[Sca-cooks] zakuska table

[Stephanie Ross]

Ok, the book I cited earlier by Princess Kropotkin is very chatty on the
subject of zakuskas. She claims that Rurik brought the idea of the zakuska
table with him from Scandinavia in 862. Perhaps this is where I got the
idea myself. She states this in the introduction, but she devotes a whole
chapter to the zakuska table and recipes for the "little bites". At a
family dinner Kropotkin says that just three or four items are served, like
pickles, cheese, herrings or sausages, and put on the dining room table.
For special occasions and when entertaining, a special table is set up
similar to our buffet. People nibble at the hors d'oeuvres, wash it down
with cold vodka, and talk and talk. This "zakuska hour" does last an hour.
During the sixties it was common in our country to have hors d'oeuvres and
cocktails and mingle before sitting down to dinner. In Russia this has been
going on for a number of decades. In Russia, a minimum of ten zakuskas are
expected at a dinner party. To quote her, "Before the Revolution every good
restaurant in Russia used to throw out shameful quantities of untouched
zakuskas every day in the week, for the entire assortment had to be made
new and fresh everyday, while only a fraction of it ever got eaten.
Actually the zakuska were a free lunch You weren't charged for them on your
bill; you merely paid for the glasses of vodka you drank with them. But
restaurant patrons in general were Russian men who took an astonishing
number of glasses, and the profit from the vodka was so enormous it more
than covered the cost of all the wasted zakooskas" (as she spells it).
Basically the zakuska hour is analogous to the American happy hour,
complete with food put out so the customers wouldn't get too drunk. Once
again, there is nothing new under the sun. Bet they would have loved
Buffalo wings! 


~Aislinn~
Et si omnes ego non.

"The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the
first and only legitimate object of good government." --Thomas Jefferson to
Maryland Republicans, 1809.