Meat
Meat was in rather scarce supply for most people, and was primarily eaten only on the main Christian holidays. Avid consumers of pork, Belarusians are less partial to mutton and beef. Most common was raw pork sausage – a pig intestine stuffed with minced or chopped meat seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic. Its common name – "finger-stuffed sausage" (Belarusian: каўбаса, «пальцам пханая» or in short пальцоўка) – provided a graphic description of the primitive production technology. Kishkа (Belarusian: кішка), or kryvyanka (Belarusian: крывянка), was a local blood sausage (Belarusian: крывяная кілбаса) made of pig’s blood and buckwheat grain. Škalondza (Belarusian: шкалондза), or kindziuk (Belarusian: кіндзюк), a particular kind of round sausage made of pig stomach filled with pork minced with spices – a relative of the Lithuanian skilandis – was known throughout the country. Borrowed from Italian cuisine by nobility in 16th century, cold meat rolls, salcesons and balerons were common to all of society by the 19th century, and are still very popular. Smoked goose breast pauguski (Belarusian: паўгускі), a local Belarusian and Lithuanian delicacy, was once the pride of middle-class cuisine, but no longer exists today.
Veraščaka (Belarusian: верашчака), an 18th century thick meat gravy with pieces of meat and sausage used as a dip or sauce for thick pancakes, is still one of the most popular specialties of Belarusian restaurants today, although it is now generally called mačanka (Belarusian: мачанка, a dip). Also popular are zrazy, chopped pieces of beef rolled into a sausage shape and filled with vegetable, mushroom, eggs, potato etc. Pork dishes are usually fried or stewed, garnished with cheese or mushrooms. Beef steaks are also quite frequent, but mutton, once very popular, is almost entirely limited to Caucasian or Central Asian restaurants, although still quite a few eat it today
Read more about this topic: Belarusian Cuisine
Famous quotes containing the word meat:
“He was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What is love itself,
Even though it be the lightest of light love,
But dreams that hurry from beyond the world
To make low laughter more than meat and drink,
Though it but set us sighing?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“He swore he would never marry, and yet now, in despite of his heart, he eats his meat without grudging; and how you may be converted I know not, but methinks you look with your eyes as other women do.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)