Kitchen in the country house of Julia Vysotskaya

• The kitchen in the basement of the Konchalovsky house has complex trapezoidal shape… One glance at this room is enough to understand: there is a lot of cooking here! Cabinets and shelves are packed to the limit with household appliances, dishes, bottles of sauces and spices. A built-in cupboard with painted facades, designed by Julia Vysotskaya, delimits the kitchen and dining area.

The kitchen in the Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky estate on Nikolina Gora is both my home and my office. We are filming the cooking show right here. The main principle of the program: everything must be real, alive. The kitchen is my favorite room in the house, and not only because I love to cook and eat, it’s just always warm and cozy here, my loved ones and relatives are always nearby.

I worked on the interior of this room myself – after all, it was about my “office”. The most difficult thing was to choose things, on the one hand, functional, on the other – combined with the furnishings of the old house. The cabinetmakers helped to find a solution: they made furniture in the Provence style according to our sketches. What is especially dear to me here? First, oak table-“island”, large and wide.

• Once, seeing his wife in the kitchen, director Andrei Konchalovsky immediately invited her to lead a culinary show. Since then, Yulia Vysotskaya’s program “Let’s eat at home” has been broadcast on the NTV channel. “I consider my cuisine exemplary. Absolutely everything in it suits me – from the coffee machine to the tiniest grater. This is the heart of our home that “works” without interruption ”.

Often, a stove is taken out on such a free-standing kitchen block or car wash… I am totally against it. When you cook a lot, splashes, drops of hot fat fly everywhere … It turns out very sloppy. Another pride of mine is the Chateau La Cornue semi-professional cooker with gas and electric grill. In its giant oven, you can bake a saddle of a lamb, a pork ham, roast four (!) Chicken on a spit at once. The power of the brass burners is seven times that of the burners of conventional stoves. Yes, I forgot to say … The most important thing in the kitchen is the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Help yourself!

• The paintings on the doors of kitchen cabinets and ceiling beams are based on drawings by Natalya Petrovna Konchalovskaya, the mother of Andrei and Nikita.
• The kitchen “island” made of solid oak is used for storing dishes and as an additional work surface. The “island” is the compositional center of the room. It sets a circular trajectory of movement in the kitchen, thereby making it easier for the cook to access household appliances, dishware and products. It is just a stone’s throw from it to the sink, the stove, and the coffee machine!

Ingredients: 500 g pitted cherries, 250 g flour, 150 g sugar, 125 g butter, 120 g almonds, 1 egg, 4 proteins.

Preparation: Grate butter, mix with sifted flour and grind into small crumbs. Add egg and salt. Knead the dough, wrap in plastic and put in the refrigerator for 40 minutes. Preheat oven to 120 ° C. Roll out the dough, form a ball out of it and roll it out again (repeat this procedure 3-4 times). Grease with oil and put in a thin layer in a mold. Cover the dough with pastry paper and bake for 15–20 minutes. Sprinkle the cake with ground almonds, add the cherries, pour the whites and sugar whipped in a blender, bake for another 35–40 minutes. You can put the kettle on and serve the pie!

The cookbook by Yulia Vysotskaya “We Eat at Home All Year Round” can be bought at the Moscow Trade House, Biblio-Globus Trade House, the price is 580 rubles.