Russian-style Barbeque and Summer Cabins – What No Russian Misses Out

So, what do we do in Russia to get some rest? The last post was kinda… sad and scary, but this one is much better, i promise! A week ago me, hubby and our co-workers (who also happen to be our friends and relatives) went out of the city to have some rest. Americans (and, i presume, some of the Europeans too?) are having barbeque or going to their summer cabins, from what I've heard. Russians do both of these things their way, of course, and how are they different?

First, almost all Russians have a дача (“dacha”). It’s a summer cabin and nothing like a summer cabin at the same time. We all descended from peasants, and living in a city for a couple generations didn’t change a thing: a particular Russian (even if he says otherwise) is eternally drawn to dig around a plot of dirt and grow something on it. Doesn’t matter what, exactly. So, “dacha” is practically a plot of land (the standard – i.e. the minimum - one is 600 square meters) where Russian go to grow stuff as their hearth pleases. Most of those dachas doesn’t even have a proper house built in them – you just need a place with a roof and enclosed enough that you can stuff your belongings in and lock them.

Many people settle for an old train baggage car or a huge container they converted to be a living space, or some ramshackle huts built out of shit… And here i must make myself perfectly clear and i really DO mean it’s built out of SHIT – cow shit packed with straw and dried into bricks, with final building plastered and painted. Those houses built of cow shit don’t stink and actually are very warm during the winter time. Some houses are built out of sheets of metal or concrete. Some dacha owners are more creative, i recently saw an old bus converted into a summer house. Not everyone are like that, people who can afford building even very a small house will surely build one. Most dachas don’t have any central sewage, so you have to “visit the garden” when you have a need. It’s practically a huge hole dug up in the ground with a toilet seat above it. People are also tend to stuff dachas with all the unneeded shit they have but are too “frugal” to throw out.

Almost everyone own a dacha. They swarm around cities, sometimes becoming parts of it, when a particular city outgrows its old boundaries, so then people move on to build dachas somewhere further away. Even those poor sods in Moscow have dachas – they have to travel 200 to 600 kilometers by trains and cars to reach theirs, but who cares how long it takes if one has to gather a couple of sickly home-grown tomatoes? Some people are living in those summer houses for months during the summer, especially when a family has grandparents to keep children away on dacha while parents still work. Dachas are also essential to survivability of a general Russian family. If things go bad and everything is completely fucked up, you can always go to your dacha and grow food there, or even have some animals.

Most people survived off their dachas in 1990’s, when USSR collapsed – it practically kept alive many families. Those in big cities who had no land to grow food were starving, surviving for years on cheap buckwheat, water and bread. My family had a really big plot of land (grandpa was an important guy in communist party, so he managed to hoard some land), where we grew all kinds of stuff – tomatoes, potatoes, corn, fruit trees, squashes – you name it. All of these things were carefully preserved in glass jars to be eaten later, they could have been kept for years if tend to carefully. We also had chickens but didn’t live there during the winter, so someone had to go over once in a couple of days to check on them.

Now, back to the barbeque part. When Russians go to their dachas, they don’t have any barbeques, we don’t even know what a “barbeque” exactly is. I never had one. The main reason is that we don’t have any kind of meat that could be barbequed like Americans do it – raw steak and stuff like that. We don’t have steaks around here, unfortunately. What we have, is шашлык (“shashlyk”). The shashlyk came originally from Caucasian cuisine, where they grilled sheep on open fire in those Caucasian mountains of theirs. Most self-respecting Russian men know how to make shashlyk. It’s a dish made out of a non-steak meat – preferably lamb or sheep or at least pig, but chicken will do too if you’re too short on money – that is marinated overnight to make it less tough to bite, then the meat is cut into pieces, pierced with sharp metal sticks and is grilled upon hot coals. When made properly, shashlyk is very tasty and quite juicy.

The thing used to make shashlyk is called мангал (“mangal”) – dictionary translated it as “barbecue” or “brazier”, but they really are different. Mangals are made of all sizes, from the portable ones to the ones used for restaurants where shashlyk is served. Because it’s very popular in Russia, many places where people gather to rest offer mangals for guests to grill their own shashlyk, and there are places where they make shashlyk for take-out, just like Chinese restaurants i see in USA movies.