Занятие по Сергею Медведеву

(и грузинский ресторан)

Yesterday (Tuesday) our second class began, and we have it two days a week only from now on. Our professor, as you may have already guessed if you can read Cyrillic, is Sergej Medvedev. He claims that he isn't related to the President, but Iosif is quite insistent to the contrary. They may not be immediate relatives, but Iosif says they're all from the same family. Either way, my professor's father was a very high-ranking CPSU member in the Central Planning Committee of the Politburo, which explains why he was able to go to Columbia for his education. He speaks English fluently with a VERY American accent (although it's still fairly evident that he's Russian, he frequently sounds like he could simply be from a different English-speaking country like Scotland or Zimbabwe), and he could easily fall into the category of the "Most Interesting Man in the World" from the Dos Equis commercials. That is to say, he's competing in the Tour d'Alps in a week or two, no big deal, and he has his own TV show, and he's pretty well known around here and in general.

However, it was his lecture that was even more interesting still. Without boring you guys with details, he talked about the expansion and retraction of the Russian state and its application as a model for the rest of society. This man was able to completely shake my world view in a matter of minutes and I was completely OK with it. Needless to say, I'm going to enjoy this class.

Today, we went to a Georgian restaurant for lunch. Now, I'm not going to say this was the best food I've ever had, because that would be ridiculous and invaluable. However, I will say that this was SOME of the best and most interesting food I've ever had, and I'll definitely be getting more while I'm here. These people have an almost entirely different concept of food as we do in America. There was a lot of walnut, cilantro, and coriander in most of the dishes, and I nearly ordered a dish that at least had the Russian word for tobacco in the name. What we did get was amazing (as a small disclaimer, I remember few of the names, but I'm going to describe everything as best as possible). First to come were these two small appetizers. One was some sort of pickled eggplant, thinly sliced and wrapped around a pasty substance. I wasn't paying attention when I ate it because I was just so hungry. There was also a substance called Лобио (Lobio) with it. It came in these half-fist-sized balls of a fairly solid light green paste with pomegranate seeds. Primarily this is composed of greenbeans (evidently with the pods, as it was slightly stringy), pine nuts, walnuts, cilantro, and various other things all pureed into the paste.

Next came what I think what called Хачипури (Khachipuri) of two types, which tasted relatively the same. Basically, these are Georgian pizzas. The crust is a light, bread-ish crust, which bakes in the oil from the cheese they put on top to form a slightly fried taste - очень вкусно. The cheese used in these and almost everything else with cheese seemed quite similar to feta. It was probably a little softer and quite salty with a higher moisture content as well, but one of the best cheeses I've ever had. We also got these large ravioli or won-ton-type things. In my honest opinion, they were fairly ordinary, but still quite tasty.

For the "main course" I had Харчо (Kharcho). This is a soup of sorts, although I also wouldn't hesitate to call it a stew either. I think if you imagine a thick tortilla soup with large chunks of tomato, rice, and lamb (I think - and they used proper stew meat; i.e. the fatty chunks that were removed from larger cuts to make them leaner), then you'll have a pretty good idea of this. There was also a considerable amount of parsley, not used as a garnish, but actually part of the flavouring of the dish, which I found interesting and ultimately - delicious.

I'm very pleased with the culinary experience I've been having here. The nightmares we hear in the US about Russian food are simply not true.