I am beginning to think that cooking out is loved just about everywhere in the world though. In America, we grill out or BBQ. In South Africa, you have a braai. In Ukraine, you shashlyk. At its simplest, shashlyk is just marinated meat cooked on skewers or spits over a smoky, smoldering fire. It is kind of like our shish-ka-bobs, nonetheless, still very much a cultural experience and social event.After church Julie, myself, Hitoshi and Sasha hopped a marshrutka toward the Mega Market for shashlyk supplies. Shopping accomplished we piled into another marshrutka to head home and marinade the meat.
Arriving home, Julie researched marinade recipes, Sasha tearfully cut up onions, Hitoshi skillfully cubed the meat and I boiled water (because we all know I don’t do kitchens… thought it was the part of the process I couldn’t mess up too badly). Once the chicken was successfully marinading we sat down to a bowl of plameni (like meat dumplings) as Hitoshi snoozed on the couch.
We left home around 3:15 to catch the metro to meet up with the rest of our group. Forty-five minutes later we arrived at our metro stop, where we found our party, waited for a missing person, began walking, had to stop and get Kbac (pronounced ka-vas… it’s a drink made from fermented bread), started walking, had to stop as someone pondered what else we may need and then finally we really started walking. And walking. And walking.
We reached the park and walked some more. Down sandy trails and past many others enjoying the relatively cool evening. I don’t know what time we actually arrived at the place chosen as our ideal shashlyking spot, but it was a good hour and half after we left home.
Setting up our little shashlyk site, the guys excitedly gathered wood as the girls opted for playing frisbee. Some time later we all sat around picnic style enjoying the roasted chicken and onion shashlyk with fresh cut tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers and your choice of fruit juices.
To fully appreciate the cultural experience you must also imagine that the majority of conversation was in Russian, which I do not speak, and occasionally someone had mercy and translated for me.
After we ate everyone joined in tossing around the frisbee, the guys tried to be cheerleaders and I think we laughed more than we actually caught the frisbee. I also got distracted by a Ukrainian squirrel (which is like the color of a fox).
As the evening came to a close, we cleaned up our site and parted ways. Julie and I dropped in at our friend’s flat to use the bathroom before running to catch our marshrutka. Arriving home we cooked the remaining marinaded meat which, yes, had been sitting in a tupperware container for the past seven hours, something we realize would never be okay in America.
Regardless it was a successful shashlyk experience… and just writing about it seems to have made me hungry again…
