What is Elena Chekalova doing now? Leonid Parfenov became a grandfather for the first time. Famous Russian TV presenters

So just be as you are in life, and there is no need to be afraid of anything. Imagine that it’s not a camera in front of you, but, for example, I’m sitting, just like now. And tell me everything." And I began to tell the story and recipe for French potato soup Parmentier. And when I saw that everyone was smiling and laughing while listening to me, I calmed down a little... You know, before, under Soviet rule, it was believed that the profession of a cook was somehow not prestigious. When I, as a journalist, began to engage in gastronomy, my mother skeptically said: “Listen, you received such an excellent education - you graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, worked as a literature teacher at a historical and literary school, published in prestigious publications, and now what have you become? A cook..." And in my opinion, a cook is one of the most creative professions.

This is not only cooking, but the history of civilization. I approach food as a philologist and historian.

- How did you develop an interest in cooking? Family traditions?

Vice versa. My dad was a journalist. Now, unfortunately, he is no longer alive. He worked in the newspaper “Soviet Russia”, then in various industry publications. And my mother is an editor and compiler of dictionaries, a lexicographer by profession. My parents were always very busy. My older sister and I - she is an engineer by training - were not given much attention. They were interested in books, museums, theaters and everything related to the profession. But everyday life and household chores were never a concern. They considered housework, home improvement, and cooking to be philistinism.

Elena Chekalova infects with her interest and thirst for life. Elena doesn’t just cook - she studies where the dish came from, how to adapt it to our products - and talks about it with passion and pleasure. Elena is also the wife of the famous TV journalist Leonid Parfenov and the mother of 25-year-old Ivan and 21-year-old Masha. That's why we talk about steaks, and about schools, and about politics.

— Cooking is only one part of life, I have many other interests. For example, traveling is something you absolutely cannot do without in life. I’m also very concerned about social life: it’s sad to look at what’s happening to us now. Well, literature, history, my children - there is a lot of things in life besides cooking.

“Try the cheese pie and the cottage cheese casserole,” Elena fussed, taking out more and more dishes from the refrigerator. I agree with gratitude: “How delicious everything is!”

- In our house you will always be fed and even given something to drink. This is probably why we have many friends. The children's friends also come; everyone loves family gatherings around the big table.

— Young people now more often prefer to sit in a cafe.

- Yes, they go to some cafes where they can afford, but they never miss our gatherings.

- “Can they afford it”? So you don't spoil them?

- No. Of course, if you have normal income, then creating artificial conditions, some kind of deficit in the lives of children is strange. I believe that there should be a measure in everything. True, my husband and I never spared money on our children’s education. A good school, courses are welcome. Some rags, clothes - that’s not it. But they are not rag pickers, they rather like to travel. The son first studied in England, graduated from school in Germany, and then entered the Faculty of Economics of the famous Luigi Bocconi University in Milan.

Masha studied here in a private school because she has very severe dyslexia - and she could not study in a regular school. After all, what is dyslexia? This is when a person does not master written language, when he can make 26 mistakes on one page. The teachers told me: “Your girl is mentally retarded, she needs to study in a special school.” And the girl is wonderful. By the way, Leonardo da Vinci and Princess Diana were dyslexic. In the West, where this has long been diagnosed, every school and university has special programs for dyslexics. During exams, they are not limited in time, and spelling mistakes are not considered mistakes - after receiving the conclusion of the medical commission, such students are given special stickers that they paste on their work so that the examiners can see that the child has a disability.

Masha and I worked a lot - with psychologists, speech therapists - and gradually pulled it out. She finished 11th grade here as an external student, and at the age of 16 she went to study in Italy. We considered that boarding school (a residential school) was too expensive for us, so we sent her to a day school, and she lived in the same apartment with Vanya. My son was a great help: he went to parent-teacher meetings at school, helped his sister with her homework, and they are only 4 years apart!

Later, Masha entered City University in London without exams. I defended my diploma in May, and now I’m going to work - for now on a very small salary. I don’t help her financially, but she has a boyfriend, they live together. Vanya is also in Moscow.

With husband and children

— And you didn’t want the children to stay to work - and live - where they studied?

— My children are terrible patriots. They want to live here, be useful, they simply adore their country. And they believe that it is dishonest to abandon her in difficult times. They make me happy: they do not live solely by material interests, they are not ready to make moral compromises for the sake of comfort. Neither for us nor for our children the criterion of “circle”, “useful acquaintances” has never been of much importance. As you know, my husband Leonid is from the village of Uloma, Vologda region. His mother still lives there, and the children always spent a lot of time there. And one of my Vanya’s close friends is from there. For me, these “circles” meant absolutely nothing in life. And those who pay attention to this are not interesting to me.

Here is our close friend, musician Vasya Oblomov - an incredibly talented person, he writes amazing poetry, he still doesn’t have an apartment in Moscow, nothing. He is from Rostov-on-Don, from a completely ordinary family - but he is so well-read and writes such wonderful poetry. Unfortunately, our system, including the educational system, is designed in such a way that it is becoming more and more difficult for people without connections to get through.

With daughter Masha and Boris Akunin at a rally in support of Alexei Navalny

— Just when the Unified State Exam appeared, it was declared that this would equalize the chances and allow children from the provinces to enter the best Moscow universities.

— What is happening with the Unified State Examination is a disaster. These scams, these answers on the Internet, this manipulation. My Masha passed the exam and received her grades - she was a sick (then) child with dyslexia! But there were children who took absentee ballots and, together with their tutors, went to the village to take the Unified State Exam - it was easier to “agree” with everyone there. And a C student from one famous family received a very high score. Five years have passed since then, and corruption has become even worse. And what do you want? The education system, like a drop of water, reflects the situation in the country. If lies permeate everything, if the main people - those who are taken into account - are officials, and everyone else is cattle - then that is you and me.

And it’s not easy for my children. We taught them, as Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn said, not to live by lies. I always think about how to educate today? This is very difficult, because parents do not have the right to teach bad things.

Parental mistakes and children's talents

— What should parents do first of all, in your opinion?

— The mother’s task is to find what is special in the child. Do you know what the most common mistake is? When you start comparing your child with others, this is the worst maternal trait. Here is Petya, he... And you, how lazy you are, why can’t you, you need to study." At this moment you are ruining all the talents that the child has! And the fact that every child has something... something special, I am now 1000% convinced. And, basically, mothers and fathers make their children wingless - because they tell the child: “This is how you are - but you should be different!” They begin to fit him into a fictitious, dreamed-up image - instead of to follow his abilities and characteristics. There are no untalented people, it’s just that one’s talent is mathematics, and the other’s is hairdressing. There are stars in every profession, it’s just important to let the child find himself, to express himself as an individual.

In Boris Akunin's novel "Aristonomia", which I really love, the story is about how a person must understand himself. And the task of parents is to help do this. For example, my son says to me: “I really wanted to play sports, but it always seemed unimportant to you.” Yes, it seemed to me that this was nonsense, such a waste of time, I focused on science. And he admits: “You forced me to study mathematics, which I hate.”

And only later, after the passage of time, do you realize how much trouble you’ve made. Yes, almost all parents are very cruel to their children. You can't go to extremes. Now I understand that children should not be forced to study, but should be exposed to the benefits of education: that it is interesting, that you can become a more meaningful person, that your life will be more versatile. We need to offer them to do different things, because what they teach in schools is very boring.

Kitchen and science

— How do you think modern cuisine differs from what our grandmothers and mothers cooked?

— Now the kitchen should be lighter and simpler. If you offer a modern woman old recipes with 12 steps, no one will do them. And I don’t blame anyone - there’s just not enough time!

With celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay

- Why was it enough before? Is the rhythm of life different?

— Yes, and there was more time: people could have huge dinners and sit at the table for hours. Reading memories of the 19th and early 20th centuries, I am generally amazed at how much faster we live now. I don’t know whether this is good or bad: people manage to do a lot of things, but it’s not always clear why.

Nowadays there are a lot of all kinds of technical devices and new products, I like to experiment with them. I cook with slow cookers regularly and am currently making a series of recipes for them. I really like the low-temperature mode - it's so healthy and tasty. For example, I bought a thick edge for a steak, made a marinade... By the way, they used to think that the best marinade was an acidic environment. But now gastronomic chemistry has proven that acid (vinegar, wine, lemon) destroys and indeed slightly softens the upper layers of muscle tissue, but at the same time it draws liquid from the meat and makes it drier.

It's a completely different matter if you use pickling. Initially, “marinade” comes from the word marina - sea, that is, sea salt. How does salt work? It’s like heat: it penetrates into the very thickness of the meat, and the liquid also penetrates with it. If we weigh a piece of meat before and after marinating in a saline solution, we will see that it has become heavier. During cooking, less moisture is lost, and if we know the temperature at which protein coagulation begins, but the muscles do not yet contract, the result is more tender cooking.

So, I take a steak, immerse it in brine - the main thing is that the amount of salt and time are calculated correctly - and then cook it in a slow cooker at a temperature of 60ºC. If you want a beautiful crust, then I quickly fry it, turning the meat over to the other side every 15 seconds so as not to dry out the top layers.

—You have such a scientific, such a conscious approach! But there probably aren’t very many chefs ready for this...

- No, now there are more and more people who are ready to study and immerse themselves in this whole science. They understand perfectly well that today this is not the explanation - “because my grandmother did it that way.” And grandma could be wrong, after all!

— What is the current culinary boom connected with?

— I am often asked about this. I answer with the lines of Evgeny Boratynsky:

I've been deceived by my heart,
I've been deceived by my mind,
But never before, friends,
I was not deceived by my stomach
Everyone must admit that
Lover, or poet, or warrior, -
Just a carefree grocery store
Worthy of the title wise.

I think this is also because very few people have creative jobs. But by nature, it turns out that this is necessary and important for a person - to do something of his own, to create, to invent, to try. Especially with the advent of the Internet. I believe that the culinary boom and the Internet are interconnected because every person wants applause. If before everyone aspired to be an actress, now girls know that you can cook a delicious dish, take a beautiful photograph - and they will applaud you and say that you are great. A person is designed this way, he wants approval, recognition, he wants to feel significant - and it’s great that people find all this by blogging. Sometimes, however, in the culinary environment this takes on very aggressive forms. I'm amazed when people start insulting each other if someone fry or bake something wrong. Although now it seems to me that it has begun to subside. In general, I’m interested in being present on the Internet, I’m ready to communicate there, but I’m not technically advanced enough - but I’d like to learn.

With mother Anzhelika Yakovlevna at the celebration of her 90th birthday

Diets and weight loss

— In Massimo Montanari’s book “Hunger and Affluence in Europe,” it is written that previously it was always believed that a person’s stout figure was a sign of his wealth, but after the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, it became fashionable, on the contrary, to be lean and active. How do you feel about this “requirement of the era”?

— Of course, you need to take care of yourself, but diets, in my opinion, are nonsense. My friends and I tried very different diets - none of them worked. But diet for me in general is like a red rag for a bull. One of my very close friends was barely saved after she got carried away with it. After all, what happens when a person eats so much protein? Monstrous slagging of the body. I tell everyone that in the Middle Ages, when they wanted to kill a person to a slow, painful death, they put him on boiled meat.

The Dukan Diet really works for very young people, as long as all organs are healthy.

I believe that there should simply be a healthy, proper, balanced diet. If you really want to eat in the evening, you can eat a small piece of lean meat. I serve meat with vegetables in the evening. And for breakfast, my husband really likes porridge and smoothies with added grains.

It is very important to understand what you can eat when. I eat almost everything, but little by little. I just don’t eat sugar in its pure form. And I try not to add sugar or sweeteners to desserts, but to prepare desserts with a lot of fruits and dried fruits, sometimes, if the berries are very sour, I add agave syrup. If you add sugar to the filling of berry pies, then always add a little and taste - we have become unaccustomed to the natural taste of fruit, we must try not to overwhelm it, stop when this richness of taste, aroma, and not just sweetness is still felt. In a classic cake, where there is sponge cake, cream - there is nothing but sweetness. It seems to me that this is not interesting - and that we are depriving ourselves of such a variety of tastes!

The future wife of the famous television journalist Leonid Parfenov graduated with honors from Moscow State University. After a short teaching career, she switched to journalism, later changing her work in newspapers to the role of a TV presenter. The most interesting thing is that this woman achieved literally everything she dreamed of. For example, cooking, which has long been a favorite hobby, has become a profession.

Leonid Parfenov’s wife, Elena Chekalova, by his own admission, captivated him from the moment he found himself in her house. Such delicious aromas were wafting from the kitchen that it was simply impossible to resist. Thus, she successfully manages to find new ways to her husband’s heart even today.
The story of their acquaintance deserves undoubted interest, which Elena talks about with pleasure, as well as other fascinating stories of their life together. Initially, she read an article by the then very young Leonid about the Aquarium group and Boris Grebenshchikov. His style and manner of expressing his thoughts made her heart flutter, and after meeting them in person, the guys realized that this was fate.

Leonid Parfenov and Elena Chekalova

Today they are raising children - Ivan and Maria, and she dreamed of such names long before marriage, the more pleasant the realization of the dream became. Most importantly, Leonid Parfenov’s wife remains a wonderful friend and faithful, devoted life partner for him. They do everything together - they plan and immediately implement everything they plan. His opinion is law for her, it is important to her what he thinks and how he feels about everything that she does on the screen and not only.

As Elena admits with some embarrassment, she is always interested in being with her husband, she has not been bored for a single day! One can only kindly envy the strength of their marriage - they have not separated for almost thirty years. A wonderful housewife, she cooks so well that no one has ever been able to resist the culinary masterpieces she created!

Leonid Parfenov's wife

It is for this reason that the program “Happiness Is!” enjoys constant success; here she shares wonderful recipes with her fans. The result of a happy life together was the conclusion expressed by Elena, which she willingly voices - “everything that the husband does with good intentions is all good and wonderful,” and she never tires of repeating to her children about the genius of their father.

Mutual love and respect, reverent devotion - this is the key to that strongest union that can serve as a worthy example to follow in our raging world of passions.

Leonid Parfenov with his wife at a social event

The birth of a media legend - the childhood of Leonid Parfenov

Later, in 1966, another boy was born to the family - Leonid’s brother Vladimir, who would become a well-known businessman involved in the purchase and sale of medical equipment. Leonid's father was very fond of fishing and hunting; as soon as he had free time from work, he often took his eldest son with him.

Coming into the profession

After graduation, Leonid Parfenov served in the ranks of the Soviet army in Leningrad. There are people who enter the profession by accident, but this was truly the right choice. As a journalist, he will try himself in a wide variety of publications, among them will be “Red Star”, “Pravda”, “Moscow News”, “Ogonyok”, “Vologda Komsomolets”.

Oblomov, Sobchak, Parfenov - Rap prayer in support of faith

After experience in print media, Parfenov will begin to understand the significance and possibilities, and will gradually begin to fall in love with the television space. His first experience on television was his work on regional Cherepovets TV. He was the first, of the few journalists of that time, to begin making friends with famous rock performers and music critics who were just appearing in the Soviet music space. Among them will be such names as Alexander Bashlachev and Artemy Troitsky, whose meeting took place precisely with the light hand of Parfenov in 1984. Leonid regularly held meetings with legendary personalities of that time as part of regional television programs.

Parfenov's adult life

The collapse of the USSR, the arrival of glasnost in the country and the formation of the new Russian state became milestones in the work of the young, promising television personality. In 1990-1991, he became the author and host of the entertainment program “Namedni,” but because of his razor-sharp words and conclusions, he was suspended from working on television at the beginning of 1991. But this fact not only did not clip Parfenov’s wings, it would give him even more confidence in his abilities and show the way to the creation of a new documentary project, “Portrait against a Background,” which was created over the course of 1991-1993 and consisted of six films. Then he will work on the release of non-political news on Ostankino Channel One, and in 1994 he will begin working on the NTV channel, with which he will have many good and not so good events in his life. In addition to his special love and awe for television documentaries, Parfenov also tried himself as the author of such popular New Year projects in the early 1990s as “Old Songs about the Main Thing.”

While working at NTV from 1997 to 2001, Leonid Parfenov will be a permanent presenter and author of the historical program “Namedni. Our era. 1961-1991”, he will also have the idea of ​​​​creating some of the most ambitious television projects of our time “Russian Empire”, “Living Pushkin”, “Leonid Parfenov’s Un Certain Regard”, he was also their permanent presenter. After leaving NTV in 2004, Parfenov went to work for Channel One, which found in him the author and presenter of documentaries “Oh, world - you are sport!”, “Lucy”, “And personally Leonid Ilyich”, “ Zvorykin-Muromets”, “Bird-Gogol”, “Ridge of Russia” and many others. All of them became proof of Parfenov’s journalistic talent and innate love for analytics. Since 2012 he has been working on the Dozhd TV channel.

Speech by Leonid Parfenov on Bolotnaya Square

Work is not just television

Leonid also tries himself as a dubbing actor for animated and feature films, worked as a member of the jury of the television programs “Minute of Fame”, “Major League of KVN”, “Voting KiViN”, and since 2010 on Channel One he has been a permanent presenter of the program “What our years! together with presenter Tatyana Arno.

Professional recognition

Personal life of Leonid Parfenov

The family has two children - son Ivan and daughter Maria, who were educated abroad and do not in any way connect their future lives with journalism. Parfenov’s son has an economics education from the University of Milan, and his daughter wants to connect her life after graduating from the Italian School of the British Council with the restaurant and hotel business.