We’re talking seasonings.

Here in the tropics when summer comes, we eat very lightly as it is hot and nobody wants to spend time in the kitchen.   But after 4 days or so of boiled eggs, half an avocado eaten out of the skin with spoon, cheese sandwiches and salad, there comes a day when hunger strikes and people want food.

These seasonings would probably be very good in winter time, but for me, they are a summer time thing, as I don’t have to spend too much time in the kitchen.  In our winter, we roast stuff more and I’ll post a dry rub for that.

Yeah, you can buy them, but they are usually flat in taste and frequently full of filler.  It is worth making these.  So, it is creole seasoning today.   This can be used even in small amounts in a salad dressing or vinaigrette.  I use these for upping the taste of whatever can go into the slow cooker, a stew or the innards of a meat pie or anything that I can leave in peace in a slow cooker and leave the kitchen in peace.  It’s hot there!  You can season rice, sprinkle on potatoes or lightly steamed veggies and I put a spoon in the water for cooking couscous – a goto for us in summer because it takes only 5 minutes.

Let’s make it:

Ingredients
4 teaspoons garlic powder
4 teaspoons onion powder
2 tablespoons sweet paprika powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon dried thyme
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper (or less if you don’t want it as hot)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

(So this means that your dried spices and herbs are also fresh and not old, which happens in my house from time to time.)

Place all of the spices in a spice or coffee grinder or a blender. Pulse until you get a fine powder.   Get it into an airtight jar and I store mine in the refrigerator.  Use within 2 months or so.

For a stew .. prepare your meat, cubed and quickly browned for a nice crust and a Maillard reaction.  If you add vegetables, now is the time to add them to the bottom and around the walls of the slow cooker.  Carrots and onions would be my first choice here, but also potatoes if you want a one-pot meal.  Meat on top of the veggies, sprinkle a good 2 tablespoons of spice mix, on everything as you layer it in, a little bit of broth or stock for enough liquid, turn on the slow cooker and leave the kitchen.  No, I have no idea how long it takes – for me, I smell it, the moment it is cooked.  Depends on the meat or chicken or fish that you’ve selected.  Make 3 minute couscous which takes all of 5 minutes, plate and eat.

I don’t like this one for a dry rub and as soon as I remember the ingredients, I’ll post a dry rub.

On a lighter but brutal note:

One of my favorite recipe sites.  The reason is that the Russians have such simple ways to preserve fresh food and their canning or bottling methods are simple and easy.  But there are some tricks there .. bottles must be very very clean – I boil mine in a big stock pot and take them out onto a kitchen cloth to dry – it is a quick process.  Boil the bottles, take them out with some kind of gripper, let them dry just quickly, and fill ’em up.  We don’t want to create a bottle of botulism for sure.  And check the lid – if done correctly, it will indent just a little while cooling, and that is your cue that the produce is canned correctly.

Here is an interesting one – a marinated salad with eggplant from the south of Russia.  I like it .. no stupid videos, but wonderful photos to illustrate the process.  Of course, the produce must be ripe under the summer sun and none of the stuff ripened under lights.

https://www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/335357-marinated-salad-with-eggplant-recipe-russian

I always have this lonely tab among a bunch of other work tabs with a recipe or a method that I study for a while.

How factory-kitchens freed Soviet women from ‘tiresome’ cooking

Click for all the photos … https://www.rbth.com/history/335132-factory-kitchens-freed-soviet-women-history

I guess in other places these were called canteens.  Where I am, they are simply called Economicos .. i.e., canteens that are very economical and serve basic food that most can afford.

In the late 1920s and 1930s, the USSR experienced a boom in the construction of factory-kitchens. Everything was done to make housework easier for female workers and to protect men from alcohol abuse.
In the 1920s, the Soviet government launched its industrialization program. New factories required a lot of workforce, including women. The ‘factory-kitchens’ project was born to establish centralized catering and to relieve female workers from cooking at home. In addition, the government fought alcoholism and believed that workers should spend less time at home, more time working and even spend leisure time together with other workers. And factory-kitchens were the preferable place for this. The factory-kitchen became a place to eat out, buy ready-to-eat meals and a place for cultural leisure activities – the buildings housed department stores, post offices, pharmacies, gymnasiums and libraries.

At first, factory-kitchens were housed in pre-existing buildings, but soon, an architectural program was developed to build separate structures. These were enormous complexes, which, by analogy with “palaces of culture”, were called “palaces of food”.

Canons of constructing “food palaces”

Lunch at the factory-kitchen.

Александр Родченко/МАММ/МДФ/russiainphoto.ru
The height of a typical factory-kitchen building was three or four stories, with a basement containing refrigerators and a food warehouse. The buildings also had a semi-basement with a bakery and a staff room. The first floor housed production workshops, a laboratory, a cloakroom for visitors, a snack bar and a convenience store. Dining halls were on the second floor and banquet halls were on the third floor.

Factory-kitchens were built either with high floor-to-ceiling windows or with ribbon glazing. In both cases, the halls had to be bright for visitors to dine in natural light. This had aesthetic value and saved electricity. Factory roofs were built flat, so that tables and chairs could be placed there in the summertime.

The first factory-kitchens

Workers in the canteen at Factory-kitchen No. 2.

Александр Родченко/МАММ/МДФ/russiainphoto.ru
The first factory-kitchen was opened in 1925 in the building of the former dormitory of a chintz printing factory in the city of Ivanovo-Voznesensk (present-day Ivanovo). This city is still known, not only for its many brides-to-be, but also for its textile industry. Leaving the facades unchanged, the interiors of the building were radically transformed. Equipment for cooking was purchased in Germany. Refrigerators, elevators, electric washers, dryers and bread cutters were installed.

In the late 1920s, the factory in Ivanovo served lunch to 600 people each day and also produced ready-to-eat meals for eight factory canteens. The People’s Commissar of Health at the time, Nikolai Semashko, called this factory-kitchen “a bomb thrown into the old way of life”. He recognized the project as a success and, soon, similar facilities began to open all over the USSR.

Factory-kitchen No.1. Moscow, Leningradsky Prospect, 7. 1931.

Public domain
The Moscow Canteen Factory No. 1, which opened in 1928 on Leningradskoe Shosse, was a famous factory-kitchen. The building was symbolically located in front of the ‘Yar’ restaurant, a favorite place for partying of pre-revolutionary aristocracy and the creative intelligentsia. The building was first designed from scratch by the architect Aleksei Meshkov, in the spirit of Soviet modernism. A dining hall for 1,200 people was constructed in the building. In addition to the factory-kitchen, there was a snack bar for 250 people, where you could buy breakfast, lunch and dinner. There was also a store, a savings bank, a post office and a telegraph office. By 1936, there were 25 kitchen factories in Moscow or at least that many were listed in the address and reference book ‘All of Moscow’ (1936).

Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg) was not left out either – four factory-kitchens were opened here in 1930. The largest complex (with an area bigger than 20,000 m2) was located in the Kirovsky District, which served the workers of the ‘Krasny Putilovets’ factory.

A factory-kitchen in the shape of a hammer and sickle
In 1929, the city administration of Samara decided to build a factory-kitchen for the Maslennikov defense plant. The first Soviet female architect, Ekaterina Maximova, who by that time had already worked on similar projects in Moscow and other cities as part of a group of ‘Narpita’ (People’s Food) specialists, was put in charge of the construction.

Factory-kitchen in Samara.

Kak vse (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Maximova believed that “in the future the factory-kitchen should… liberate women from boring domestic duties and enable a full life and self-expression on an equal footing with men”.

Maximova designed a two-story constructivist building in the shape of a sickle and hammer, the Soviet symbol of the unity of peasants and workers. Invented in 1918 by artist Yevgeny Kamzolkin, it became part of the coat of arms of the Soviet Union. Maximova used the unusual shape to separate the building into segments by functionality.

The first floor of the hammer housed the kitchen and technical facilities, while the sickle housed the cloakroom and three canteens: for children, workers, and factory employees. A conveyor belt served food from the kitchen in the “hammer” to the canteens in the “sickle.” The factory had a production capacity of nine thousand meals per day, and three thousand meals were made daily in the form of semi-finished products.

The second floor of the building was occupied by technical rooms and staff offices. The floors were connected by six staircases, the spans of which were decorated with colored stained-glass windows. There was a terrace on the roof, where, in summer, people could have lunch if the weather was good. In addition to the dining halls, the building housed a cookery, a library, a post office and a sports school.

Were the factory-kitchens a success?

Factory-kitchen No. 3.

Александр Родченко/МАММ/МДФ/russiainphoto.ru
Factory-kitchens as places of public catering had several advantages over cooking at home or eating at a café: bulk purchases of products and high productivity with mechanized cooking methods made it possible to produce lunches at home prices with substantial savings in time. Earlier, workers simply stepped away from their machines and ate a piece of bread or other simple food brought from home for lunch. Now, all workers ate meals prepared to a uniform standard in bright dining rooms from clean porcelain plates with shiny cutlery.

Lunch at the factory-kitchen.

Александр Родченко/МАММ/МДФ/russiainphoto.ru
Despite all pros, the construction of factory-kitchens was halted by the mid-1930s. The construction of huge buildings with high-tech stuffing was expensive, while their profitability was low. In a slightly better position were the factory-kitchens that sold bulk food for canteens of other factories. However, at that time, many enterprises began to open their own, in-house canteens and provide their employees with food. In addition, the food industry was also actively developing. The USSR began to produce canned foods, which also facilitated cooking at home. However, the complete abandonment of homemade food did not happen.

Factory-kitchens worked until the very collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, private businesses reappeared and the profitability of factory-kitchens did not suit the private sector. Stores and other enterprises that brought more income began to open in the buildings.

Nice selection Sudhi!