Well, it’s getting about time to update this thing. To be completely honest, I was working myself sick and being ultra-productive before Misha got here so that I could spend some guilt-free time with him, and then after he came two weeks ago, we were so busy running around and having fun that I left all of my food photos and recipes to write commentary on and post, batch-style, after he left. He’s now back in Russia, which means that I get to share here some of the wonderful food we made in a small community kitchen in his hotel.
The first food (really, a drink) that sticks out in my mind was conjured up on a bicycle trip we took from Thun to Spiez, another small city on the Thunersee about 15 km from here. The trail went through the woods, and about five minutes after hitting gravel I heard a bicycle peeling out behind me and a happy exclamation of “Smotri! Kostyanika!” (“Look! Stone bramble berries!”) from Misha.
Now, I should tell you the thing about Russians: they go crazy about picking things out of the woods and eating them. Berries, mushrooms, stinging nettles (a recipe I really want to try), you name it. And to me, they all seem to be experts on what’s edible, and what just might contain lethal nerve toxins on certain days of its life cycle but not others.
And I agree with the philosophy: there’s probably nothing cooler than spending time in the woods, collecting things to bring home and then making delicious food out of them. It, like Linux (yeah, got that in there), is free, in both the senses of “free beer” and “free spirit”, and (unlike Linux) it’s a great opportunity to get out of your house and learn about the wonderful local wildlife around you. So I, of course, jumped all over these stone brambles when Misha mentioned them, despite the fact that I’d never seen one in my life, nor did I even know the English term for them (hello, Wikipedia). . . all I knew was that I trusted Misha’s judgment, they tasted okay off of the bush (and didn’t immediately kill me), and had huge pits in them.
When we got home with a liter of them in an inside-out plastic shopping bag (now I know why Russians always carry at least one), we started brainstorming, with the help of this website (in Russian).
Now, I’ll tell you the other thing about Russians: they love their kvas, and rightly so, in my opinion. It’s basically made by fermenting juice or rye bread with yeast for a few days and is served cold. It’s not boozy like beer, but it’s not sweet either. It’s genuinely refreshing when sold in the summer from big yellow barrels on street corners–but it’s doubly refreshing when you make it yourself out of berries you picked with your own hands, and drink it during a tough bike ride in the mountains on a hot summer day in Switzerland. Which, I can only assume, is why Misha immediately suggested making kvas out of our new stone bramble berries.
Here’s how it’s done.
Stone Bramble Berry Kvas
To make it vegan, use some other sweetener instead of the sugar (it’s mainly there for the yeast to eat, so choose something suitable).
4 cups stone bramble berries
1 cup granulated sugar
5-10 grams dry yeast
3 liters water
Take your berries, and crush them using either an inverted drinking glass:
or a Foley mill (why there was a Foley mill in our hotel’s community kitchen, yet not a decent spatula, I’ll never know):
Put the crushed berries and with their stones and pulp in a pan over medium heat, and boil them for five minutes.
Strain them using a cheesecloth (or a washcloth, either way)
in order to remove the seeds
Stir in the sugar, and then cool the mixture completely so it doesn’t kill the yeast. Stir in the yeast, pour into a bottle, and wait for two days. We kept ours on the bottom shelf of a closet, but I guess you could keep it anywhere warm but out of direct sunlight. Don’t close the lid entirely.
After those two days are up, you might see some sediment at the bottom. Pour the liquid into another bottle to avoid drinking the sediment–and then you’re done! Enjoy!
