By Lucinda Frye
Diverse and indigenous cuisine brought by the many ethnic people to St. Maarten from all over the world piques our interest. To this end, we are on a quest to find where it comes from, if it is used for celebrations, if it is exotic to some but normal food to others. Anything to do with keeping the body and soul nourished with what is produced from good old terra firma is what makes the world go around.
Innovative farm to table – Russia
The daughter of friends of ours has just been to Russia. Her mother (a very well-known cookbook author) and her dad (sadly both deceased) were right there beside her with the catching, cleaning and cooking of all that made up the recipes she tried out and wrote about and then published. Their daughters grew up with one taking to doing the fishing and providing and the other following through with publishing, finding her own feet and her own way in the culinary world.
Over the last few years, she has been invited to numerous world-wide culinary functions and the latest invitation has blown our minds. She was invited to go to Moscow to “Twin’s Garden restaurant and farms.” This should be on everyone’s bucket list. (Oh, how wonderful this would be!)
Sergey and Ivan Berezutsky are twin brothers, twin chefs identical in looks, but one has a very scientific mind and the other an arty mind. Combined, their scientific, artsy minds take on all things culinary making them a formidable team. They have a lab, an “experiment room” and a corridor of rare wines – some of them are their own vegetable wines. Yes, the group was treated to some quite interesting and good veggie wines along with menus that are totally contemporary and out of this world!
Farm to table at its best
Originally, the chefs had a restaurant called Twins. It was very popular, but they were not as happy as could be about the kind of ingredients they could get. They were not fully satisfied with the produce they were getting so they did a new thing (in Russia) they went off and started their own eco-farm and 70% of the ingredients used in their restaurants come from their own farm. The other 30% is sourced from fishermen they trust in another part of Russia.
When one hears about Russian cuisine, one mostly thinks “Ah! Borsch, pelmeni, beef stroganoff” – and to most of us, that is great, especially if it is cold. But in Russia, that is the same old, same old. These twins are at the forefront of a new generation of creative chefs that are challenging this all things stodgy, heavy and same old, same old! Their restaurant is sleek and stylish and has a fabulous view of Moscow. One can choose la carte or go for the degustation menu, and the wine list will please all wine lovers as there are more than 1,000 different wines in their cellar – many are not to be found elsewhere in Russia.
Twins Garden Farm is 125 acres of wonderful arable land in the Kaluga region. The farm is designed with international experience and advanced technologies with at least 150 kinds of vegetables, fruits, berries and herbs being cultivated. They also raise dairy cattle, breed poultry and rare Nubian goats for their cheese production, as well as fish farming. The aeroponic fruit and vegetable system installed in the restaurant has made them become pretty well self-sufficient.
Both the identical Russian twins became chefs. They worked (individually) in some of the world’s finest kitchens like elBulli and El Celler de Can Roca in Spain, and Alinea in Chicago and Varvary in Moscow. Sergey won Young Chef of the Year at the S.Pellegrino and Acqua Panna Cooking Cup in 2014 – quite a feat for any chef! When they opened Twins in Moscow, their aim was to reinterpret Russian cuisine with modern techniques. Their restaurant was placed on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.
The farm in Kaluga is just two hours to the Southwest of Moscow, which enables the twins to truly focus on farm-to-table concept that is so popular in the West.
The menu at the restaurant shows the world the sense for the theatre that Muscovites have. The tasting menu – built on the theme of "twins" – has many dishes that are based on two ingredients that resemble each other in appearance, but are different and ultimately complementary. Just like the twins themselves.
Some of the dishes they had on the menu include:
Horsehair crab (it has a fuzzy body shell) – served in combination with armillaria mushrooms (a genus of parasitic fungi that includes the A. mellea species known as honey fungi that live on trees and woody shrubs) ~Wikipedia.
Veal brains and shelled walnuts (couldn’t be more brainy!) and apparently taste just like foie gras but creamier!
Steamed sturgeon served with a side dish of "fusilli" which is actually dried fish bone marrow shaped into a kind of spiral.
Beef/Plum – the plums smoked then diced to resemble and taste like its partnered beef tartare. Sea/Soil – a delicious “butter” made of oyster, Kamchatka crab caviar and plankton spread onto an earthy bread designed to smell of freshly-turned soil.
Celery Stalk/Celeriac – the celeriac mixed with barley and baked in a bread shell, creating a risotto-like consistency topped with crunchy celery stalk.
The dessert that sounds quite incredible is the “Roasted Seaweed ice cream with caviar & pressed hazelnut oil” – truly contemporary and innovative.
Years of sanctions from the West have prevented some of the most staple ingredients of fine dining from being served at Russian tables. Foie gras has possibly never been into Russia unless it joined the ranks of smuggled goods. Most wines were not found in Russia either. However, some Georgian wines are very good. Seafood is another story; the shellfish like crab is excellent, and of course there are sturgeon and mushrooms. There is Taganrog durum wheat, the most prized flour for use in Italian pasta making, and there is caviar!
As I’m a lover of seafood, my young friend’s description of a meal has left me truly hankering after a chance to hit Moscow and dine at these restaurants: “A crazy crab feast at the Twins Wine & Crab Restaurant where we tucked into nine different varieties of crab from the well-loved Kamchatka king crab, blue king crab, spikey Hanasaki crab, soft shell crab, spanner crab, snow crab and horsehair crab. We donned velvet bibs to protect our threads as we grazed our way through delicious crab meat sourced from the seas surrounding Russia.”
RECIPES
One of the dishes served at Twin’s Garden in Moscow was “Dandelions and Burratta.” Dandelions are usually thought of as a weed, but it is “Taraxacum – a large genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae, which consists of species commonly known as dandelions. They are native to Eurasia and North America, but the two commonplace species worldwide, T. officinale and T. erythrospermum, were introduced from Europe and now propagate as wildflowers.” ~Wikipedia
Dandelions stimulate the liver and help the body’s natural detoxification process.
Dandelion Marmalade – by John Wright "River Cottage Handbook”
Ingredients
1 litre apple juice (not from concentrate)
80g dandelion petals - green sepals and stalk removed
100ml fresh lemon juice
750g sugar
Method
Put a plate into the freezer to test for setting later.
Pour apple juice into a saucepan and stir in 60g of the petals.
Bring to simmering point, remove from heat, cover and leave overnight.
Strain juice into a separate pan and add lemon juice, slowly heat to boiling point.
Add sugar, stir until dissolved before adding remaining 20g.
Increase heat and boil for 6-7 minutes until the setting point has been reached.
(Remove the pan from the heat and test for setting by placing a small spoonful of marmalade onto the frozen plate. If after a minute the marmalade wrinkles when you push it gently with your finger, it is ready.)
Remove scum with a slotted spoon before ladling into warm, sterilized jars.
Cover and seal.
Once cool enough to handle, give the jar a sharp shake to distribute the petals through the marmalade.
Dark Chocolate and Nori Ice cream – Agar-agar (Japanese name for red-algae) is used as a thickener; it is a by-product of seaweed and is used to thicken some ice-creams. It does not necessarily leave a seaweed flavour on the tongue. Using seaweed in ice cream is an unusual concept so I did a bit of searching and found the following recipe. If anyone tries this, please let me know if it was a success – I think it will make a very unusual dinner party ending.
Ingredients
2½ cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup sugar
¼ cup extra-dark unsweetened cocoa
1/8 tsp kosher salt
4 sheets nori cut into 1-inch pieces
4 oz 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate, chopped
4 large egg yolks
Coarse sea salt (optional)
Method
Whisk together milk, cream, sugar, cocoa and salt in a saucepan.
Bring to a quick simmer whisking constantly, until sugar and cocoa dissolve, 3 minutes.
Add nori; cook until the sheets are softened, 7 to 8 minutes.
Remove from heat and cover.
Allow to stand 20 minutes.
Pour milk through a fine wire-mesh strainer into a bowl, discard solids.
Remove and reserve ½ cup of milk.
Return remaining milk to saucepan.
Place bittersweet chocolate in a large bowl.
Whisk egg yolks in a small bowl.
Gradually stir ½ cup reserved milk into egg yolks.
Slowly whisk egg yolk mixture into milk over gentle heat.
Cook gently, stirring often, until mixture thickens slightly and coats the back of a spoon, 12 to 14 minutes – do not boil.
Immediately remove from heat, and pour over bittersweet chocolate, whisk well to combine. Cool to room temperature. Partially cover, and chill 3 hours.
Pour mixture into freezer bowl of a 1½-quart electric ice-cream maker.
Proceed according to manufacturer's instructions.
Transfer to a freezer-safe container and freeze until ready to serve.
Garnish with coarse sea salt, if desired.
