Fragrant watermelon honey, brewed from the juice perespevshey striped berries - nardek - considered to be the invention of Central Asian cuisine, which took over the Don Cossacks. Over time, cook the honey of watermelons have become melon growers, crop protection until the new year has been a guarantee of satiety big family. Nardek today preparing the south of Russia, in the Lower Volga region and Central Asia.

What nardek

The thick syrup is boiled from the pulp and juice of watermelon, resulting condensation on an open fire, called nardek. A distinctive feature of watermelon honey is that it is cooked without sugar. The closest relatives are from nardek pekmez (grape honey), Irchan (pekmez with berries) and the cue (honey from fruit sugar). The word "nardek" is of Turkish origin, where «nardäŋk» - is a syrup of pomegranate juice.

Recipe nardek was obtained as a result of people's experience of the peoples of Central Asia: Vintage striped berries each year was so huge that large berries had to somehow preserve for the winter. Eat all the watermelon harvest was impossible to watch as it disappears - not in a businesslike way. Watermelon salted, vyalili, cooked and candied fruits are nardek. Melon growers sometimes called nardek watermelon syrup.

The Cossack villages watermelon honey The benefits of honey: tasty recovery   watering muffins, casseroles Casseroles. The variety and economy , Muffins and pancakes are often only eat a piece of fresh bread. Nardek used as fillings for baking cheesecakes Cheesecake - a small fire of love , Pies, cookies, make him a candied melon.

Recipe for honey watermelon

The Cossack villages in the late autumn, when the main harvest of watermelons has been sold, started cooking nardek. Because of the small pot-bellied fruit, halved, juicy pulp with a spoon was removed and passed through a portion of the hair sieve. The reddish liquid watermelon juice poured into a cast-iron vat and placed on an open fire in the courtyard house. Boil the juice until until it turns into a thick brown syrup with a characteristic smell of watermelon.

Density nardek determined boiling time: usually the consistency of syrup was like a young honey and heavy cream. Ready watermelon honey poured into jars and sealed at the winter or kept in clay pots in the cool cellars, to use as a regular honey.

Nutritional value and benefits nardek

Calorie watermelon honey is low, although the sugar it contains up to sixty percent. The nutritional value of dessert - 110 kcal per hundred grams of the product. Nardek helps with colds, they can gargle with angina, diluted in a glass of water, it is good thirst quencher. Two or three cups of tea a day with a teaspoon of honey watermelon help restore the kidneys, the cardiovascular system and stomach.

This dessert saved the majority of vitamins and nutrients watermelon because it is useful for adults and children. Vitamins A, PP, C, E, B group, beta-carotene, potassium, calcium, iron, phosphorus, magnesium and sodium - exhaustive list of vital substances contained in nardek.

Spicy bits of scandal

An essential attribute of the so-called mandatory spice falls into a vat of boiling nardek are wasps and flies: the beginning of autumn, still hot, the aroma of the brew is intoxicating, alluring, like insects flock to honey. The product is filtered after the preparation, but the attitude of the aristocracy to nardek was as a product for the poor.

It is interesting

In the middle of the XIX century it began to flourish Astrakhan watermelons melon and trade. Two of the then entrepreneur Jerks and throat, began to carry striped berries up the Volga. Profits have been steadily creeping up, their example was followed by fellow countrymen. Soon huge melons yields lower Volga barge on the Volga were taken to Nizhny Novgorod and Perm. There was a crisis of overproduction: watermelons began to grow so much that they were unable to sell and deliver, demand began to fall steadily.

In the new economic conditions, the Free Economic Society has announced a competition for the production of sugar from the watermelon flesh. No one managed to get out of the striped berries, but already existed folk recipe cooking nardek was invited to put on a commercial footing. With nardek Russian steel oven cakes and export them to Europe.

Jeanne Pyatirikova

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