Russian Food

I think that, in general, it's a bit unfair for me to talk about the Russian food I've had, just because the things that stick out in my mind are the bad things, when the majority of the food I've had here has been pretty good. However, there is a line that I think was crossed this morning, when alongside the usual bowl of kasha that we get each morning (which is a lot like cream-of-wheat, and comes in 4 varieties: corn, rice, and two other kinds of kasha I can't identify) was a breakfast "pizza." They take some sort of sausage (that is very similar to a hot dog; most of the sausage here is really, really great, but this one was very much like a hot dog) and slice it up, put it on top of a ketchup and mayonaise "sauce," and melt cheese on top. Mmmmmm.

In all fairness, it isn't gross. It tastes like a bologna sandwich in some ways, but the fact that they're passing it off for pizza is what I find wrong. It was brought up in my class about a week ago (we've had this pizza multiple times), and my professor said that the way they make home-made pizzas is to just mix ketchup and mayo to make a pizza sauce. We were a bit offended, and our professor was left to defend how tasty the combination is.

OH! While on this topic of food, though, I should mention what's been super tasty here. It's still not technically "Russian" cuisine, but they have a lot of it in the area of Moscow I live in, and I've never had it in the states, and so it's Russian to me. Having google-searched it, I guess the English spelling of it is Shawarma (but the Russian is closer to Shaurma). It is pretty close to a Greek gyro, but it's a bit different. It's lamb, cabbage, tomato, onion, tsatsiki sauce, red pepper, and some red sauce that I don't know what is. And it's wonderful.

This is not a picture of mine, but this is what it looks like when I've gotten a shawarma.

And they only cost 80 rubles, which is about $2.50, which is a really cheap meal here. I've talked to the guy selling them, and he's from Tajikistan, so maybe it's Tajiki, instead of Russian. Either way, it's tasty.