The name is stroganoff. Don’t give me stroganoff. Is it Russian? Maybe beef stroganoff –or rather Beefstroganov– is, but beef stroganoff is as Brazilian as football and x-salad.
In addition to being useless, it is extremely foolish to boycott stroganoff because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I can list a litany of reasons.
Let’s start with the origin of the dish. As with almost all foods, you can’t rely 100% on historical accounts – it was common for chefs to slightly modify traditional recipes to name them after them (or the boss’s) – but here we have a consistent plot.
It is said that strips of meat with mustard and sour cream were created by a French chef in the kitchen of a certain Count Alexander Grigoryevich Stroganov, a military man and politician of great power in the Russian Empire, back in the mid-19th century.
Now, where did Count Stroganov live at the time of the invention of stroganoff? In Odessa, port of Ukraine under the tsar’s rule. That is: in a way, stroganoff is a Ukrainian dish. Franco-Russian-Ukrainian, to be exact.
Canceling stroganoff is a protest of exception, after all. Nobody stopped eating hamburgers when the Americans invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Not even WWII was reason enough for the world to stop drinking German-style beer!
And imagine if the fashion catches on? Maybe, up front, Italy will decide to bomb Malta. Are you going to ditch pizza, forgo lasagna, say goodbye to spaghetti? Me, not even.
The boycott of typical foods may also have collateral implications in the geopolitical context. Let’s say that Brazil criminalizes falafel in retaliation for Israel’s actions in Palestine: Lebanon, Syria and Palestine itself, where falafel is also a national dish, will pay the duck by the table.
Stroganoff was born to travel, it has a vocation for international food. It wasn’t just Brazilians who adapted the recipe in their own way.
In the United States, stroganoff is eaten with pasta instead of rice. The Swedes prepare a version made with a type of local sausage. In Japan, cubes (similar to beef broth) are sold to be diluted in water, instant beef stroganoff sauce.
In mother Russia, stroganoff is made with sour cream and is served with boiled or mashed potatoes, sometimes pickles as well. I am much more our tropical recipe.
We could swap the ketchup for tomato concentrate and use a better mustard, but nothing beats the “choose-your-protein” model of brasuca stroganoff. You can meat, chicken, pork, shrimp, sausage, chicken heart, tofu, jackfruit, whatever you want.
Stroganoff is a Brazilian heritage. It’s that safe haven at the kilo restaurant you go to for the first time. To compose the dish with tabbouleh, cheese cake, a few leaves of watercress, quail eggs, potato straw and rice.
One more scoop of beans, obviously. And a little farofa.
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I am currently a news writer for News Bulletin247 where I mostly cover sports news. I have always been interested in writing and it is something I am very passionate about. In my spare time, I enjoy reading and spending time with my family and friends.
