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March 7, 2005
A small index of expats complaining about dill
(I personally find the herb reminiscent of shredded astroturf.)
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To tell the truth, there are few fans of Russian cuisine to be found among the ex-pat community. Complaints frequently heard center around the appalling and recklessly excessive use of mayonnaise in salads, the parsimonious use of spices of any kind and, dare it be said, the complete lack of taste of your average pelmeni - for many, getting through a bowl of the latter without an industrial-sized canister of soy sauce, is an uphill struggle. And there really are only so many imaginative things that you can do with a cabbage, not to mention the fact that borshch isn't even Russian. Vegetarians confronted with a Russian menu usually find themselves looking down the business end of a green salad (if they're lucky), the total absence of meat-free dishes compensated for with copious quantities of dill.
In russia, they put dill in EVERYTHING. DAMMIT MOM stop putting dill in my soup in my salad in my potatoes in my borscht in my pasta dammit I don't like dill anymore! ARGH!
Again the Russian obsession with dill spoiled things - our breakfast came absolutely smothered in the stuff. But the staff were very nice and re-cooked it for us.
... if you get bored with the Russian cuisine (I agree that many of the tastes become a bit "samey" after a couple of weeks of them... you start to tremble when you see sour cream and dill yet again...)...
A word of warning - the breakfast (bacon and eggs) comes covered with dill, so if you like us are not a fan, remember to ask them to leave it out.
Friday evening I went to a Mexican cafe with some girls from school. I had an enchilada which turned out to be not bad, except that the sauce on top was mustard sauce. And the salsa had dill in it (Russians put dill in everything!).
Or one can hit an overlong streak of dill, as we did at a dinner splitting up a sampler appetizer of vegetable zakuska ($8.95): the eggplant caviar was unusually and attractively spiced with dill; the marinated mushrooms were typically spiced with dill; the red-cabbage slaw was interestingly made with dill-pickled grapes -- and if you don't like dill, you were down to Georgian eggplant in walnut sauce, and our friend the venigret, which was merely sprinkled with dill.
they grow corn, tomatoes, onions, peas, carrots, beets, cabbage, garlic, oh....LOTS of dill. Just about every dish has dill in it, I'm getting tired of it already!
Posted by michele at March 7, 2005 3:59 PM