Easter jelly

[EASTER KISEL]

EASTER KISEL

On Wednesday-Thursday they cooked oatmeal jelly to "satisfy" the frost.


"Kisel and the tsar always have a place." - Russian proverb.

Imagine oatmeal jelly, which was a favorite dish of our ancestors, for over 1000 years! Nourishing and nutritious, he even deserved the honor of getting into the "Tale of Bygone Years", written by the Monk Nestor the Chronicler. The legendary author told us an amazing story about how during the siege of one of the cities Russian squads suffered a terrible famine. On the advice of the wise old man, the inhabitants gathered the last supplies, cooked thick oatmeal jelly, then poured it into the well, sat around and in full view of the enemy scooped jelly from the well and ate it. "The Russian land itself feeds them, such a people cannot be defeated!" - the Pechenegs decided and lifted the siege. In those distant times, jelly was prepared not only from oats, but also from vegetables, rice, buckwheat, wheat, peas or milk. It sometimes took several days to cook a thick and tasty jelly.

V. Belov "Lad".

Oatmeal jelly - favorite Russian food. This is a proverb about him: "There is always enough space for the king and jelly." On ordinary days it was cooked in cast iron. The gruel fermented the oat seedings, set it in motion with rip in advance, in the morning it was filtered and began to cook by the fire. On holidays, in some places, for example, in Tighino of the present Vozhegodsky district of the Vologda region, they cooked jelly in special tubs, dipping hot stones into it. Kisel turned out so much that there was anecdotal rumor about the inhabitants of Tighin.

Hot jelly thickened before our eyes, you need to eat it - do not yawn. They baked a bit of rye bread, seasoning with sour cream or vegetable oil. The cooled jelly froze, and it could be cut with a knife. From a spreading jar, they tumbled it into a large dish and poured it with milk or wort. Such food was served at the end of the meal, as they said "overfeeding." Even the most well-fed had to at least take a sip ...


Old oat kissel
Ingredients: oats - 860 g, water - 4 bottles, kvass - 2 bottles, salt.
Kissel tastes better if it is prepared not from oat flour, but from oats. Oats must be dried to crush. Pour hot water over the crushed oats (in a bottle according to the old recipes 0.7 L, in a pound - 430 g) and leave in a warm place for a day and a half. Then stir the mixture, strain through a sieve, squeezing out the oatmeal. What drains is called a tsezh, it must be cooked with continuous stirring until it thickens, salted to taste. As soon as the bowl thickens, it is cooled to a jelly state. Kissel becomes like jelly. This is where the image of jelly banks and milk rivers in fairy tales began. Oat jelly is served with excellent old-fashioned kvass.
Oatmeal jelly, cut into pieces, is poured with kvass and served to the table.

Oat milk jelly
Pour oatmeal flour with warm water and put in a warm place for 15 - 20 hours. Strain through a sieve into a saucepan to sour, settle, and carefully drain the liquid. Transfer a few tablespoons of the remaining grounds in the pan to another bowl, pour in the milk and cook, stirring constantly, over low heat, strain again and add ml to high heat.
Pour the settled and somewhat thickened jelly into a mold moistened with cold water, cool and put on a dish. Wheat and rye jelly is also prepared. You can add sugar to taste.

Peasant kissel "Zhito"
Ingredients: oatmeal (or Hercules groats) - 1 glass, water - 3 glasses, sour cream - 1 tbsp. spoon, salt.
Wash the oatmeal and cover with cold water for 2-3 hours, then pass through a meat grinder with water in which it has been soaked.
Pour "Hercules" with cold water for 20-30 minutes and also pass through a meat grinder.
Mix the passed mass thoroughly, rub through a sieve. Pour the liquid part into a jar or enamel dish and | set for 24 hours at room temperature for fermentation.
Put the prepared sourdough in a water bath and heat to a boil, add salt, season with sour cream and immediately serve the jelly to the table. If desired, the jelly can be cooled and served on a platter, like jelly.

Pea kissel
Ingredients: dried peas - 2 cups, wheat flour - 1/2 cup, salt, sugar.
Soak dried peas overnight in hot water, boil the next morning without salt, rub through a sieve and, together with the water in which they were cooked, put on fire. Dissolve wheat flour in a small amount of cooled pea broth, and when the grated peas boil, add sugar or salt to taste and season with cooked flour, stirring quickly so that the dumplings do not brew. Serve hot. To prevent a film from forming on the surface, sprinkle the jelly with sugar.

Recipes from the book by Yu. Ya. Ivanichenko "All About Drinks"

It is interesting that oatmeal jelly was treated like a brownie; and Santa Claus: "Frost, frost do not freeze my oats, go eat jelly!"
And earlier, when the komoeditsa was still celebrated, they served jelly and the bear (the man in the skin) so that that oats would not trample. This custom was kept by the Belarusians longer than others.



Oatmeal kissel with rosehip broth
500 ml water
0.5 cups dried rose hips
200 g oatmeal
salt, sugar to taste
30 g butter

Soak rose hips in 250 ml of warm water for 30 minutes. Add another 250 ml of water and cook for 20 minutes. Strain the broth.
Pour oatmeal with hot rosehip broth and let it brew, 15 minutes. Strain the infusion, and squeeze the thick. Pour the warmed infusion over the grounds again, leave for another 15 minutes. Strain again, squeeze out the thick. Repeat all over again.
Add sugar, salt to the resulting oat milk to taste and, stirring, cook until thickened. At the end of cooking, add butter, stir and pour into molds soaked in water.
Chilled jelly can be eaten with a spoon.