Superb coordination skills with the mandolin.

@@giovanna722 YES it's true, I was actually pointing out how he reaches into a scalding hot skillet to pick stuff up with his fingers.... I heard his daughter call him 'asbestos fingers' once on a show. 😊😊 It's hard to watch anything he does without learning something.

Do you guys use cilantro a lot as he says? Wonder...do you guys make your pelemini homemade?

@@biancahotca3244 Russian cuisine consists out of Gergian, Armenian, Uzbek\Tajik, etc. So basically in those southern dishes there is a lot of cilantro. But Russia mostly kinda northern country and we actually use a lot of dill and parsley. I feel like dill is main green in Russia. My girlfriends mother from south of russia (Taman peninsula) and she likes cilantro, but my mother is from Saint-Petersbut and we eat mostly dill and parsley (but she likes cilantro too). I consider myself as a gourmand and i use a lot of spices and all that stuff, but mostly people eat simple food with just pepper and salt and some green. The main oil in russia is sunflower we use it for frying and unrafinaded we use for salads, also we eat salads with smetana (everyone says it is fresh cream but i never tryed fresh cream and cant tell if it is similiar, i think its not), Smetana is big deal in russia. Also we eat a lot of soups, russian soups are signature of our cuisine. And they are not like in europe, I havent even seen Jaques or anyone else do something like that. But actually the are pretty simple. We sometimes do pelmeni homemade, like on ocasion. It is easier to buy them in shop, there is big variety of them from cheap and bad to premium quality in every shop. Also we have small bistros where they sell only pelmeni. There is a lot of variants of pelmeni: plain pelmeni (they can be different shape and size, and meat inside but they all pelmeni), in USSR it was popular to eat pelmeni with vinegar, it is actulally good. Vareniki - they are like pelmeni only they contain not meat, but some berries like cherry or raspberry, or potato (could be with mushroom), or cottage cheese (big deal in russia too), also vareniki is bit bigger than pelmeni and they look more like raviolli, we eat them with smetana. Another variant is hinkali - this is southern variant somewhere from Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, they made mainly with lamb or beef, spicec added and cilantro. They contain some bulion inside, so firstly you bite small hole in dugh, drink builion and then eat hinkal itself. Hilkali usually 2-3 times bigger than pelmeni and they have completly different shape, it is curled to the top. Manti is another type, they are even bigger and made from lamb or beef too, meat is chopped and spices with greens also added, they are usually steamed. They are so big you can have 3-4 of them and be full. And the last one that comes to my head is buuzi - this Buryat dish similiar to manti ot hinkali but buuzi have hole on top of them. And for all of them the dough is pretty same, just water and flour. All of these we eat with smetana :D We eat everything with smetana Im pretty sure there is lot more variants of pelmeni. If you have any questins i will be pleased to answer to them

@@NippleTitMD I think we Eastern Europeans share many of the same dishes, culture in many ways, and we have some Russian/Slavic words as part of our language. I'm Romanian and we love to eat soups as well for instance. I've made two Russian dishes a few times, Shuba and the beet soup. I like them both a lot. I had pelemini too before. Of course Russia is a huge nation that conquered many lands and people (including our country) and they take a lot of culinary influences from them as well. I'm from that part of Romania where it used to be Austro-Hungary, before WWII and we make many of the same dishes from this region, Goulash, soups, pilaf, stews and desserts. We have this most popular Romanian dish, sarmale, cabbage rolls. Do you guys make something like that?

@@biancahotca3244 Herring under Shuba is super cool, I like it very much! When I was working as chef at one place, I used to make it for buiseness lunch sometimes and I couldnt stop eating it myself. I like to cut herring in small cubes, cut onion in cubes same size, rince onion in hot water, mix with herring. Then you make layer of grated beet, put mayonese mixed with smetana (1\1), layer of grated potato, herring, layer of mayo with smetana, potato, beet and then again mayo with smetana. It is better to let it sit in fridge for couple hours. Super tasty, also you have to boil beets in skin, they are better this way. Yea, Russian cuisine contained much from other countries, but soviets basicaly destroyed it and built their own thing which is not very fine, so a lot of thing was lost due to time. Its actually started to reinvent itself not so long ago, only 5-10 years there started to pop up really unique chefs in Russia who can do something interesting. Actually there is such dish like sarmale. It is called Golubtsy - they can be rolled and done with rice, meat and cabbage, or they can be lazy - just cutted cabbage mixed with rice and meat. i dont know why we use rice in that dish, I feel like it is little off. I guess it is just soviet tradition so you could make it more nutritious. Also we and I personally very like Bigos. Cabbage is big deal in Russia too, most common soup is Shi and it is just cabbage soup. What is some weird dishes that you make you have in you country?

@@biancahotca3244 our languages are basically one same language, even without much learning we could understan each other

That's exactly what I was thinking. I've never seen a Russian dish use cilantro before. Never! Although they might have it now. Though with everything that's going on there now...I wonder. Well they still got China to import from.

You can tell he’s pandering to the crowd with his calorie counts

We agree. This was a reflection of the time when it was recorded. Food should be enjoyed!