Only Russian cuisine can boast of an unusual variety of dishes and the peculiarities of their preparation. Seafood was the main holiday treat in Russia, because fishing has long been considered the main craft of the Slavs. We offer an old recipe for a dish of fish baked in a pot, slightly changing it, instead of an oven we have a good and modern oven, and the table setting corresponds to our time.
Food was stored and cooked only in earthenware. Except for pots in those distant times, they didn’t have time to come up with anything more convenient. Russian cuisine was able to carry through the centuries the most simple, but valuable recipes, almost unchanged, which gives us the opportunity, plunging into the past, to imagine how our ancestors ate and enjoy great food to our taste.
Food in pots appeared in Russia, as evidenced by historical facts. Guided by the descriptions of old books, we can confidently say that a clay pot is the first dish of people in principle. It owes its origin to an ancient man, who, having discovered a rock that acquires plasticity under the influence of water, hastened to learn more about its properties, creating clay containers and experimenting with them.
In ancient times, food was cooked in clay conical vessels, placing them in ashes. It is believed that it was only with the advent of ovens that dishes acquired a convenient convex shape with a flat bottom, suitable for cooking on straight surfaces. It also turned out that the food is distributed and heated more evenly in the pot. Eating fish, vegetables and dairy products can be considered the foundations of Russian food culture.
These components are contained in our pot, which has also been an integral part of Russian cuisine utensils since the 15th-16th centuries. Then the first traditional Russian stoves appeared, but now they can be found somewhere in a remote place, although the stove has a no less worthy replacement - an oven. Let's prepare a dish of fish in pots in the oven, but first we will buy the necessary products.
Soak ceramic baking pots in water for 20 minutes.
Pour boiling water over the fish, remove the scales, and then gut and rinse again.
We cut the fish along the ridge and divide it into fillets, freeing them from bones.
After salting and seasoning with maximum pepper.
Peel onions, potatoes and carrots and put water.
When the onion is soaked, cut it into half rings.
Carrots must be cut into strips.
Potatoes will look best in the form of rectangles.
Fry salted onions and carrots in butter.
For the sauce we use a mixture of sour cream, mineral water and salt.
We cover the baking sheet with parchment, put the pots and start filling them: lay out the vegetables in layers and put the potatoes on top.
Second layer - vegetables again.
The third layer - approximately 1/3 of the total volume - is fish.
Pour prepared sour cream sauce on top.
Now we put the pots in a cold oven, close them with a lid and place them on the lower tier of the oven. Cook the fish at a temperature of 180 degrees for about an hour and 20 minutes. When ready, the temperature should be reduced to 150 degrees.
Check the readiness with a knife. As soon as the vegetables become soft, the pots must be removed from the oven.
Such fish can be served with greens. It is perfect for an ordinary dinner, and for a festive event.
It is food stewed in ovens that has been prepared in Russia for centuries and is still highly respected by connoisseurs of Russian cuisine. To create the effect of a cooling stove, it works well by gradually reducing the temperature in the oven. There are many options for preparing baked fish dishes in ceramic dishes, you just need to change the type of fish or experiment with vegetables, but even with all such manipulations, you can distinguish food from pots with your eyes closed.
All good housewives know about the nutritional and medicinal properties of fish dishes and therefore they try to serve them to the table at least twice a week. Enriched with protein, valuable fat, an impressive amount of amino acids and vitamins, as well as the most important microelements for the body (calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, fluorine, potassium, iodine, sulfur, etc.) - pike perch fits perfectly into our dish in pots. Other equally useful components of a culinary product can be considered vegetables, rich not only in a complex of almost all vitamins, macro and microelements, but also in unique fiber. Fish baked in a pot, and even with vegetables, is certainly healthy.
When frying, carcinogens that are harmful and dangerous to the body are released, and when cooking, dishes turn out to be less fragrant, they lose a large amount of nutrients, and the integrity of the products is violated. Stewed or baked food cooked in ceramics will retain all the beneficial properties and vitamins, and will also be easily absorbed by the body due to the valuable properties of environmentally friendly natural clay material. Even the most modern frying pan with a ceramic non-stick coating is inferior to clay containers.
In conclusion, we can say: "For lovers of a delicious meal with health benefits, without fear of extra pounds, it is strongly recommended to eat dishes such as our fish in pots."