The Slavic east and the Balkans · Volume 26, Rye, the Samovar and the Sturgeon’s Retreat
Kutya
Russia (Orthodox fasting table)
Illustration
- Time
- Hands on 2 hours 20 · Waiting 8 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 62 sources in the brief
Whole cooked grain, sweetened with honey or sugar and studded with dried fruit, poppyseed and nuts; kutya and sochivo are treated in Russian sources as effectively the same dish under different regional names.
As tradition built it
Soak overnight; about 2 hours 20 minutes on the day.
Ingredients
- 200 g wheat groats
- as needed water
- to taste salt
- 95 g raisins
- 30 g (2 tbsp) poppy seed
- 100 g walnuts
- 56 g (2 tbsp) honey
To serve
- optional dried fruit
Method
- The day before, rinse the wheat well and soak it overnight.
- Rinse the raisins and soak them 20 minutes in boiling water.
- Boil the wheat in salted water until tender, about 2 hours.
- Meanwhile pour boiling water over the poppy seed, cover and leave 30 minutes off the heat. Drain it and blend it smooth.
- Toast the walnuts lightly in a dry pan and chop them fine.
- Mix the wheat with the poppy seed, drained raisins, walnuts, honey and salt.
- Serve at once, with dried fruit if you like.
Notes
Kutya and sochivo are treated in Russian sources as effectively the same dish under different regional names, prepared specifically for the Rozhdestvensky and Kreshchensky sochelnik, the eves of Christmas and Epiphany, the latter kept as a strict one-day fast in its own right.
The recipe is Alina Biryukova's, culinary editor at Food.ru. Azbyka.ru, the Orthodox portal, files kutya among the memorial recipes: 150 g poppy seed kept on the heat until it crushes between the fingers and put through a mincer, untoasted nuts, sugar and vanilla sugar, served chilled. Neither uses barley, millet or rice.
What a modern chef changes
A silken poppyseed cream poured at the table, and dehydrated dried fruit
Method
- Toast the dry poppyseed briefly before working it, for a nuttier flavour than the traditional cold or barely-warm handling achieves.
- Blend it in a high-power blender with a little water and honey, and pass the result through a chinois for a genuinely silken poppyseed cream. Pour it over the grain at the table rather than stirring it through in advance, so the contrast between the two textures stays sharp until the moment of eating.
- Dehydrate a portion of the dried fruit further, to a genuinely chewy, concentrated intensity beyond what shop-bought dried fruit offers, and finish with a thread of reduced honey rather than a stirred-through sweetness, in keeping with the fast's own restraint even at its most ritual and festive point.