These are only a handful of the traditional Romuva traditions that stay on. You’d by no means know the place they got here from by observing with the bare eye given the best way they’re continually recycling and taking new varieties. Nonetheless, they continue to be.
None of that is to say that every one of Lithuania’s culinary heritage stems from historic or medieval instances. There have been centuries between the Christianisation of the nation and Soviet occupation. And with that interval of relative freedom, there’s loads for modern cooks to rediscover.
In response to Keršulytė-Ryčkova’s analysis, Lithuanian-written recipes didn’t exist earlier than the nineteenth Century. And thus, she works with historic references to dishes and substances present in archives and previous books, recreating them primarily based solely on their description.
“We labored with the Lithuanian Historical past Institute, and we seemed into the inventories of various palaces,” she mentioned. “So, you might have substances listed for every century, for every interval, for every duke.”
It was a busy Tuesday evening when Keršulytė-Ryčkova led me down the spiralling stone staircase into the Sixteenth-Century Gothic cellar the place a whole portion of the menu options wild recreation with captions referencing the historical past.
Wild boar, for instance, was a privilege reserved for Lithuanian nobles. Solely they had been permitted to hunt. Commoners, however, risked a demise sentence if caught looking. Now, for the value of €21, anybody can have a boar roast the likes of which Grand Duke Gediminas (1275-1341) would’ve loved, served with cowberry wine sauce, and candy pear and potato croquettes with cheese. There’s additionally a beaver meat stew with mushrooms, tomatoes and a potato puree flavoured with spinach.
However what really grabbed my consideration, left my abdomen grumbling and piqued my curiosity was the part of vegetarian and vegan dishes devoted completely to dishes with roots in Litvak delicacies: selfmade boletus (a type of mushroom) dumplings served with onion jam, cheese curd balls stewed in a tomato sauce; and zeppelins (a big potato dumpling additionally known as cepelinai) served with bitter cream. This Litvak vegetarian part is a comparatively new addition to the menu.
