MS: In your TV projects, you talked about repairs, travel. Now you are engaged in gastronomy - already as the creator and author of the popular Handmadefood project. How do you combine such different things?
Elena Usanova:All my projects are based on one simple principle: everything must be applied in practice and tested on personal experience. I share what I am interested in, tell about what I have tried myself and what has benefited me. This applies both to television programs, for example, "Made with taste" on TNT, where we combined two seemingly incompatible things: cooking and renovation, as well as online and radio projects. For example, the task of the culinary website Handmadefood, whose motto is “More than food,” is to provide information that will always be relevant. These are not just recipes, this is food as a lifestyle - together with like-minded authors, we talk about food design, author's cuisine, and the latest trends in gastronomy. I want to boast: Handmadefood became the best app of 2014, we have over 400,000 downloads, this is my great pride. And soon on Megapolis radio we are planning to launch the Extended Day Group project - a weekly program in which we will talk about the news of the culinary world, the best food travel routes, and share life hacks for fitness and health. I hope that once a month we will meet with listeners and live, communicate, and conduct master classes. In short, the principle is the same: applicable to life.
MS: How did you get interested in gastronomy and cooking at all, where do the legs grow from?
E. U.:Actually, there was always interest. At school, work was my favorite subject - I especially liked that you could cook something and eat it right there. At that time I liked eating more than cooking. When I started working at MTV in 2002, there was no time for cooking: filming, touring, career growth … But in 2008, a crisis hit, budgets were cut, a long and happy period on the channel ended. At that moment, I realized that the time had come for me to feel at home, that I could finally be a culinary fairy, and I started cooking. And everything I cooked I took pictures and posted on my Facebook page (www.facebook.com/usanovafood). This is how my culinary blog appeared, which later grew into a website and Handmadefood. This fascinated me, I realized that a woman should be able to combine career growth with household chores. Well, the process of cooking itself can be very entertaining, especially if you have someone to appreciate it.
MS: You say that a woman should be able to combine. Do you have any life hacks in this regard? How do you manage your time between work and home?
EU: Usually every evening I make a plan of meetings and necessary things for the next day. In the morning I answer letters, and then - on meetings. In winter, on the contrary: in the evenings you want to be at home or in some quiet, cozy place to calmly work at your computer. I plan meetings in a week or two, but the bustle of the metropolis sometimes makes adjustments: it happens that you realize that you can't make it to a meeting due to traffic jams, then you have to urgently rebuild and communicate online, on Skype, for example. As for cooking, I prefer something simple and quick for every day - all kinds of salads, pasta.
MS: Do you cook every day?
EU: Yes, of course. Usually breakfast and dinner. I'm not at home at lunchtime.
MS: Where do you think a sophisticated gourmet and food traveler should go now?
EU: In my opinion, Scandinavia is at the forefront of gastronomic fashion today. Of course, France remains a gastronomic Mecca. But, it seems to me, it makes no sense to become attached to a specific country, because in the same States - in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles - all the cuisines of the world are represented.
MS: Do you study the history of national cuisines, gastronomic traditions, specific dishes and products?
EU: Of course. My journey into gastronomy just started with a culinary column in OK! Magazine, in which I talked about the history of different dishes, how to cook them better and where to try them in a traditional or author's reading. Now I am passionately studying Russian cuisine - oddly enough, we know the least about it.
MS: Tell us about some of your recent discoveries in Russian cuisine
E. U.: For example, kundyums, or kundyuks, are a kind of dumplings with mushroom filling made from a mixture of custard and extract, which are not boiled, but first baked and then languished in the oven.
MS: What would you recommend to read about Russian cuisine?
EU: In 2013, Pavel and Olga Syutkin's book "The Invented History of Soviet Cuisine" was published. This is a large study of Soviet culinary life, where the authors, using specific examples, trace the origin of dishes, their connection with pre-revolutionary Russian gastronomy, or, conversely, a complete denial of it. And even earlier, they wrote "An Invented History of Russian Cuisine" - also fascinating, informative, and most importantly, practical reading.
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