelly with cranberry sauce. “It is about him in Russian fairy tales that they say “jelly banks,” the monastery cook notes. oatmeal ferment for the night rye sourdough, wipe it through a sieve in the morning, add honey or sugar, salt and boil until thick. Such jelly is eaten cold with cranberry sauce on honey.

Monastery gingerbread

What to feed guests

The chef of the refectory at the church in honor of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow" on Bolshaya Ordynka Oleg Brizhinyuk has to take into account not only Lenten menu for the rector, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, but also the tastes of his foreign guests. Therefore, both national Slavic and modern European dishes are prepared in the kitchen.

"Once during Lent, I decided to make a radish steak. I bought white radish, cut into rings, boiled for about forty minutes, held a little in soy sauce with pepper, with spices and browned on the grill so that stripes from frying appeared. Everyone thought it was scallops. And this is a radish!" - says Oleg.

He says that when he worked in a restaurant, it was easier - there was a menu approved for six months. And here you have to have time to navigate and compose something all the time. "I literally dissolve in the work. I like the way Jamie Oliver, Gennaro Contaldo cook - simply and clearly. I copied some things from them," the chef admits.

Meat, fish and greens he buys in the market, something on the little things - in the store.

“Recently, a European delegation came to us, and I was asked to demonstrate Russian cuisine. I made cabbage rolls, Russian salad and borscht. Everyone liked it,” he adds.

fennel salad

One of Oleg's latest discoveries is a salad of fennel and Italian burrata cheese: "The taste is unusual, and it looks good. The combination is awesome." And you just need to finely chop the fennel, lemon zest, pour over lemon juice and olive oil, salt, pepper and leave for ten minutes. Then top with cheese, cherry tomato halves and sprinkle with mint leaves. You can add a little more sugar.

A few years ago, Oleg worked as a cook's assistant at the Donskoy Monastery. One of the most favorite dishes in the monastery was cutlets from two or three varieties of fish. "Let's say we take salmon and cod, or salmon and pike perch, or tuna and salmon - the combination should be dry-fat. Chop into small cubes, finely chop the onion, salt, pepper, add a little starch and flour, mix, sculpt small round cutlets and It remains to “finish” for about ten minutes in the oven, ”the master of the monastery kitchen shares the recipe.

He serves this dish green sauce: basil, parsley, garlic, olive oil, a little citric acid, salt, pepper, grind with a blender. (“The sauce turns out to be just a bomb! It can also be added to salads,” Oleg clarifies.) And he recommends broccoli as a side dish (boil, and then “press” on the grill, “so that there is a crust”). Or other fried vegetables: tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini ("this goes well with meat").

Fish cutlets according to the recipe of the Donskoy Monastery

“I remember that during the days of Lent, Patriarch Kirill came to the Donskoy Monastery, and we baked beets: cut them into slices, sprinkled with dry basil and decorated with basil, it turned out delicious,” he recalls.

"Or bake eggplant, bell pepper in the oven, and then add raw tomato, onion, greens, salt, pepper, garlic to taste on top. You can cook without oil. Scald the tomato, remove the skin, chop finely. It turns out caviar - spread on bread "Oleg continues.

"And broccoli with spinach on coconut milk doing well. It is lean, so it helps out well - you eat up. Sweet, but ok in soup. You can add a little lemon, "he goes to the first courses. And recommends for the summer Belarusian soup"refrigerator". “Beets are boiled, water is boiled separately, then cooled, then grated beets, diced cucumber, a lot of greens are added to it - onions and dill, grated boiled eggs and kefir - if one percent, in a ratio of one to one with water. Well, more salt and a little sugar, a little lemon or a couple of drops table vinegar. Soup should be sweet and sour," explains Oleg.

And yet, in the end, he remembers the modest. Meat, according to him, such as beef or veal tenderloin, should not be fried for a long time - two minutes on each side and on the sides. “I cut it into plump medallions, salted it, pepper it, fry it - you don’t need to put a lot of pieces, the meat gives juice and starts to cook, then it’s in foil, and the meat still comes out. Opened it - the juice came out. The veal is tender, soft, cooks quickly, "says monastery chef.

Cooking secrets

Another Oleg, Olkhov, chef of the Danilov Monastery and brand chef of the Revival of Traditions center, hosts the Monastic Kitchen program on the Spas TV channel. He is sure that the culture of the Russian meal to this day is inextricably linked with the monasteries.

At the age of 14, Oleg came to the restaurant as a chef's apprentice, now he is 42. "I do not stop learning from colleagues, but I do not consider it shameful to use the experience of non-professionals. interesting dish, which no one else has," says the chef.

"The profession of a chef, on the one hand, is very creative, but on the other hand, it is full of daily routine. Creativity is the creation of new dishes, their development, testing and assembly. Routine is the daily workflow associated with the kitchen, control over products, work with the staff. Often the routine takes up most of the working time, and there is no longer enough strength for creativity. In addition, the profession is not an easy one - the chef has an irregular working day, sometimes you have to spend the night at work, "says Oleg.

Among his signature dishes- lentil cutlets and pumpkin in honey filling.

Lentil cutlets

It is necessary to cook lentils, add chopped garlic, salt, pepper, mix, let cool, then add onion sautéed in vegetable oil. Make cutlets out of this stuffing, roll in flour and fry on both sides in vegetable oil. And the pumpkin, peeled and diced, is poured with honey, diluted with water and the juice of one lemon, cranberries are added and put in the refrigerator - after 24 hours, the pumpkin dessert with honey and cranberries is ready. Can be stored in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

"Monastic cuisine is very useful, you can say that it is diet food: fish, seafood (easily digestible protein, polyunsaturated amino acids), cereals, grains and cereals, legumes, herbs, vegetables, berries, mushrooms (vitamins, vegetable protein, fiber, minerals, carbohydrates). Products of lactic acid fermentation - kvass, pickled berries, apples, turnips, sauerkraut - have a beneficial effect on digestion. Rye and rye-wheat sourdough bread, which is baked in the monastery bakery, is also very useful. In general, it is balanced and tasty food", - sums up the chef of the Danilov monastery.

Pumpkin in honey sauce

Everyone who, while living in a monastery, visited the monastery refectory, is surprised at how tasty the food is there, although the products are the simplest. To the question, what is the secret?

The monks themselves answer as one: "There are no secrets here, just when you cook and when you eat, you need to pray." But still there are some general principles, which are observed in most monasteries, following the instructions of the holy fathers.

Firstly, you can’t eat up your fill, food should not burden the stomach. You should leave the meal with a slight feeling of hunger, which, by the way, is absolutely correct, since, according to all the laws of our nature, saturation occurs half an hour after eating.

Secondly, the food should, if possible, be vegetable and devoid of any spices. As we were explained in the Solovetsky Monastery, “there is a fine line between satisfying the feeling of hunger and pleasing the whims of the flesh. A monk needs to learn to distinguish it well. it is the only joy left to him from the world."

To avoid such temptations, the monks adhere to simple rules: food should be simple, nutritious, healthy and contain the necessary vitamins. Food serves to saturate and maintain strength, nothing more.

Brest Nativity-Bogoroditsky Monastery

Lenten biscuits in brine

1 cup brine (preferably from canned tomatoes), 1 tsp. soda, three-quarters of a glass of vegetable oil, three-quarters of a glass of sugar, 1 sachet (11 g) vanilla sugar, flour.

Mix brine, vegetable oil and sugar, add vanilla sugar and flour. The dough should be dense enough so that it can be rolled out into a 1 cm thick layer. Cut out cookies with a cookie cutter and bake in a well-heated oven until golden color.

Oatmeal jelly (lean jelly)

500 g oatmeal, 3 crusts of rye (yeast) bread, salt, sugar - to taste.

Pour in oatmeal warm water to cover them completely. Dip the bread crusts into the pan and put in a warm place for a day, stirring occasionally. Strain through cheesecloth, add 0.5 l of water, salt, sugar. To put on small fire, stirring constantly, bring to a boil, stand for 5 minutes after boiling. Remove from heat, pour into bowls, let cool.

Lenten gingerbread

4 cups flour, 2 cups sugar. One glass of raisins, finely chopped walnuts, vegetable oil and dried fruit decoction, 25 g of ground cinnamon, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, 2 teaspoons of soda, salt to taste.

Mix sugar, salt and cinnamon thoroughly with vegetable oil. Add minced raisins and chopped walnuts. Dilute with a decoction of dried fruits and add soda. Then gradually add flour, pour in vinegar and mix. Pour the dough into a greased and floured form and place in the oven. Bake at a temperature of 170ºС for 50-60 minutes.

***

Lenten Recipes:

• Lenten Recipes - Orthodox posts and holidays
• Life without oil (Lent recipes)- Victoria Sverdlova
• Lenten Recipes: Breakfasts
• Lenten Recipes: Salads and Appetizers- Boring Garden
• Lenten Recipes: Lenten Soups
• Lenten Recipes: Main Courses- Nina Borisova, Maxim Syrnikov
• Lenten Recipes: Pastries and Desserts- Nina Borisova
• Fasting recipes: drinks in fasting- Maxim Syrnikov, Nina Borisova
• - Alexey Reutovsky
• The history of Russian cuisine: we in Russia are doomed to eat porridge- Maxim Syrnikov
• Special dishes of Great Lent: crosses, larks, ladders, black grouse- Maxim Syrnikov
• Kolivo: Athonite recipe- Boring Garden
• fruit table- Pravoslavie.Ru
• Advent Recipes: lentil stew, bread salad, green soup, squid stew, eggplant, avocado appetizer, squid-cube hodgepodge, couscous, gozinaki, apple toast, etc. - Ekaterina Savostyanova
• Recipes for the New Year- Ekaterina Savostyanova
• Maslenitsa: 10 best recipes- Orthodoxy and the world
• How I Made Ancient Roman Garum Sauce(with photos and comments) - culinary reconstruction - Maxim Stepanenko

***

Trinity Sergius Lavra

Millet porridge with pumpkin

1 liter of water, 100 grams of pumpkin, a glass of millet.

Sort millet, rinse. Rub the pumpkin on a grater, add water and cook for half an hour. After that, add millet, salt, sugar and cook until tender.

celery salad

600 g celery root, 200 g each carrot and apple, 2 teaspoons lemon juice

Grate the root, add grated carrots, an apple, sprinkle with lemon juice - so that the apple does not darken. Fill with vegetable oil.

Trinity Serafimo-Diveevo Convent

Bishop's cutlets

half a loaf white bread, 3-4 onions, a glass of peeled walnuts (they replace meat and fish), two potatoes, a clove of garlic.

Pass all other ingredients through a meat grinder. Add garlic, salt, ground pepper.

There is no need to add oil to minced meat, because. when frying, tunics absorb oil very well.

Do not spare breadcrumbs, they form a crust during frying, which prevents the cutlets from falling apart. Make the tunics small and thick, so that later it is convenient to turn them over.

I think you can experiment: add a can of canned beans or mushrooms to the minced meat, or double the proportion of potatoes.

Pyukhtitsky Dormition Convent

Pea porridge

500 g of peas, 2 - 4 onions, vegetable oil, salt to taste.

Put the peas in large saucepan, wash thoroughly in cold water and pour 1.5 liters of water. Leave for 1 hour, then put on high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, carefully remove foam and cook until tender, stirring frequently. Cooking time depends on the variety and quality of peas and can vary from 45 minutes to 2-3 hours. Peas should boil down: turn into a homogeneous mass, like mashed potatoes. Salt to taste, add finely chopped onion fried in vegetable oil and arrange on plates, sprinkling fried onion rings on top. Pea porridge can be cooled in the form, then cut into pieces and served as a cold appetizer.

Spaso-Preobrazhensky Solovetsky Stauropegial Monastery

Lentils with beets

500 g green lentils, 1 large beetroot, vegetable oil, salt and spices to taste.

Wash lentils, pour cold water and bring to a boil over high heat. Remove the foam, reduce the heat to a minimum and cook under the lid for 40 minutes, adding salt. Peel raw beets and grate on a coarse grater. Place the beets in the pot with the lentils and cook for 5 minutes. Add chopped garlic and spices - ground black pepper, turmeric, garam masala. Remove from heat and leave for 30-60 minutes. You can add vegetable oil. It turns out very tasty dish with a taste of borscht.

Solovki tea

Mix in equal proportion three varieties of tea - black, green and red (karkade). Take herbal collection - mint, lemon balm, oregano, thyme, cloudberries, a little chamomile and mix in equal amounts. The collection of herbs can be from one quarter to one tenth of the tea.

It is better to first put herbs in boiling water, wait 5 minutes, and then add a mixture of teas. Wait 5 minutes again and strain through a colander. This tea can be both stored and heated.

Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Monastery

Shchi Valaam (with mushrooms)

A handful of dried mushrooms, 4 potatoes, 250-300 g white cabbage, 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 bay leaf, salt and pepper to taste.

Soak dried mushrooms overnight in cool water. In the morning, strain the water through a fine sieve or gauze into a separate container (do not pour it out, we will still need it). Rinse the mushrooms, cut into slices and put in boiling salted water. Cook for 1 hour until done. Cut the onion into small cubes, cut the carrot into thin strips and fry in vegetable oil until golden brown. Add diced potatoes and finely chopped cabbage to the pot. After 10 minutes, add the prepared carrots and onions and cook for another 15 minutes. The cabbage should not be overcooked, but should remain slightly crispy. Shortly before readiness, put a bay leaf in the soup and pour in the preserved mushroom infusion. Pour into bowls and season with black pepper to taste.

Potato salad

3-4 potatoes, 1 carrot, 200 g frozen green beans, 100 g frozen green peas, 10 olives, 1 onion, a few sprigs of dill and parsley, salt to taste, unrefined sunflower oil.

Boil carrots and potatoes in their skins, cool, peel and cut into cubes. Cook for a couple green beans and green peas. Combine potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, pitted olives and diced onion in a large bowl. Sprinkle with finely chopped spicy herbs - parsley and (or) dill and pour over with sunflower oil. Salt to taste and mix gently.

500 g of buckwheat, 1 large carrot, 1 onion, 300 g of frozen green beans, 2 tbsp. l. tomato puree (you can use chopped tomatoes in own juice), 1 tbsp. l. flour, vegetable oil, chopped herbs, salt to taste.

Cook crumbly buckwheat porridge. While the porridge is cooking, prepare the vegetable part of the dish. To do this, finely chop the carrot, cut the onion into small cubes and fry in a deep frying pan for sunflower oil until golden. Boil green beans in a small amount of salted water for 5 minutes from the moment of boiling, drain the broth and transfer the beans to the pan with the rest of the vegetables. Pour flour into a small dry frying pan and lightly fry. Add vegetable oil, tomato puree and mix, preventing lumps from forming. Dilute with hot water until the density of sour cream, heat to a boil and pour into a pan with vegetables. Cook for a few minutes, season with salt if needed. Place buckwheat porridge and vegetables in bowls, sprinkle with chopped herbs and serve immediately.

Alexey Reutovsky

Everyone who, while living in a monastery, visited the monastery refectory, is surprised at how tasty the food is there, although the products are the simplest. To the question, what is the secret?

The monks themselves answer as one: "There are no secrets here, just when you cook and when you eat, you need to pray." But still there are some general principles that are observed in most monasteries, following the instructions of the holy fathers.
Firstly, you can’t eat up your fill, food should not burden the stomach. You should leave the meal with a slight feeling of hunger, which, by the way, is absolutely correct, since, according to all the laws of our nature, saturation occurs half an hour after eating.

Secondly, the food should, if possible, be vegetable and devoid of any spices. As we were explained in the Solovetsky Monastery, “there is a fine line between satisfying the feeling of hunger and pleasing the whims of the flesh. The monk needs to learn to distinguish it well. After all, it is no coincidence that gluttony or guttural insanity is the first instrument of the devil, with which he approaches the heart of a monk, suggesting that this is the only joy left to him from the world.

To avoid such temptations, the monks adhere to simple rules: food should be simple, nutritious, healthy and contain the necessary vitamins. Food serves to saturate and maintain strength, nothing more.

Brest Nativity-Bogoroditsky Monastery

LEAN COOKIES IN BRINE
1 cup brine (preferably from canned tomatoes), 1 tsp. baking soda, 3/4 cup vegetable oil, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 sachet (11 g) vanilla sugar, flour

Mix brine, vegetable oil and sugar, add vanilla sugar and flour. The dough should be dense enough so that it can be rolled out into a 1 cm thick layer. Cut out cookies with a cookie cutter and bake in a well-heated oven until golden brown.

OAT KISSEL (LEAN JELLY)
500 g oatmeal, 3 crusts of rye (yeast) bread, salt, sugar- taste.

Pour oatmeal with warm water to completely cover. Dip the bread crusts into the pan and put in a warm place for a day, stirring occasionally. Strain through cheesecloth, add 0.5 l of water, salt, sugar. Put on a small fire, stirring constantly, bring to a boil, stand for 5 minutes after boiling. Remove from heat, pour into bowls, let cool.

LENTEN CARPET
4 cups flour, 2 cups sugar. One glass of raisins, finely chopped walnuts, vegetable oil and dried fruit decoction, 25 g of ground cinnamon, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, 2 teaspoons of soda, salt to taste.

Mix sugar, salt and cinnamon thoroughly with vegetable oil. Add minced raisins and chopped walnuts. Dilute with a decoction of dried fruits and add soda. Then gradually add flour, pour in vinegar and mix. Pour the dough into a greased and floured form and place in the oven. Bake at a temperature of 170ºС for 50-60 minutes.

Trinity Sergius Lavra

MILLET PORRIDGE WITH PUMPKIN
1 liter of water, 100 grams of pumpkin, a glass of millet.

Sort millet, rinse. Rub the pumpkin on a grater, add water and cook for half an hour. After that, add millet, salt, sugar and cook until tender.

CELERY SALAD
600 g celery root, 200 g each carrot and apple, 2 teaspoons lemon juice

Grate the root, add grated carrots, an apple, sprinkle with lemon juice so that the apple does not darken. Fill with vegetable oil.

Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent

Bishop's cutlets
Half a loaf of white bread, 3-4 onions, a glass of peeled walnuts (they replace meat and fish), two potatoes, a clove of garlic.

Soak the bread slightly in water, pass all other ingredients through a meat grinder. Add garlic, salt, ground pepper and a little vegetable oil. If mince is runny, add breadcrumbs, roll in breadcrumbs and fry like regular cutlets.

Pyukhtitsky Dormition Convent

PEA PORRIDGE
500 g of peas, 2-4 onions, vegetable oil, salt to taste.

Put the peas in a large saucepan, wash thoroughly in cold water and pour 1.5 liters of water. Leave for 1 hour, then put on high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, carefully remove foam and cook until tender, stirring frequently. Cooking time depends on the variety and quality of peas and can vary from 45 minutes to 2-3 hours. Peas should boil down: turn into a homogeneous mass, like mashed potatoes. Salt to taste, add finely chopped onion fried in vegetable oil and arrange on plates, sprinkling fried onion rings on top. Pea porridge can be cooled in the form, then cut into pieces and served as a cold appetizer.

Spaso-Preobrazhensky Solovetsky Stauropegial Monastery

LENTILS WITH BEET
500 g green lentils, 1 large beetroot, vegetable oil, salt and spices to taste.

Wash the lentils, cover with cold water and bring to a boil over high heat. Remove the foam, reduce the heat to a minimum and cook under the lid for 40 minutes, adding salt. Peel raw beets and grate on a coarse grater. Place the beets in the pot with the lentils and cook for 5 minutes. Add chopped garlic and spices - ground black pepper, turmeric, garam masala. Remove from heat and leave for 30-60 minutes. You can add vegetable oil. It turns out a very tasty dish with a taste of borscht.

SOLOVETSKY TEA
Mix in equal proportions three varieties of tea - black, green and red (hibiscus). Take herbal collection- mint, lemon balm, oregano, thyme, cloudberries, a little chamomile and mix in equal amounts. The collection of herbs can be from one quarter to one tenth of the tea.
It is better to first put herbs in boiling water, wait 5 minutes, and then add a mixture of teas. Wait 5 minutes again and strain through a colander. This tea can be both stored and heated.

Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Monastery

CHI VALAAM (WITH MUSHROOMS)
A handful of dried mushrooms, 4 potatoes, 250-300 g of white cabbage, 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 bay leaf, salt and pepper to taste.

Soak dried mushrooms overnight in cool water. In the morning, strain the water through a fine sieve or gauze into a separate container (do not pour it out, we will still need it). Rinse the mushrooms, cut into slices and put in boiling salted water. Cook for 1 hour until done. Cut the onion into small cubes, cut the carrot into thin strips and fry in vegetable oil until golden brown. Add diced potatoes and finely chopped cabbage to the pot. After 10 minutes, add the prepared carrots and onions and cook for another 15 minutes. The cabbage should not be overcooked, but should remain slightly crispy. Shortly before readiness, put a bay leaf in the soup and pour in the preserved mushroom infusion. Pour into bowls and season with black pepper to taste.

POTATO SALAD
3-4 potatoes, 1 carrot, 200 g frozen green beans, 100 g frozen green peas, 10 olives, 1 onion, a few sprigs of dill and parsley, salt to taste, unrefined sunflower oil.

Boil carrots and potatoes in their skins, cool, peel and cut into cubes. Steam green beans and green peas. Combine potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, pitted olives and diced onion in a large bowl. Sprinkle with finely chopped herbs- parsley and (or) dill and pour sunflower oil. Salt to taste and mix gently.

BUCKWHEAT WITH VEGETABLES
500 g of buckwheat, 1 large carrot, 1 onion, 300 g of frozen green beans, 2 tbsp. l. tomato puree (you can use chopped tomatoes in their own juice), 1 tbsp. l. flour, vegetable oil, chopped herbs, salt to taste.

Cook crumbly buckwheat porridge. While the porridge is cooking, prepare the vegetable part of the dish. To do this, finely chop the carrot, cut the onion into small cubes and fry in a deep frying pan in sunflower oil until golden brown. Boil green beans in a small amount of salted water for 5 minutes from the moment of boiling, drain the broth and transfer the beans to the pan with the rest of the vegetables. Pour flour into a small dry frying pan and lightly fry. Add vegetable oil tomato puree and stir to prevent lumps from forming. Dilute with hot water until the density of sour cream, heat to a boil and pour into a pan with vegetables. Cook for a few minutes, season with salt if needed. Place buckwheat porridge and vegetables in bowls, sprinkle with chopped herbs and serve immediately.