The Coolest Cuisine in the World.
Siberia is not the first choice when it comes to food destinations but for several different reasons that was where I was, an ever-hungry traveler in the middle of the Siberian tundra. The sun was shining and people were happy that the thermometer was approaching minus twenty. “Summer is on the way,” they said.
After one hour by can and three hours by caterpillar from the nearest town we drove into a small Nenet village. The first thing we saw was a dead wolf and the proud man who had just shot it. Reindeer were parked outside the houses. Everyone I could see was wearing clothes made out of reindeer skins and on the frozen river nearby there was lasso throwing competition. These are the kind of things that make you realize that you are far away from home.
The Nenets are the indigenous people of the Yamal republic in Russia, traditionally reindeer-herders, and a fiercely proud people who have still, to an impressing degree kept their traditional way of life, following the reindeer and living off the land. I must admit that part of the attraction, the reason for going there, was the draw of the exotic. But the experience is about something more than the mere exotic; to me it is about learning through challenging established conceptions. Being in Siberia challenged both what I thought to be true. It was also sometimes a challenge to my taste buds.
Many of the Siberian food traditions are better suited to anecdotes than to recipes. When we visited a Chum (the temporary dwellings used by the Nenets, see also http://en.wikipedia.org/ the food was – How should I put it? – different. Pieces of frozen reindeer meat topped with raw brain; raw liver and blood; the only cooked dish contained spleen and eye. Even though I consider myself an omnivore, it demanded some getting used to. This was afforded me as they served the same food for breakfast, lunch and tea break as well.
When you look past the shock of the food – different to the extreme – there are many open questions, and a lot to be learned. How come the people here, who for long periods eat nothing but the meat from one type of animal, are healthier than we are? It is what Patricia Gadsby, writing for Discover magazine about the somewhat similar diet of the indigenous people in Northern Canada and Greenland, called "the Inuit paradox."
This emphasis on raw food is, interestingly enough, not exclusive for the indigenous population. Restaurants in the nearby boom town Salekhard serve many of the same dishes, although in a somewhat refined manner. At the home of a local politician the blood dish was laced with pieces of intestines.
The trip to Siberia was a part of an ongoing book project about the food culture of the Arctic. During the next couple of years I will be travelling to all kinds of far-off destinations to investigate the people living there and the food they eat. The Arctic – I can already tell you – is not the new Tuscany. But it is one of the most fragile areas in the world, arguably the region most affected by climate change and other man made environmental problems. I think that it is important to document its culture and nature before it is too late, and perhaps by doing that, I will be able to make a positive contribution. I also believe that there are many things we can learn from the way life has been lived and is being lived near the margins of existence. Together with the University of the Arctic I am networking with scientists working in many different fields to help me better understand what I see and experience.
After my trip to Siberia, I spent some time investigating the why’s and how’s of the “Nenet paradox”. I found out several interesting things, some new, other that I might have suspected but I now know much more about; the advantages of eating game meat, and the virtues of using the entire animal, not just the “finer” cuts.
Much of the Siberian food I have mentioned can be filed under “interesting”. There are also Siberian foods that can be an inspiration for people who are just looking for something good to eat. First, if you think if it, the raw food served by the Nenets is just another version of a carpaccio, or tartar steak – with a somewhat more polished presentation it isn’t quite as rough to behold. There is also a Siberian kind of ravioli (from the Komi Republic) filled with potato or reindeer stuffing that is just delicious. My favorite was stroganina, a kind of raw, frozen sashimi – it blew my mind and makes me long back to what must literally be the “coolest cuisine in the world”.
You can read more about the trip and about the health aspects of the extreme diet of the Nenets in this Washington Post article Where Home Cooking Gets the Cold Shoulder:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
og mer om University of the Arctic her:
www.uarctic.org