Happy New Year! (once again)

The Sun entered is Aries in March, 20th, and the  dawn of March 21st opened the new year. This day is an ancient Persian feast of the New Year called Nowruz.

Omar Khayyam says in his Nowruz-name:

As for the reason of the establishment of Nowruz, it is the following:
The Sun has two revolutions. One of them is when the Sun returns to the first minutes of Aries every 365 and 1/4 days…
When Jamshid comprehended this day, he called it Nowruz and established the feast. Kings and other people followed him.

Nowadays, Nowruz is the traditional feast in several countries including post-Soviet republics of the Central Asia, and it is a feast in my family as well. My wife spent few years of her childhood in Tajikistan, where this feast has been celebrated all through the ages. From the other hand, Russian astrologers celebrate a vernal equinox as the Astrologer’s Day. We have doubled reason to celebrate this day thereby

One of the traditional dishes of this feast in practically all countries is a round flat cake. It is a typical solar symbol in food. Many traditional cultures have the similar food relating to solar feasts. For example, Russian traditional blin-s (flapjacks) – the obligatory food for Maslenitsa, the ancient feast of winter’s send-off.

One of my favourite dishes from these solar flat cakes (not counting blin-s of course ) is Balkar khichin-s. Balkars is a nation belonging to the Turkic linguistic group. They live in the Caucasus, near to Elbrus, the loftiest height of Russia and Europe. My wife is grown in that region, in the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, and I always ask her to cook khichin-s for this feast.

To make khichin-s you need:

• pastry. You have to mix flour, water (or sour milk), egg. Salt;
• cheese. You need brynza – salty sheep milk cheese. If you can’t get it, you can replace it by feta or something similar;
• potatoes.

Boil and cool the potatoes.

Grate the cheese.

Mix potatoes and cheese togheter until you get a uniform mass.

Prepare a board, flour and a rolling pin. Make the following manipulations to make a knichin:

Now put it on a frying pan. The frying pan must be good heated and dry – no butter, nor oil. And fry a khichin on both sides. Sometimes you will see how a khichin blows up. It means that you are doing everything well.

Take off a khichin from the pan, put it on a plate and grease with butter.

Eat these suns if you dare

Related posts:

1. The Sage Wine
2. Walking About Moscow