Getting ready for the holiday. Lenten dishes for the New Year’s table

And so another year comes to an end. It ends with a holiday – the New Year, which falls on the days of Advent. Every Orthodox housewife tries to prepare not just delicious dishes for the festive table, but also lenten ones, because there is very little left before the feast of the Nativity of Christ. And today we will try to help you with this, suggest what you can cook for the New Year’s table without breaking the fast.

Of course, many Russian writers beautifully describe the Lenten meal. But when it comes to the Nativity Fast, I always remember Ivan Shmelev. How picturesquely he wrote about fasting days, when all kinds of fish were cooked: red salmon, and pink salmon, and white salmon, and fat herring, and arshine whitefish, and all kinds of aspic with lemon-carrots, and piles of hot crimson crayfish, and lean kulebyaki, and any pickle for appetite, and hot puff pastries, and fresh steamed cucumbers, and shredded cabbage, and all sorts of mushrooms – you can’t try everything. And pies: with candied fruit, almond-lean, and fruit pies, filled with pineapple jelly, with jam, with aspic nuts in a greenish pistachio cream …

So you won’t go hungry at this table.

What can you cook today in fasting, following the old traditions?

If you want to cook a lean and hearty hot dish, you can make cabbage casserole with mushrooms.

To prepare it, we need:

– white cabbage – 1 kg;

– vegetable oil – 2 tbsp. spoons;

– mushrooms (I had frozen chanterelles) – 300 g;

– onion – 2 heads;

– water – 2 glasses;

– salt, ground crackers, spices and herbs to taste.

Peeled and washed cabbage should be chopped and stewed in oil until soft. Mushrooms and onions chop and stew with salt in vegetable oil.

Lay all products in layers in a form so that there is cabbage in the lower and upper layers. Top with a mixture of flour, water, salt and vegetable oil. We put the form in a heated oven for 40 minutes. The casserole should be baked and covered with a golden crust. Then pour the sauce over the casserole with browned onions, flour, salt and pepper. This dish is served hot on the table, sprinkled with herbs.

The Advent fast is not so strict, and on many days you can eat both fish and various seafood. So it is quite possible to bake fish on the New Year’s table.

And what is a New Year’s table without various salads, but what about the dressing? Can be used for salads mustard dressingrather than the usual mayonnaise.

To prepare mustard dressing, we need:

– 300 g of vegetable oil;

– 50 g of table mustard;

– 30 g of 3% table vinegar;

– 50 g of sugar;

– 20 g of salt;

– 2 g ground pepper, other spices can be added to taste, such as curry or suneli hops.

Grind table mustard, salt, sugar until a homogeneous mass is obtained, then, stirring continuously, pour in vegetable oil in a thin stream. Pour each portion of oil only when the previous portion of oil is well combined in the form of a stable homogeneous emulsion, after which the mixture is diluted with 3% table vinegar, add pepper and other spices and stir well.

You can serve the sauce to the table in a gravy boat and decorate with sprigs of dill and parsley.

Well, what kind of festive table would do without traditional Russian pies, you can cook them lean with lentils. This undeservedly forgotten culture has become more common on our tables. Lentils are rich in vitamin A, iron, magnesium and calcium. It improves the condition of hair and skin, boosts immunity and improves digestion. When choosing lentils, pay attention to the grains – they should be of a uniform color, without plaque and spots, smooth and with even edges.

Cooking 8 lean lentil pies we will need:

For test:

– wheat flour – 200 g;

– vegetable oil (preferably olive) – 4 tbsp. spoons;

– water – ½ cup;

– yeast (fresh) – ½ tbsp. spoons;

– sugar – 1 teaspoon;

– salt to taste.

For filling:

– lentils – 200 g;

– onion – 1 head;

– garlic – 2 teeth;

– dill – 15 g;

– salt to taste.

Sift the flour first. Wash and dry the lentils and dill. Peel and rinse the onion and garlic. We heat the oven to 200 degrees. We heat the water to 40 degrees. Pour water into a small bowl, put yeast, salt and sugar. Mix everything and carefully add the flour. We add oil. Knead the dough and cover it with a damp towel. We put the dough for an hour in a warm place. We grease the baking sheet with vegetable oil.

For the filling, boil the lentils in salted water until soft, make a puree out of it, crush enough to make it not very liquid. Mix chopped onion, dill and garlic with lentils.

Next, we make pies. We divide the dough into 8 pieces, make cakes out of them, put the filling in the center, form pies. We lay them out on a baking sheet, cover with a towel and let them stand for 20 minutes. Then put the pies in the oven for another 20 minutes.

And unusually, and quite in a festive way, you can cook lean jellied salad with marinated mussels.

To prepare it you will need:

– boiled carrots – 1 pc.;

– boiled beets – 1 pc.;

– boiled potatoes – 1 pc.;

– olives – 50 g;

– parsley greens – 50 g;

– agar-agar – 10 g;

– vegetable oil – 1 tsp;

– water – ½ cup;

– salt – to taste.

We boil vegetables. Three on a coarse grater cooled and peeled vegetables. We start with potatoes, then carrots and beets so that the vegetables do not stain on the grater. We cut the olives into rings, leave the whole leaves of the parsley.

In a silicone mold for muffins, lay layers of vegetables, starting with parsley and olives, then beets, carrots and finally potatoes.

Agar-agar is soaked in boiling water with oil, salt. Stir and carefully pour into the holes so that they are completely covered.

We place the form with the salad in the refrigerator for 1 – 2 hours to solidify. If you have more forms, then take more agar-agar.

Let the salads cool thoroughly, and then turn them over onto a dish, and you can put them on the table.

Alina Fedorova.

Author’s photo