Restaurant in the provinces: Mozhaysk

Great, modest little restaurant-bar in Mozhaysk, 130 kms south west of Moscow. Three lovely courses, simple and delicious Russian food, salad, soup(borscht) and fried fish or pork and mash with dill, plus tea or coffee, for only 230 roubles($8.50 approx)

Restaurants in Moscow: Georgian

Mama Zoya Kafe, near Novodevichy monastery, a great Georgian restaurant, fragrant soups, tasty meat courses, nice khachapuri filled pastries!

Ukrainian delicacy in Moscow--salo and marinated herring

Went to a lovely Ukrainian restaurant not far from the Tretiakov gallery today, a late lunch or early dinner, I'm not sure which but we had some typically Ukrainian delicacies including one I'd heard about in the Russian Accelerator course I did before coming here, 'salo' or pig fat(yes, literally) cured and cut in thin slices, sometimes also peppered, sometimes also sold as a kind of potted paste. It's a bit of an acquired taste but wasn't quite as sickening as I'd thought it might be--in fact for my taste the potted stuff was nicer, but the peppered slices were quite good, in a small dose washed down with a good dose of delicious berry-flavoured or honey-pepper Ukrainian vodka! Great rib-sticker for those bitterly cold winters I imagine.
The marinated herrings were delicious here too.
Here's a link to a page on how to make salo:

Simple Russian meal

 As we're staying in an apartment in Moscow rather than a hotel, we can cook for ourselves as well, using the excellent local produce. Here's something I cooked up the other night--pork chops with red currant sauce and dill, with pan-fried forest mushrooms, preceded by a simple, delicious entree of red caviar, Siberian vodka and black bread! 
The mushrooms I simply cooked in butter, adding a small splash of vodka, plus salt and pepper. The pork chops were also gently fried in a little butter till coloured on both sides, then I added the red currants in a sweet-sour juice(which I bought from the markets)salt, and chopped up dill, then cooked till pork is done. We had it with a little mashed potato as well. Deliciously simple!

Russian cornucopia

I was really impressed by Russian produce the last time I was there, two years ago; now, two years later, back in Moscow and renting a flat for 2 weeks, I've had even more of a chance to explore Russian culinary delights. Here I'm just going to present some pictures of the lovely stuff you can buy here in markets and supermarkets.

Around the world in eighty dishes..

Well, it won't be eighty dishes and we're not quite off around the world, but quite a few countries--Russia, Poland, France, UK and Singapore. Will try and post some culinary titbits, restaurants, markets, from each! Right now in Sydney Airport, looking at the array of food on offer, better than it used to be, but still not very inspiring--ordinary shopping-mall food-court stuff, really. But at least cheaper than it used to be or at least a bit more in line with ordinary prices out in the 'real world.' (Isn't it funny incidentally how airports, like hospitals, feel very much like they're not quite in the ordinary world--places of transition I suppose.)
A bientot!