Dividing My Time

Vodka and Me: The Reset Button

I was taken aback last month when a reader wrote to ask me if bacon-flavored vodka is as popular in Russia as it is in her part of the world:  the Southern United States.

Bacon vodka?  Really?

I’ve never been a big vodka fan, which is probably the reason I am still alive after twenty years in Russia, where vodka is a way of life.  I’m more of a gin or chardonnay gal, but the idea of bacon-flavored vodka, and what a basic Internet research revealed to be its unquestioned popularity, forced me to take another look at vodka and experiment with its seemingly endless possibilities.  Flavor infusion has helped vodka and me hit the reset button!

Since the Poles first brought vodka to Russia in the 8th Century, the clear, strong, largely flavorless beverage has been the liquor of choice to accompany both the lavish banquets of the Tsars as well as the simple fare of Russian peasants.  In the 18th Century, Catherine the Great granted distillery rights to select members of the aristocracy, who vied with one another to produce the purest and most sophisticated brands of vodka, as well as flavored versions which, as Moscow’s Vodka Museum points out used, “all the letters of the alphabet…cherry and pear, blackberry and acorn, caraway seed and dill, bird cherry and sage!”

Vodka, then, is a blank culinary canvas on which the creative cook can paint almost any flavor by infusing fruit, vegetables, herbs, spices and yes, even bacon.   Infusion is a simple process which combines a flavor component with any liquid at a specific temperature for anywhere from four hours to four weeks (depending on the properties of the component.)  Vodka is particularly suited to infusion because of its odorless clarity and high alcohol percentage.  

Summer is the perfect time to start experimenting with flavored vodka, particularly in Russia where vodka is always cheap, and the bounty of summer floods the market with fresh berries and pungent fresh herbs.   Flavored vodka is not only delicious on its own: chilled in a simple shot glass, or as the basis of imaginative mixed drinks; but it also adds wonderful flavor to soups, risotto, stews, and makes a marvelous marinade to meats, poultry, and fish, and are a great accompaniment to traditional Russian summer staple of shashlik.   

Here are some of my favorite infused vodkas, and the foods they match to perfection!

Ginger-Infused Vodka:

This is ideal for mixed drinks, a marinade for fish and chicken, or on its own to accompany Asian food.  I serve this with sushi and spring roles for an innovative, light appetizer.

Ingredients:

One large knob of fresh ginger (10-12 centimeters long) peeled and sliced very thin.

750 ml of plain, unflavored vodka

Instructions:

1. Wash and sterilize a one liter bottle or jar with a non-metal lid.

2. Using the back of a spoon or the smooth end of a meat tenderizer, gently crush the ginger slices to release their essential oils.  

3. Combine the ginger slices and vodka in the jar or bottle, shaking lightly to combine.

4. Place the mixture in the freezer for 5 days.

5. Remove the mixture from the freezer and allow the mixture to come to room temperature.

6. Sieve the mixture through a coffee filter or fine mesh colander.

Thyme-Infused Vodka:

This vodka infusion pairs wonderfully with lamb chops, poultry, and grilled vegetables.  Combined with extra virgin olive oil, the vodka does well as both as a dipping sauce or marinade, or drizzle it over goat cheese, to add a wonderfully fresh flavor component.

This recipe works well for almost any fresh herb. Try tarragon, dill or basil!

Ingredients:

One bunch of fresh thyme 

750 ml of plain, unflavored vodka.

Instructions:

1. Carefully remove the thyme buds from the stems.  Wash in a salad spinner and pat dry on paper towels.

2. Wash and sterilize a glass jar with a tight, non-metal lid.

3. Gently crush the dry thyme buds in a clean mortar and pestle and place in the bottom of the jar.

4. Pour vodka over the thyme buds and gently shake to combine.

5. Cover with lid and place in a dark location at room temperature (no warmer than 20°C).  Allow to steep for up to three days; periodically shaking to ensure the vodka absorbs the thyme flavor.

6. Strain vodka through a coffee filter or fine wire mesh with cheesecloth.

Lime and Coriander Infused Vodka:

I combined these two flavors, which go wonderfully together, for a delicious pairing for Middle Eastern meze:  hummus, baba ganouch, and tabouli!  

Ingredients:

Zest of one lime (be careful to remove only the green rind and not the inner white part of the rind.

5-Tbl of lightly toasted coriander seeds, crushed in a mortar and pestle

750 ml of plain, unflavored vodka

Instructions:

1. Combine lime zest and coriander in the bottom of a sterilized glass jar or bottle with a non-metal top.

2. Add vodka and shake gently to combine.

3. Let the mixture steep for four days in a dark area at room temperature (not warmer than 20°C).  Do not steep for more or the lime rind will make the vodka bitter.

4. Shake lightly periodically.

5. Strain the mixture through a coffee filter or a fine wire mesh with a piece of cheesecloth.

6. Return the mixture to the dark location to age for approximately 30 days.

7. Serve chilled.

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This article was first published in French under the title "La vodka se reinvente pour les gourmets," in La Russie d'Aujourd'hui on June 15, 2011.  A link to that original article may be found here.

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Privyet Readers!

Want to know the secret to bacon vodka? You know you do!  Leave a comment below and I’ll send it right along, along with some creative ideas on how to use it (and not abuse it!)  Don’t knock it ‘til you try it – it makes a mean Bloody Mary, and has a truly phenomenal flavor!

A Hymn To PIMMS

There is no question about it – it’s summertime!

Temperatures are hovering around 90°F, I’ve got my gas mask ready for the peat bog fires, and Velvet is at a marathon seven-day horse show that is literary called “Horseshows in The Sun” or HITS.  I’m bugging my nuclear family about sunscreen.  True to form, they are ignoring me.

When it gets this hot, there is only one thing for it and that is PIMMS, which, together with excellent men’s tailoring is Britain’s lasting gift to world culture.  This delightful gin-based liquor is mixed with fresh fruit (apples, limes, oranges, peaches, mint, cucumber, and strawberries) and topped up with what the Brits call Fizzy Lemonade and Yanks call 7UP.  It’s a big part of things like the Regatta at Henley.  I spent a good deal of the mid eighties in a pleasant PIMMS haze and I can tell you now, there are worse ways to spend time.

PIMMS is hard to run to ground in Moscow, which is why everyone including me prefers to fly British Airways and not with the octogenarian mean flight attendants of a leading American flag carrier, nor, indeed, with those clowns at Russia’s national carrier.  No, a nice two-hour layover at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 gives you enough time to stock up on life’s essentials:

1. As many bottles of PIMMS as you can carry.

2. Ditto Jo Malone

3. Ditto English language magazines.

That’s why God invented those Longchamps bags, right?

PIMMS always reminds me of one of the top three most awkward events I’ve ever attended, which, when you’ve lived in Moscow for 17 years is saying a lot.  It was a Christmas party held out in one of the Gated Communities by one of HRH’s silly, wildly over-compensated bosses and his pretentious Russian wife.  It was one of those ill-conceived expat attempts to be egalitarian in Russia, which always go horribly wrong.  The silly boss, wildly over-compensated boss was from the Antipodes if you get my meaning, and his Russian wife (who was so much smarter than he it wasn’t even funny) was incredibly pretentious.   It was December and there was a raging blizzard.  We struggled out to the Gated Community with the entire staff, including the drivers (and you know your in Russia when a company hires drivers for the drivers) and got to their house for drinks before we had to wrap up and struggle over to some restaurant where we had to have Japanese food.  The Russian wife had set out a range of hor d’oeuvres on the coffee table, which baffled the drivers and their silent scared wives.  After the Russian wife explained to us what Brie and smoked salmon was, she then served us all PIMMS, complete with strawberries (at the time I am speaking of, strawberries cost about 12 dollars a piece) and cucumber and mint, and even an ice cube or two.   

I could not for the life of me figure out what the hell they thought they were doing.  Until I remembered that Christmas in the Antipodes is a summer event.

But it was still silly.  

So, mix yourself up a PIMMS and relax…wherever you are in the world!!!

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Hey Readers!

What's your most awkward event ever?  Did it involve PIMMS?  Have you ever been to an ill-conceived expat attempt to be egalitarian?  Tell us about it, won't you, by hitting the comment button below.  And put on some sunscreen!!!

 

A Short History of Dieting In Russia

Dee Dee, a new expat arrival to Moscow, caught me in a sour mood.

“Is there a Jenny Craig in Moscow?” she wailed.

“Of course,” I quipped back, “I’m amazed you didn’t notice it – it’s right there on Red Square, between Target and Whole Foods.”

“There’s a Target in Moscow?” she asked breathlessly.

Alas no.  There is no Target in Moscow. There is no Jenny Craig, nor even one single Weight Watchers meeting.   If you are feeling homesick for the US, there is a McDonald’s on almost every street corner, KFC, Dunkin’ Doughnuts, TGI Friday’s, Pizza Hut, Subway, and a newly opened Chili’s on New Arbat Street.  Moscow is the last place in the world you want to try and diet:  it takes twice as long to lose a kilo as it does a pound, you can’t walk anywhere, it takes four hours to drive to the gym, everyone drinks too much, and stocking your kitchen with fresh fruit, lean meat, and whole grains is three day marathon.  Is it any wonder expat women are constantly struggling to take off some weight?

I met Dee Dee for a latte, and after much persuasion, Larissa the Barista at Starbuck’s on Tverskaya made them with 1,8% milk instead of the usual 3,5%.  Feeling guilty about my earlier mood, I slid two yellow packets from my horde of imported Splenda over the table to Dee Dee who behaved as if it was Grade A Beluga Caviar.

“I’ve been here two months,” she complained, “and I’ve put on ten pounds!  I didn’t notice at first because the scale in our hotel room was in kilos – I actually thought I’d lost some weight -- but then our container arrived with my regular scale and I was horrified.   Do you think it could have been recalibrated during the voyage?”

“Very possibly,” I soothed.

“I can’t find any low fat food anywhere – everything in the restaurants is either deep fat fried or swimming in butter or sour cream, and where are all the low fat products?  The yoghurt is like 5% !”

“That,” I said putting on my chef’s toque for a moment, “is by way of being a hallmark of quality here – high fat content is an indicator that the product has been made with good materials.”

“Bunch of hooey,” retorted Dee Dee, “Look at all those skinny girls out there,” she waved her hand towards Tverskaya Street, “are you telling me they subsist on 5% milk and deep fried everything?”

“They are the Banana Generation,” I explained, “that’s why they are so tall and slim.”

The dubious Banana Generation theory is a soothing balm to every expat woman who ever warily eyed her husband’s new twenty-six year old 5’10”, 89 pound secretary. According to the theory, the generation of children who are now abnormally tall and enviously slim were entering puberty in the years just after perestroika, when vassal states such as Cuba were repaying their debt to Russia in fruit, flooding the previously barren Soviet shelves with affordable bananas.  Russians, who to this day regard a glut in anything as a license to stockpile as if the apocalypse were scheduled for the next day, loaded up their shopping bags with bananas and force fed them to the small children in their care.  And, the theory runs, there is something in bananas that produces abnormally high growth spurts in early adolescence.

“That’s ridiculous,” scoffed Dee Dee.  “If that were true, the boys would all be abnormally tall, and I haven’t noticed that.”  She tilted her head towards a pair of diminutive pimpled young men at the next table engrossed in a video game.  “You’re holding out on me, there must be some kind of diet help here.”

Indeed there is.  In twenty years, I have seen hundreds of diet fads come and go. In the early 90s there was “Gerbal Laif,” with hyperactive salesmen in the Moscow metro wearing buttons on their grimy leather jackets proclaiming, “Want to Lose Weight – Ask Me How!”  I often wondered if anyone had ever asked how, given that Russians would rather have a colonoscopy than converse with a stranger in public.  As “Gerbal Laif” declined, a revolutionary program known as “New Vays” took its place.   Skeptics like HRH noted that “New Vays” was remarkably similar to “Gerbal Laif” with its powders and potions, all of which turned out to be manufactured from outdated talcum power at a dubious factory outside Minsk.   Diet pills from Thailand enjoyed huge popularity, until a spate of hospitalizations and an enterprising yellow journalist put the kibosh on them.   A number of my svelte acquaintances tried the “Extrasens” or hypnotist, where they were told that their biorhythms were severely unbalanced and that only twelve sessions with her – twelve sessions minimum – could rectify their organism to accept weight loss.   

The advent of clean-living Vladimir Putin introduced the briefly popular Kremlin Diet—an innovative program that eliminated sugars, starches, and alcohol, leaving protein and vegetables as staples.  This was completely eclipsed, however, by the arrival of the Atkins Diet.  Finally a diet made for Russians!  Go ahead, said the Atkins people, eat that pork fat, drink that sour cream – as much as you want! Wash it all down with vodka, just don’t, for God’s sake, have a banana!

Dee Dee and I hit upon a very expat solution.  We created our own Weight Watchers-type support group, easily recruiting other expats as members.  We met a few times for weigh-ins and discussions, but it quickly spiraled into a wine drinking/moaning about the servant problem evening.

Which, of course, is how we piled on the kilos in the first place.

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This article was first published in Russia Beyond The Headlines under the title "A History of Dieting" on May 24, 2011.  A link to that online version can be found here.

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Dear Readers!

Have you ever tried to diet?  Of course you have!  You're probably, like me, firmly into the third week of the Dukan Diet.   How's that working out?  Ever tried to diet in kilos?  Ever tried to diet abroad?  Let's have your diet stories!!  You don't have to use your real name!  Hit the comment button and let 'er rip!!

 

Ukha: Russia's Oldest Soup

There are two ways to make Russia’s oldest soup, ukha.   The first way (and the way I first experienced it on the shores of Lake Baikal in 1990) goes like this: catch a fish in a crystal clear lake or river.  Throw it into a kettle of the crystal clear water and boil until the eyes pop out.  That’s how you know it’s done.  Consume immediately.  And that’s it.

Which is fine if you happen to be on the shores of a crystal clear river, know how catch a fish, and can make a fire in the wilderness.  But if one of these prerequisites is missing, fear not!   You don’t have to go all the way to Siberia, learn to fish, or even work up the courage to deal with a fish eye.  It is, however, a good idea to make friends with your local fishmonger, if you haven’t already, for help in sourcing the freshest fish possible for your version of ukha.

Ukha has been around for centuries, and like all Russian dishes, has changed and adapted in the kitchens (and riversides) where it is prepared.   Ukha comes from the word “ukho,” the Russian word for ear, which is odd since fish don’t have ears.    Ukha originally had nothing to do with fish, but was rather a thick, rich stock made from the leftover parts of cows and pigs, including the ears, the feet, the sinews, and other trimmings.   The word ukha became synonymous with “bouillon” and ultimately with the simple broth and fish soup popular with both peasants and nobles alike.

Chucking fresh fish into boiling water is not so much a recipe, as a method of cooking, but ukha was re-imagined and tweaked throughout the centuries.  At the Tsar’s table, “amber” ukha, redolent with precious saffron strands, was made with perch or sturgeon.  The French chefs working in Russian noble kitchens concentrated on perfecting the flavor and appearance of the bouillon itself, clarifying it with egg whites and eggshells and experimenting with different kinds of fish.   Some Russian chefs insist upon the addition of potatoes and root vegetables, whilst others vehemently protest that anything but fish and water make the concoction no longer ukha, but genertic fish soup.  I’ve heard violent arguments about whether or not to add lemon slices, and some heated discussions as to how many different kinds of fish you can use for ukha.  There are many fish in the sea, and many recipes for ukha.

So, if you are not bound for Siberia, or if you aren’t an accomplished reelsman or woman, but you’d like to try ukha, a recipe culled from numerous stories, cookbooks, advice from Russian fishermen, and a little sage input from my friend the fishmonger follows:

Ingredients:

2 liters of Fish Stock (recipe below)

750 grams of scaled and deboned white fish such as pike, perch, halibut, cubed (5 centimeter pieces)

750 grams of salmon fillet, cubed (5 centimeter pieces)

½ of a parsley root or turnip, cubed (2 centimeter pieces)

½ a celery root, cubed (2 centimeter pieces)

1 tsp of olive oil

2 leeks or one large yellow onion

1-2 bay leaves

15 allspice pellets

4 Tbls of Malden sea salt

1 Tbls of black peppers

1 bunch of flat parsley

1 bunch of dill

Lemon slices (if you dare!) for garnish

Instructions:

1. Sweat the leeks or onions in oil in a heavy bottomed soup pot on moderate heat.

2. When the leeks and onions are soft and translucent, add the parsley and celery root cubes and sauté until tender (5-7 minutes)

3. Add the fish stock, bay leaves, allspice, salt and pepper.  Raise heat and bring to a boil.  

4. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

5. Add the fish, poaching it lightly at low heat for 7-8 minutes.

6. Remove the bay leaves and add chopped fresh parsley and dill.

7. Serve immediately.  Russians traditionally serve ukha with rastigai or fish pies, and it is the traditional accompaniment to Salmon Coulibiac.

Fish Stock:

I am a great believer in fresh stock made from natural ingredients, which is far superior than prepared and processed cubes or tinned broths, which introduce too much salt and a chemical taste that has no place in a fresh soup like ukha.  Whenever possible, take the time to make fresh stock, and while it isn’t essential to clarify it, nothing looks better than a clear, sparkling broth to showcase the delicately poached fish and the brilliant green garnish.

Ingredients:

2 fish heads, gills and eyes removed (here is where your friend the fishmonger can be so helpful!)

2 liters of water

1 stalk of celery

½ a yellow onion

2 Tbls Malden sea salt

1 Tbl of black peppercorns

3 crushed cloves

Trimmings of fresh herbs (keep these in a plastic bag in the freezer): parsley, dill, scallions, tarragon etc.

3 egg whites and eggshells

Instructions:

1. Place all the ingredients except the eggs and eggshells into a heavy, deep-bottomed stockpot. 

2.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer on low heat for 1 hour, skimming the surface of any scum, which has accumulated.   

3. Remove from the heat.   

4.  Line a colander with fresh cheesecloth or a clean linen kitchen towel and strain the bouillon into a clean stockpot.  

At this point, you can stop, but if you wish to clarify the stock, proceed as follows:

1. Replace the stockpot onto moderate heat and bring to a simmer.

2. Whisk the egg whites together with one cup of the hot stock and then pour the mixture into the stockpot.

3. Add the crushed eggshells and stir for four minutes.

4. Reduce heat and slide the stockpot to the left so that only the left third of the pot covers the burner and let simmer for ten minutes. As the egg whites cook, the cloudy matter of the stock adheres to them.  

5. Rotate the stockpot around to allow the other side of the pot to cover the burner and let simmer ten minutes.  Do the same to the top and bottom of the pot, taking care that the stock does not boil over.

6. Remove the pot from the heat.   Line a fine sieve with cheesecloth or a clean linen dishcloth over a tall stockpot.  Ladle the stock and egg mixture carefully through the sieve, taking care that the bottom of the sieve does not touch the clarified stock.

Priyatnogo Appetita!

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This article first appeared in french under the title "Oukha, la mere des soupes russes." in Le Figaro and La Russie d'Aujourd'hui on May 16, 2011.  A link to that online article can be found here.

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Hey There Readers!

Sorry for the radio silence, but it is not an indication of a lack of interest in blogging!  We're working hard on a major overhaul: introducing new material, launching a new blog and all kinds of new and interesting developments!  So stick with it!  

Question to the cooks in the group:  what other Russian recipes interest you?  Been longing to make something you read about?  Log in and let us know and we'll plan some new columns around it!

The Easter Tin Hunt

 

Orthodox Easter cuisine in Russia keeps pace with the liturgy’s potent symbols of resurrection, the triumph of light over darkness, and the return of spring.     During Holy Week, Russians bake a light, dry traditional Easter bread, called kulich, and color and decorate hard-boiled eggs, which sadly fewer people these days seem to do in the traditional manner with the skin of yellow onions boiled in water.  Orthodox Christians bring their eggs and kulich to their parish church for a Pascal blessing.  Together with a sweet, rich, creamy curd cheese mold, spiked with spices, candied fruit, and citrus zest called paskha, these are the fundamentals of the Easter meal, right after the lengthy service, which culminates in the joyful Easter greeting “Xhristos Voskres!” or “The Lord Hath Risen!” to which the faithful respond, “He is Risen Indeed!” In Church Slavonic, this phrase is rendered by the Cyrillic letters “XB,” a motif which appears on eggs, kulich, and the paskha.

I remember my first Russian Easter as a frantic hunt, not for eggs and chocolate, but for bake ware.  Although I have a sizable arsenal of pots, pans, pie and tart dishes, and other baking paraphernalia, none of them is suitable for the Easter confections.  I wanted to do the thing properly: kulich is tall and cylindrical with a slightly puffy mushroom-like cap on top.   Paskha is traditionally prepared in a special trapezoidal mold called a pasochnitsa decorated with elaborate “XBs” and Orthodox Crosses on each panel so that the chilled mold retains the imprint of these seasonal decorations. 

In Russia, sourcing things never comes quite as easily as it does in the rest of the world.  Figuring the pasochnitsa would be the harder of the two to run to ground, I started my search there.   I prowled supermarkets and specialty kitchen stores to no avail.   I checked the farmer’s markets and found nothing but got lucky with some local knowledge.  Since the primary ingredients of paskha are cream, curd cheese, or “tvorog,” eggs, and butter, I threw myself on the mercy of the rosy-cheeked ladies who peddle these items at the market.  

“Try the Churches,” they advised, leaving me wondering why I hadn’t thought of that simple solution.  I’d got the scent, and after a slight detour to the three churches in my neighborhood and the Danilovsky Monastery gift shop, I headed strait towards the source:  the Sofrino Ecclesiastical Store in Central Moscow where you can buy anything and everything having to do with the Russian Orthodox Church from a slim 2 ruble candle to a 13 million ruble marble baptismal font.  There was one pasochnitsa there and I held my breath as four priests cut in line in front of me (apparently they can) to stock up on holy water and wedding crowns, but I was in luck, and, precious pasochnitsa in hand, I literally skipped down the stairs and out into the.

The kulich tin proved even more elusive.  The church store didn’t have them.  I trawled up and down the aisles of department stores and supermarkets.  I found tube pans and charlotte moulds, both of which were too short, and baba cups, which were the right shape, but too small.  Back at home, I burst into tears of frustration.

“What’s wrong?” asked my Russian husband.  Hiccupping slightly, I explained that, thanks to my lack of a kulich tin Easter would be ruined – completely ruined.  To my surprise, he burst out laughing.  He disappeared into the pantry, still chuckling, then emerged with four metal tins of various sizes, which held tomatoes, coffee, beans, and pickled mushrooms.  

“Kulich tins,” he said.    I dried my eyes and let out a chuckle of my own.

“Kulich tins, indeed.”

Paskha:

Paskha is the tangible proof that Lent has ended, combining, as it does, all the forbidden foods in one delicious confection.  The smooth and rich creaminess of paskha is a perfect foil to the drier kulich, and one without the other doesn’t seem to make any sense.

Don’t let the lack of a traditional pasochnitsa deter you from trying this recipe.  An agnostic but serviceable mold of any kind will do the job.

Ingredients:

750 grams of full fat tvorog (curd cheese)

500 gms of caster sugar

5 egg yolks

450 ml of heavy whipping cream

500 grms of sweet butter

2 cups of chopped candied fruit and peel

2 Tbl of vanilla extract  

3 Tbls of a sweet liqueur such as Cointreau or Grand Marnier

Directions:

1. Whip the egg yolks together until slightly thickened.  Add the sugar and beat until smooth.

2. Cream the butter in a separate container and then add to the egg yolks and sugar.

3. Drain the curd cheese through a fine sieve, and then mix it well into the butter, sugar and egg yolk mixture until smooth.

4. Add the cream, vanilla and liqueur and mix until smooth.

5. Fold in one cup of the candied fruit and peel, 

6. Line a mold with plastic wrap or cheesecloth.  Pour the mixture into the mold, and then weight the top with a pot lid or flat plate and a heavy weight such.  

7. Chill at least 12 hours in the refrigerator.

8. Unmold the paskha and decorate with the remainder of the candied fruit and peel.  Keep cool until serving.

Kulich

Ingredients

2 packages of active dry yeast

1,5 liters dry flour + 1 tablespoon

¾ teaspoon of salt

350 ml of caster sugar + 1 tablespoon

5 large egg yolks at room temperature

300 ml of whole milk, scalded and cooled to 50°C

225 grams of butter, melted and cooled to 45°C

2 large egg whites at room temperature, whipped to stiff peaks

6 strands of saffron dissolved in 2 tablespoons of rum

2 cup of candied fruit (I use a mix of raisins, candied ginger, dried cherries, candied orange peel)

1/3 cup of slivered blanched almonds

Extra butter

Glaze made of egg yolk, vegetable oil, and water

2 cups of icing (I used a confectioner sugar glaze)

Directions

1. Butter aluminum tins, then line the bottom and sides with buttered parchment paper.

2. Combine yeast, 6 Table of water, 1 tsp of sugar and flour in a bowl.  Cover and set to rise in a warm place with no breeze.

3. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until combined, then vigorously for approximately 5 minutes.   When the mixture is thoroughly combined, add the milk, then flour and the salt.  Knead or mix for 2 minutes.

4. Add the proofed yeast, beating for 2 minutes to combine.  

5. Add the melted butter gradually, beating a moderate speed.  Let the dough rest for two minutes, and then test for elasticity.  If needed, add more flour.

6. Add the egg whites and saffron and rum mixture.  Once the dough is thoroughly combined, add one cup of the candied fruit.

7. Cover the dough to rise in a buttered bowl placed in a warm place until it has doubled in size (2-3 hours)

8. Knead the dough lightly a few times, then return it to the bowl and cover for another 2 hours.

9. Divide the dough between the aluminum tins so that the dough covers slightly more than ½ of the tin.  Retain 1 cup of the dough.  Cover and let rise another hour.

10. Preheat the oven to 180°C.  

11. Take the retained dough and form it into strips.  Place two strips across the top of the dough in each tin in the form of a cross.  This will enhance the top of the kulich.  

12. Glaze the tops of each tin and place in the preheated oven.  Cook for 15-20 minutes.  Then raise the temperature to 200°C.  Smaller tins will cook faster than larger ones.  Kulich is finished when a skewer inserted into it comes out clean.

13. The final step is a little local peasant wisdom that seems to work an extra bit of magic:  cover a soft bed pillow with a towel and gently place the kulich tin onto its side on the pillow.  Gently roll the tin back and forth over the pillow to ease the kulich out of the buttered tin.  Cool the kulich on its side on the pillow for at 40 minutes.  Then place it upright and frost with the glaze of your choice.  Use the remaining candied fruit and almonds to decorate the kulich in any way you wish!

Priyatnogo Appetita!

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A version of this article first appeared in Le Figaro in French under the title, "La Chasse au Moule" on April 19, 2011.   An online link to that publication may be found here.

 

International Womens' Day/Международный женский день: Clara and Rosa Turning in their Graves!

 

When the men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices in behalf of our ideals.
~Clara Zetkin

This week was of course the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day – or 8th of March, as it is better known in Russia, one of the most important dates in a calendar chocker block with important holidays.   

8th of March was originally conceived as a day dedicated lobbying for equal rights for women, universal suffrage, and the abilities and achievements of women throughout the world.   It was first celebrated in Russia in 1913, and, after the revolution of 1917, quickly became a fixture on the calendar for the new Bolshevik government.    On the 8th of March, men are supposed to take on all the tasks traditionally assigned to women.  They clean the house, make a meal, or possibly look after the children.  Today, however, in this more mercantile post-perestroika era, celebrations have strayed a little bit far off the mark.   8th of March has become an obligatory gift giving extravaganza.  The gross national product of Holland shoots up a number of points due to all the flowers sold on 8th of March, and restaurants do a brisk business for those International men who can’t quite face the kitchen.   

This year, Russia held its national beauty pageant and crowned a “Miss Russia,” and this alone would have the socialist pioneers Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxumburg turning in their graves.  In what are politely called penal facilitates, Russian women prisoners also held beauty contests to crown a “Miss Prison Russia.”   Russia’s favorite redhead spy, Anna Chapman, who for some reason is still making headlines, launched a very silly website, and Russia’s infamously unpleasant traffic cops declared a one day cease fire on pulling women over for minor traffic offences.  This pulled the GDP of Russia down a few points.

Celebrating 8th of March this year was a three-day event thanks to the way the holiday fell in the middle of the week.   For the uninitiated used to bank holidays and first Mondays, this may seem a trifle confusing, but follow me if you can:

Saturday, March 5th was a working day, meaning that Russians worked a six-day week.   We had to work on Saturday so that Monday, March 7th could be a day off even though Tuesday, March 8th was the actual holiday.  Does that make sense? Vintage Russian public holiday stuff.     If the holiday is on a Tuesday, you have to have the Monday off as well so you can get a three-day weekend.  Even though you have to work on the previous Saturday.   Where that gets us, I don’t know, but I’m not sure anyone comes out ahead.    Joe Biden is town this week and he’s talking about Russia’s accession to the WTO but if you ask me (and no one ever ever does) if they let that warped individual who sits in his windowless room in the Kremlin massaging the calendar keep on with this stuff, Russia doesn’t deserve to join the WTO.

On Saturday, I actually came in from London – a flight time of just over three hours.   It took me about that amount of time to get from Domodedevo Airport to my flat in Moscow.  HRH, my “horrible Russian Husband” was unable to meet me since he was at work, so Tolya my driver and I sat in a traffic jam that was more than usually insane.

“Yep,” said Tolya, “Everyone’s out congratulating the ladies.”  

Saturday may be a working day, but most of it is given over to kicking off 8th of March in fine style, with lots of champagne, chocolates and flowers.  Legions of delivery trucks leaned on their horns and tried to cut off their competitors through the gridlock.

Tolya told me he’d heard on the radio that you could hire an official emergency service ambulance as a taxi service for 6000 rubles and hour, which comes to about 200 USD per hour.   

“I don’t approve of it,” he said.  Neither did I, but we both agreed that it require a leap of the imagination to understand that it was actually happening.   

My HRH hates to shop for anything – he becomes grumpy and impatient buying a newspaper at a kiosk, or a loaf of bread at the nice French bakery across the street from us.   But, each 8th of March, he girds his loins and plunges into the maelstrom of baffled men trying to club together ingredients for a home cooked meal.

“Keep it simple,” I advised as we parked the car at a new place I’d heard about, called The Farmer’s Bazaar.  I had high hopes of it turning out to be the Whole Foods of Moscow, which of course was delusional of me.  It turned out to be a token supermarket on the 5th floor of what used to be a perfectly respectable food market on a central Russian street.  Closed for a number of years, it had recently re-opened as a glitzy shopping mall.  Because that’s just what Moscow needs – another glitzy shopping mall.   And who in their right mind puts a supermarket on the 5th floor of a glitzy shopping mall?   

Farmer’s Bazaar was definitely not Whole Foods.   Far from it.  It was like any overpriced Moscow supermarket:  you needed to take a second mortgage to afford some of the items.  I clocked a small package of white beans, which are admittedly hard to find here, retailing for just over $12.  A packet of Earl Grey Tea would run you $20.   HRH had that “I knew this would be a nightmare” look on his face as I steered him over to the fish counter.   He was mildly mollified by some fresh fin de Claire oysters, reasonably priced at about 3 bucks a pop, and ordered a few dozen.  These were carefully packaged in plastic takeaway containers with a bed of ice, but the problems was that they only fit 3 oysters to the container, so we ended up with ten takeaway containers.   I then queered the deal by asking if I could buy the heads and spines of some beautiful fish one of the charmingly nautically clad fishmongers was gutting.  This appeared to be the first time anyone behind the fish counter had ever received a request remotely like this, and it was met with a lot of suspicion.

Needless to say, I’ll be back to shopping on my own for the next calendar year.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Hello There Male and Female Readers!

How did your 8th of March pan out?  Did you get anything nice?  Did you encounter any baffled men?  Let us know 

Instead of some links to other posts, today, have a listen to a live radio interview I did with Voice of Russia by clicking here.

 

Масленица/Maslenitsa: Parties, Pancakes, and Punch-Ups

With enough butter, anything is good.

~Julia Child

Today is the beginning of Maslenitsa, Russia's version of Mardi Gras!

I wrote this piece for one of papers I write for, but they went with something about bears in Trafalgar Square which I didn't feel was nearly as informative, nor indeed entertaining.  Looks like Olga Quelque Chose strikes again...So, here it is for fans of The Stunt:

There are a number of non-negotiables about life in Russia.   You can’t have the window open—ever.   You have to take your shoes off when you enter any residential dwelling—always.  And, if you plan to earn the respect of your family, you need to learn how to make bliniy or pancakes---well.  Particularly this time of the year.  It has eluded me, in the past but this year, I promised myself I would master the art of the elusive Russian pancake in time for Maslenitsa.  I rolled up my sleeves.  I delved into 19the Century cookbooks.  I cornered old women at the farmers’ market.  I contemplated calling my mother-in-law.

“I have to work today, “ said my workaholic Russian husband last Saturday.

“Perfect,” I muttered, “I need you out from under my feet.  I have to crack this bliniy recipe, and it is going to take me all day.”

“Don’t overdo it,” he cautioned hastening out the door.

“Don’t you dare have anything to eat,” I yelled after him, “because we’ll be having sixty pancakes for dinner!”

The pressure is on.  Maslenitsa is upon us! Russia’s riotous Mardi Gras: a week of partying, pancakes and punch-ups which celebrates the end of winter, the beginning of Lent, and the promise of spring.  Half-heartedly absorbed into the Russian Orthodox Calendar, Maslenitsa is really a tenacious rite of spring belonging to a much older, more pagan culture of nature worship, agrarian traditions, and a heightened awareness of the change of seasons.

Maslenitsa was originally pegged to the vernal equinox, that moment in early spring when the sun passes directly over the equator, making day and night equal length.   Of the four points of the calendar (the solstices and the equinoxes), the vernal equinox was most revered by ancient societies, because it heralded the return of the sun and life after the darkness and death of winter.  Many ancient monuments such as the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem were oriented such that the rays of the vernal equinox sunrise would fall directly above the High Alter.  

Pagan Slavs interpreted natural phenomena in their religious worship with stories of human love and betrayal, sex and separation, and life and death.  In a popular myth reminiscent of Egyptian Isis and Osiris, Russia’s Yarilo and Morana are brother and sister lovers who represent life and death, fire and ice, and spring and winter.  Their courtship reaches a fever pitch during the summer solstice, only to spiral into betrayal in autumn, and separation and death in the winter.  Spurred Morana turns into a fearsome hag, spreading death and frost in her wake. Crops wither to dried straw as Yarilo retreats to the underworld. As spring returns, the faithful burned a straw effigy of Morana on top of the snow to call forth Yarilo back from the Underworld.   As the flames of the straw Morana crackled, pagan Slavs celebrated the return of spring by dancing, wrestling, and feasting on life-affirming pancakes, symbolic of the sun and eternal life.

Christians, ever-efficient recyclers of other people’s holidays, have nevertheless found Maslenitsa an awkward fit in the liturgical lead in to Easter.  In agrarian Russia, Lent served as a handy spiritual excuse for a Spartan diet as it excludes meat, cheese, oil, eggs, alcohol, and butter, all of which do a lot to spice up plain buckwheat kasha.  The forty days of Lent coincide with the period when the staples of winter stores had dwindled down to a bare minimum in Russia.  Nowadays, of course, you can get mangos and quail in aspic at any supermarket year round, but many Russians proudly go through “The Great Fast,” as a way of clawing onto some moral high ground and dropping twenty pounds in less than two months: both goals easy to achieve if you are subsisting on buckwheat porridge and cabbage soup. Maslenitsa contains the word “maslo” meaning butter, although some scholars argue that it is a more ancient version of “mysia pust’” meaning “empty of meat.”  Whatever the explanation, it is a time to gorge on butter, cheese, and cream, and is to Russia what Shrovetide is to the Anglo-Saxons and Carnival and Mardi Gras are to the Spanish and French: a public celebration of the return of light and warmth and the last gasp of fun and fat – and pancakes of course-- to be had before the onset of Lent.  

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This post is part of The Stunt.

This piece first appeared in La Russie D'Aujourd'hui and Le Figaro on February 16, 2011 in French under the title: "Les blinis sans états d’âme"

Photos (and pancakes) by the author.  All Rights Reserved.

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Hello Readers!

Have you had a pancake today?  Want to know the very best pancake recipe ever (much better than any of the ones posted that I've seen?)   Hit the comment button below and I'll let you in on it.  Not for the faint hearted!!!

To revisit a Maslenitsa that went horribly wrong, try this post.

The Imported Locavore

I am a culinary schizophrenic.

I spend half my time in the messy and energetic Russian capital and the other half in Northampton: the politically correct epicenter of the galaxy, nestled in the heart of the bucolic Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts.  I designed this division of time to become a saner human being, but it has completely backfired.

“Have an olive,” I urge Vladimir over drinks in Moscow, “they’re from Spain.”

“Have some hummus,” I invite Caitlin at a poetry reading in Northampton, “the chickpeas were grown three miles from here in a humane solar-powered greenhouse co-operative.”

In Northampton, any invitation involving food necessitates sending out the following code, “Do you or your partner have any food allergies?” This reveals the extensive list of banned substances.  Your guest responds: “We eat everything, except of course red meat, caffeine, chickens and eggs from non-local humane farms outside a six mile radius. No alcohol, of course…no sugar, obviously, and oh, no farmed fish, or processed dairy.”  Which leaves a gourmand like me almost nothing to work with.

Contrast this with a recent exchange in Moscow:

“Come for Sunday lunch,” I email Posey St. Edmonds, mother of three,  “I’m making Bouef Bourguignon.”

“Awesome,” she answers, “what can I bring?”

“Childcare,” I respond.

In Northampton, everyone is a passionately committed locavore, consuming only that food which is humanely grown within biking distance of her own front door. Even the garbage collectors in Northampton go around on bikes.   Imagine chickens being tucked in at night, and you aren’t far wrong.   Ground Zero for Northampton locavores is the Tuesday farmers’ market known simply as “Market.” When I first moved to town, I was totally fired up for “Market.”   I bought the tote bag and hid my car in the adjacent multi-story car park, doing what I hoped was a credible imitation of someone who biked everywhere.  I felt sure the sisterhood of writers, poets, yogis, and fascinating friends I planned to make would all be there.   Two hours (and a desperate trip around the corner for some locally-made rum raisin ice cream) I reluctantly concluded that “Market” was great if you wanted to live on kale salad.  I didn’t. 

I feel curiously off the hook somehow when I return to Moscow, where even the most committed Northamptonite would be forced to agree: you can’t subsist on a diet of local beets, sour cream, and cabbage, and you’d lose face if you tried.  It’s all about imports here in the Big Potato—a sushi bar on every street, a German beer in each refrigerator.

Nothing in Moscow is easy, though, and shopping for imported food at a decent price is an all-day contact sport necessitating stamina, my wingman Tolya-The-Driver, the gas-guzzling Land Rover, and a full water bottle.  Our objective: a large, wholesale cash-and-carry warehouse, catering mainly to restaurants, called METRO, where $100 gets you more than three items.  Cash is king here, so I secure a wad of 1000 RUR notes from HRH, tuck them carefully into a money belt, don my most comfortable shoes and dress in layers that can be removed as needed.  

Oh, the thrill of METRO!  Much harder work than “Market,” but infinitely more satisfying.  I feel like a mighty Neanderthal hunter-gatherer, forging through the jungle of Leningradski Prospekt, stealthily sneaking the re-usable shopping bags (no five cent discount for using these at METRO) past the watchful eye of the armed security guard, and stalking my prey.  

List poised, I push the oversized, lopsided trolley around, parking it strategically at the end of an aisle blocked by surly staff re-stocking with their forklifts.  On goes my coat for a plunge into the chilly meat room:  Lamb chops from Wellington, chicken breasts from Lille!  Forward to the Dairy Annexe for Finnish milk and Swiss cheese.  Spanish anchovies in olive oil, and real cornishons from France not Bulgaria!  Momentary confusion in the spice aisle: why so very much allspice and no cumin?  Alas, this day is not a complete retail slam-dunk: no Australian wine, but compensation looms in the form of Greek melting cheese and Israeli limes.   

Once the bounty is safely stowed in the back of the Land Rover, Tolya and I celebrate with some local fare:  Quarter Pounders with cheese, from the Avto-Mac, made from beef raised just outside of Moscow.  We don’t want to be accused of not supporting local food producers or anything.

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This post first appeared as an article in Russia Beyond The Headlines and The Washington Post on February 22, 2011.  

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Dear Readers,

Do you get embroiled in the "it has to be grown within a bike ride away from you" stuff?  Did you read "The Poser" where the narrator comes across a woman sobbing in a Seattle grocery store because she can't find artisan cheese to take to her Nursery School's snack thing...only something from Madison, WI?  Hilarious.  Alternatively, do you live in a place where everything is imported?  

Hit the comment button and let us know how your shopping plays out each week! And if you would like some more humor from the disconnect between Moscow and Northampton, try some posts like these:

Day of Russian Policemen/День российской милиции: Do They Know Where My Husband Is?

May Day / День труда: A Day of Solidarity

Oh, Do You Know The Muffin Mom?

If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends by liking it on Facebook, tweeting it to your followers, or re-blogging it, all available on the buttons below!

Day of the Defenders of the Fatherland/День защитника Отечества: A Hymn To Him

As you spend February 23rd (Men's Day), so shall you spend 8th of March (Women's Day).

~HRH (and a lot of other Russian men I know.)

A friend, who is perhaps not the brightest bulb on the tanning bed, has just figured out the double entendre humor I use in referring to my “Handsome Russian Husband” as “HRH.”

“You know,” she said, “That can also stand for ‘His Royal Highness’. Like Prince William.”

Really?

The moniker HRH is eminently applicable to Russian men, who are all brought up by their mothers believing that they are, indeed, royal scions and therefore above such plebian and unmanly concerns like housework.  In Russia, they are still teaching Home Ec to the girls and Shop to the boys, with no reform in sight – and certainly not regarding the impending gender-specific public holidays.  In place of one messy, gender-neutral love fest on February 14th, Russians are suiting up for the very separate Men’s Day (February 23rd) and its companion piece, International Women’s Day (March 8th.)  

I’m a Russian historian, so I like to delve into the origin of national holidays. Men’s Day is very interesting.  Its full, and characteristically overblown, name is “The Day of the Defenders of the Motherland,” and it celebrates the 1918 rout of Kaiser Wilhelm’s forces by the just-that-day-drafted Red Army.  The name eventually morphed from “Red Army Day,” to “Day of the Soviet Army and Navy,” and in 1995, as part of a re-branding campaign to drop “Red” from everything, ended up as “Day of the Defenders of the Motherland.”  In HRH’s family, we take the 23rd of February very seriously indeed, since we are a military family:  HRH and Dedushka both served as officers in the Red Army – as did Great Uncle Boris, and several others, dating right back to that Red Letter Day in 1918.  Interestingly, this list also includes several gutsy great aunts and great-great grandmothers, who served, with distinction, in the Red Army as border patrol guards, field medical officers, and behind-the-lines guerilla fighters in Occupied Ukraine.  Nevertheless, February 23rd remains devoted exclusively to the men of Russia, who, ipso facto, are all obliged to defend the Motherland as part of their mandatory military service.  

On its current web site, the Russian Consulate in Houston, TX offers helpful guidance on the celebration of Men’s Day: “On this day,” it says, “the entire masculine population - from boys to old men - receive special greetings and presents. Women have a wonderful opportunity to convey their warmest and kindest feelings to the loved ones and to indulge them with sings (sic) of attention and affection.”  

Translation: Women: shop, cook, clean.   Lather, rinse, repeat.

HRH, in mufti, is not a force to be reckoned with on the domestic front, although he does open wine bottles, which, along with driving a car, is what well-brought up Russian men consider “man’s work.”  I once begged him to empty the dishwasher.  He sighed deeply, went to the sink, and stood, his back to me.

“Darling,” I said quietly.

“What – “ he barked, turning around to glare at me.

“Just that, the dishwasher, you know, is the appliance on your left.”

  HRH and Dedushka won’t be emptying anything except a bottle of premium whiskey this week – as we women convey our warmest and kindest feelings.  I’ve bought HRH a new super sonic corkscrew, Babushka has the sweet Sovietskoye Champanskoye warming up in the vegetable steamer, and Velvet is on dishwasher duty, so we are all set to indulge our Defenders with the royal attention and affection they deserve.

But I refuse to sing.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

This post first appeared as an article in Russia Beyond The Headlines on February 10, 2010.

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Hey there readers!

This may well have been the post that started me down the rocky road of profprazniks.   Did you have a nice men's day?   I decided to put all my chips on one number and spent a large part of Tuesday night making bliniy and all kinds of good stuff.  Then everyone got sick.  So now the house is full of food.  Any Defenders out there still looking for a good meal?

Birthday of Russian Vodka/День рождения русской водки: Russia’s Favorite Imported Beverage

Vodka is tasteless going down, but it is memorable coming up.

~Garrison Keillor

Happy Birthday Russian vodka!   On this day, in 1865, renowned chemist Dmitry Mendeleev (last seen writing the lyrics to a Tom Leher ditty), defended his doctoral dissertation, “On Combining Water and Alcohol,” in which he began the exploration of the ratios, concentration and weights of various concentrations, which would lead to the publication, in 1894, of Mendeleev’s state standards for vodka production.   Mendeleev’s 40% has remained the standard by which Russian vodka is produced to this day.

It may come as a surprise to readers to learn that vodka is not Russia at all.  Unless those readers are Polish or Lithuanian (and in the era we are looking at this was more or less the same thing) in which case they will nod their heads vigorously and agree that, indeed, vodka is just another one of those things, like onion domes, snow, oil, and fur that the copy cat nation has stolen from other cultures and made their own.

Vodka can be traced as far back as 8th Century Poland, where it was more commonly used as medicine.  Multiple sources credit ambassadors from Genoa for bringing the first hard spirits to Russia the 14th Century to the court of Prince Dmitry Donskoi. They called it aquae vitae, or “water of life” and although it was considerably lower in alcholic content than 40%, it was much stronger than mead or beer, which made up the liquor cabinets of the 14th Century boyars.  Having just seen off the Tartar Mongols, the Russians were ready for a stiff drink, and took to aquae vitae like ducks to water.

Russia’s rulers kept close control over the distillation and distribution of vodka, which remained a state monopoly until the 18th Century, when Catherine The Great granted distillery rights to select members of the aristocracy, who vied with one another to produce the purest and most sophisticated brands of vodka, producing flavored versions which, as Moscow’s Vodka Museum points out used, “all the letters of the alphabet…cherry and pear, blackberry and acorn, caraway seed and dill, bird cherry and sage!”

Prohibition has reared its ugly head more than once in Russia, though in each case, legislation designed to curb alcoholism only fanned the flames, since addicts turned to illegal hooch to satisfy their cravings.  Prohibition issued as a patriotic measure in 1914 by the Imperial Duma was only repealed in 1925 by the Soviet Government; and the roller coaster years of perestroika and the Wild 90s were made even more miserable by Gorbachev’s unpopular move to limit the production of liquor. 

I am not, myself, a big vodka fan, and this is probably the reason I am still alive and well on this earth since it costs less than Windex here in Russia and is often used for much the same purpose.   In fact, vodka is used in all kinds of original ways in Russia, and here are just a few:

Medicinal:

Vodka has always been considered a cure-all for anything that might be wrong with you. When vodka was first introduced to Russia, it was largely used for this purpose, which may be why Russians all drink “To your health!” when they start to knock it back.

Got the runs?  Or the opposite?  The cure is the same: Take a shot of vodka with a heaping teaspoon of salt and, strange as this may seem, it acts like a kind of intestinal cement.  I was forced to try it on (I kid you not) The Road To Samarkand and it gets the plumbing sorted out in record time.  Throw away your Imodium.

Vodka, rubbed on the chest and back of an infant is the quickest way to bring down a fever, if you don’t mind your two year old smelling like the inside of Kazan railway station, that is.

Vodka, mixed with pickle juice or a delicate mixture of tomato juice, horseradish, Tabasco, celery salt, and Worcestershire sauce (depending on your ethnic origin) is a good way to vanquish the excesses of the previous evening!

Housekeeping:

My cleaning lady looks askance every time I wave the vinegar bottle at her as eco-friendly, cost effective cleaning agent.  She prefers Mr. Proper (a Slavic cousin of Mr. Clean) but if that’s not available, she’s got the vodka bottle out quicker than you can say “Stolichnaya” to get rid of mold on chrome, smears on glass, or any stubborn residue or stickiness.   It’s cheaper than Mr. Proper and smells much much much better.

In a recent post, I advocated taking all the dubious cheesily branded vodka bottles you received for New Year’s, and pouring them into the hole where the windshield wiper goes: lots more effective on those -30 degree mornings (the kind where your contact lenses begin to stiffen) and, as any Russian will tell you, it’s a lot more “ekologitcheskiy chisto,” (ecologically clean).  Like that’s ever bothered them.  

Finally, I have seen with my own eyes just how effective Russian vodka can be as a de-icing agent.

If, however, you are not that creative, then you can always fall back on vodka’s culinary charms.  If you are a man, that is.  Vodka is not really a tipple for girls in Russia since it is taken straight, no chaser, out of a shot glass.  You order vodka by the grams here:  50 grams is a small shot, 100 is a double, and the barman measures it out from the bottle into your shot glass.  Ideally vodka is somewhat chilled, but that’s by no means a deal breaker.   Like tequila, there is a ritual to taking a vodka shot:  get your vodka poured and hoisted, take a massive sniff of some black bread, exhale vigorously, knock back the vodka, then grab a pickle, a piece of dried fish, or, if there is nothing salty to hand, the bread you just stuck up your left nostril and bite into it. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Vodka today is still a thriving business in Russia and a favorite take-home souvenir of foreign tourists, many of whom seem baffled that, once opened, the half-liter bottles cannot then be re-capped.  If asked, a Russian looks bemused and wonders why on earth you would need to re-cap a bottle of vodka?

Happy Birthday, Vodka!

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Readers!

Do you have a favorite vodka story?   How do you take your vodka?  With tonic and a twist, or a black bread chaser?  Ever try the dried fish?   Let us know by uncapping your bottle and clicking the comment button below!

If you enjoyed this post, stick around and enjoy more like it:

Day of the Beer Brewers /День пивовара: Quantity Trumps Quality

Day of The Fishermen/День рыбака: It’s a Guy Thing

Okroshka: The Versatile Russian Classic

New Year's/Новый год: Is This Christmas??

Happy New Year's, Readers!

No prizes for guessing what today is...apart from being 1/1/11 which is pretty cool: It's New Year's!  Hands down the brightest star in the Russian holiday firmament! It's been going on very steadily since about 1918 and it is for everyone!   

Foreigners get confused about Russian New Year, Russian Christmas and all the things that go with it.  I wrote a piece about it for Russia Beyond The Headlines and it seems appropriate to reprint it here:

So, Is This Christmas?

“Is this a Christmas Tree, or a New Year’s Tree?” asked my five-year old daughter Velvet, as I struggled with a tangle of fairy lights.

“It’s both,” said HRH, my “Handsome Russian Husband,” who was lying contorted on the floor, trying to get the tree to stand up strait in its holder.

“Nastia says,” Velvet informed us, referencing her infallible best friend “that Santa Claus isn’t Santa Claus at all – he’s called Ded Moroz and he comes on New Year’s.”

“Tell Nastia,” I responded through gritted teeth, “that in our very fortunate family, Santa comes on December 24th, and then his cousin, Ded Moroz comes on New Year’s Eve.”

“Nastia says Christmas is on January 7th,” said Velvet, still confused.

“That’s true too,” said HRH, brushing pine needles off his hands.

“Why?” asked Velvet, and they both looked at me expectantly.

Christmas in our American-Russian family is a marathon, not a sprint.  Since Velvet was born, HRH and I have worked hard – he writing checks, me sifting the dry ingredients -- to fuse the varying traditions of Russia and the West into our family celebrations.  The result is a month-long slog, from December 15th, when my friend Gail guilts us all into buying tickets to the Moscow Oratorio’s rendition of Handel’s “Messiah,” through January 13th, or “Old New Year” in Russia, at which point, I am ready to lock Prince Albert, Charles Dickens, and Pyotor Ilyich Tchaikovsky into a small, windowless room and throw away the key.   

Russian Christians adhere to the Eastern Orthodox calendar (see sidebar), which lags 13 days behind the modern day calendar.   This discrepancy was corrected in 1918, by the fledgling Bolshevik regime, but Christmas never reverted to December 25th in Russia, because the Bolsheviks began a systematic campaign to phase out traditional religious holidays and replace them with Soviet ones.  Christmas was shifted to New Year’s Eve.  At the beginning, stringent measures were put in place to see off any holdover of the old days:  Christmas trees, introduced to Russia by Tsar Peter The Great in the 17th Century, were banned in 1916 by the Holy Synod as too German.  The Bolsheviks kept the tree ban in place.   Stalin declared Ded Moroz “an ally of the priest and kulak,” and outlawed him from Russia.

“Like the Burgermeister Meisterburger outlawed Kris Kringle in ‘Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town?’” asked Velvet breathlessly, referring to the seminal 1970 animated American Christmas classic.

I cast a careful look at HRH who was now struggling with the star on the top of the tree, “Exactly like that,” I whispered.

  But you can’t keep the likes of Ded Moroz down for long.   In 1935 Pavel Postyshev, Stalin’s architect of the collectivization program, possibly concerned about his lasting legacy, published a letter in Pravda asking that “New Year’s Trees” be erected in Pioneer Palaces and that Ded Moroz and his granddaughter and helpmate Sneguritchka be allowed to return to the children of the Soviet Union on New Year’s Eve.  Ded Moroz and the trees were rehabilitated in 1937.  Although Christmas and other Orthodox holidays were reinstated on the Russian calendar in 1992, New Year’s Eve remains firmly entrenched as the primary holiday.  

Although Christmas itself was banned, Russians recycled traditional pagan and Christmas traditions as a template for the New Year’s Customs.  In Old Russia, when the first star appeared in the sky, symbolic of the Star of Bethlehem, families gathered to break their 40-day fast with a twelve course “Holy Supper,” featuring “kutya” or grain porridge sweetened with honey and dried fruit.  From pagan times, this dish symbolized life, hope, sweetness, and blessings to the home. You can still find kutya on the tables of today’s Russian New Year’s celebrations, along with lavish zakuski (hors d’oeuvres.) In the Soviet Era, New Year’s always saw the arrival of rare tropical fruits such as tangerines, which for HRH is the smell of his childhood New Year’s.   After the Holy Supper, the faithful in Old Russia returned to church for an All-Night Vigil.  Today, Russians gather around their tables in front of the TV to greet, not the Redeemer of Mankind, but President Dmitry Medvedev, who will hoist a glass of champagne and wish everyone health and happiness for the coming year.  Then fireworks will explode all over Russia and all the bells will peel, as Russians exchange three kisses and good wishes: “New Year, New Happiness, New Luck!”

Sidebar:

Why is Russian Christmas on January 7^th?

Dates and holidays are often confusing in Russia because of the historical split between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches over the reforms to the Julian Calendar by Pope Gregory XII in 1582.  Most of the world rushed to adopt what became known as “The Gregorian Calendar,” which introduced more effective leap years and more precisely calculated the length of the year not as 365.25 days, but rather 365.2425 days, a difference of 11 minutes.   The Eastern Orthodox countries, however felt that the Julian calendar more accurately plotted the spring equinox and Easter, and refused to buy into the Gregorian reforms.  If you think 11 minutes doesn’t make a difference:  think again:  over three centuries, as the Orthodox Christians doggedly stuck to the older, less accurate calendar introduced by Julius Caesar, a time lag developed.  By 1918, when Lenin decreed that Russia should join the rest of the world, the lag was 13 days long: the most severe jet lag in the history of mankind.   Today, the Eastern Orthodox Church still adheres to the Julian calendar, though it has indicated it is ready to make the shift in 2100.  Orthodox Christmas is 13 days behind what Russians call “Catholic Christmas.”  Russians, who believe that when it comes to holidays “more is more”, also celebrate “Old New Year” on January 13^th as well as “New Year” and Orthodox Christmas on January 7^th.  To ensure the season is indeed jolly, Russians enjoy a ten-day national holiday from January 1 – 10^th!

This piece first appeared in Russia Beyond The Headlines and The Washington Post on December 15, 2010 and a link to the original online version can be found here.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Happy New Year Readers!

Hope you are having a good one!  If you aren't, here is a nice tip:  if you make Bloody Marys with Aquavit and Clamato instead of vodka and tomato juice, they are a.) much better and b.) cure the bite a lot better.  Which is about all the wisdom I've gleaned over this holiday season.  

What are your New Year's Resolutions?   Be the first in 2011 to weigh in by hitting the comment button below.    

I mentioned Bees Rees in my last post, that uncrowned queen of Moscow.  She collected over 15,000 Russian Christmas/New Year's Tree ornaments which is outrageous.   She used to send e mails out to get everyone to come and help her unpack them...and THEY DID.   Oy-veh.  I don't have as many as Bees, but I have some nice ones and here they are:

 

Chicken Soup for the Humor Columnist

Tancy O’Reilly lives alone, and was felled by a bad cold over the November holidays.   I packed up some chicken soup, garlic, and oranges and went over to her apartment.  She was in bad shape: huddled in bed, surrounded by balls of soggy used Kleenex, a sticky laptop, and an incongruous teddy bear.   I took one look, banished her to the bathroom for a long hot shower, opened the windows to freshen up the air, then changed the sheets.  I heated up the chicken soup, dropping peeled and sliced slivers of fresh garlic into it and let it simmer.  I squeezed the oranges, fixed a tray and returned to the bedroom.

Propped up against fresh pillows, in a clean nightgown, Tancy slowly spooned the garlic soup into her mouth, and sipped the fresh orange juice, “This is great,” she croaked, “but I hate to take you away from your work.”

“Well, I needed a break,” I responded, scooping up dirty T-shirts from around the room into a laundry basket.  “I’m a little frustrated.  I wanted to use this week to really get stuff done with my book, but I keep having to re-write my humor piece for this month.”

“Why?” asked Tancy.

“My editor, whom I adore, keeps rejecting everything I write.   I wrote about Dr. X –“

“—He is SO funny,” crowed Tancy, “what’s wrong with that?”

“They have to be careful about legal issues,” I said shrugging, 

“Why don’t you write about these crazy holidays?” asked Tancy, “how the calendar gets all screwed up?”

“I did that already,” I said, “and got into trouble for it.”

“How?” she asked.

“Some of the other editors objected to the phrase ‘warped individual sitting in a windowless room in the Kremlin’” I said, shaking my head, as I ran a duster over Tancy’s deep window ledge,  “So, then I put in another piece on how Russians never write thank you notes –“

“—Now that is absolutely true,” said Tancy, stuffing another pillow behind her back and wriggling up to a better position,  “—or you get one of these really silly formal ones.  What was wrong with that?”

“Perceived as angry – not funny,” I said shortly.  My mobile rang; it was Velvet from home with a question about her homework. 

“Mommy, can I write about the Russian guy with the big cross at the Baptism of Christ site in Jordan who went in the river?”  Velvet’s class was studying the Middle East, and each child was doing a country, she was doing Jordan.  

“You mean the guy with the wife who had blue fingernails that matched her bikini and put Canadian club in her Diet Coke at 10 am?” I asked, catching my breath.  Now, they really were funny.

“They sound perfect!” wheezed Tancy reaching for the Kleenex, “what happened to them?”   I put Velvet on speaker so she could help tell the story.

“He wore this teeny tiny Speedo and a huge pectoral cross” I began.

“And he jumped into the Jordan River –“ said Velvet, “which was really gross.”

“It looked like dishwater” I qualified, “and like only a tiny strip of dishwater, but he was submerging himself under it over and over again, while his wife – blue fingernails – filled up the empty Canadian club bottles with the water…and they were totally oblivious that on the other side of the bank were about four hundred Israeli soldiers with their weapons trained on him.   The Jordanian guide was tearing out his hair.”

“And there was this man from America next to us, -- what did he say?” said Velvet giggling.

“He said, ‘Jesus, I hope that dude got a Tetanus shot,’” I howled.

“That is hilarious!” said Tancy.  “Use that.”

“No, that story needs more than 3000 characters without spaces – and I want it for the book,”

“You could always publish the recipe for this chicken soup,” said Tancy “I feel better already.”

“That’s my cooking column,” I sighed.

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Hey there readers!

Would you like the recipe for this miraculous chicken soup?  Leave me a comment and I'll send it along!

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This piece first appeared in Russia Beyond The Headlines and The Washington Post on November 18, 2010.  A link to the online original version can be found here.

 

Day of The Fishermen/День рыбака: It’s a Guy Thing

Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.  

~Dave Barry

Last summer I was stuck in a bizarre time warp.  American friends of a cousin were over in Moscow for a large medical conference.  They roped me in to a dinner at some out-of-the-way restaurant, called, ominously (and I suspect not ironically) "The Collective Farm" organized by some of their fellow delegates: a 50-something surgeon called Rostislav Dmitrievich, and his wife Tatiana Ivanovna, who were stiff, formal and old-fashioned.  I was late, having coming on from a meeting with my editor, and a good thing too, since I missed the first course: a lavish spread of traditional Russian zakuska: pickled mushrooms, pickled fish, pickled cucumbers, pickled garlic, and pickled diners, if their flushed cheeks and the half empty vodka bottle were anything to go by.  The zakuska also featured the mandatory stale slices of brown bread, curling slightly at the ends, and a warm viscous homemade cranberry juice, which tastes like cough syrup, called “kliukva” and sulphorous mineral water from the Caucuses which tastes like rotten eggs.

It was like an express train back to the late 1980s: during my misspent youth as a tour guide, I’d had that same meal from Tallinn to Tomsk a thousand times.  It came as no surprise to me that the next course was mushroom julienne: a glutinous concoction of sour cream, mushrooms, salt, and cheese, which I had no doubt was more cholesterol than my cousin’s friends had consumed in the last month.  Then we moved on to blini and (red) caviar, which everyone pretended was a massive treat. Then, tough, inedible beef (possibly the only red meat the doctors had consumed in this century) finishing up with melting ice cream.

“What has been the most…just amazing thing about living in Russia for 17 years,” asked the lady doctor in a desperate attempt to force conversation during one of the numerous deeply awkward lulls.

“Affordable smoked salmon.” I answered promptly, which made everyone laugh for some reason.

 

Today is Fishermen’s Day in Russia!  Today we are feting not just those who go out to their local watering hole with a rod or a reel for a quiet afternoon’s nap, but all those who trawl Russia’s 12 seas, 2 million rivers and 3 oceans to haul in catches of over 3 million tons of fish annually, making Russia one of the world’s top ten producers of fish.

 

I wasn’t completely kidding when I said that affordable smoked salmon is one of the highlights of living in Moscow…it is fantastic, although you buy it in chunks, rather than fillets, unless you go to the market yourself and are firm with the salespeople about how you would like it sliced (which if you are like me is thinly).   They don’t tend to want to hear it from a girl, since fish is another one of those things, like shashlik, that is a predominately guy thing.  Like the dried fish Borya from Zapolyarniy was kind enough to bring with him.  Guys, for example, have a charming tradition of buying live crawfish (pictured below) boiling up a large pot of water and…well…I’m sure you can imagine the rest.   Another fishy male bonding ritual is simply called “shrimp.”  For “shrimp,” conditions are ideal if there is a major sporting event on television and all the women in the house have been banished elsewhere.   Donning blue and white striped naval undershirts, the men spread newspaper over a coffee table in front of the television, boil shrimp in their shells, then spend the evening peeling, eating, and spitting out the hulls with copious amounts of beer.  No cocktail sauce or anything.  My freezer in Moscow is full of bags of these unshelled shrimp.  

Then, there is caviar (which they prefer you don't photograph:) HRH claims he was force fed black caviar as a child on the basis of its high protein count.   When I first lived in Russia, we used to get a lot of from HRH’s colleagues in Astrakhan (and the less said about HRH’s colleagues from Astrakhan the better): like a whole kilo, which we would open and spoon straight from the tin, although I occasionally made an effort to do the thing properly: toast, some chopped hard-boiled egg, a little onion to bring out the flavor, and a dash of lemon juice, which is not the way the Russians do it.  They serve caviar with sour cream and blini, which if you ask me (and no one ever ever ever does) is like taking a perfect vine ripened tomato and dumping half a bottle of Stop & Shop French Dressing on it.   

A metaphor that works for many things here come to think of it…

Happy Fisherman’s Day to everyone!

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Author's Note:  Kudos to Velvet (who turned 13 this week!!) for not only arranging the smoked salmon so cleverly, but having the foresight to snap it on her iPhone!!!

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Hail Readers!

Do you fish?  For complements…or perhaps comments?  I do…so please leave me a few, or like me on Facebook.  Or something. It's been a long hot weekend, and the peat fires are starting to stink up the place. If you liked this post, stick around for a few more like it:

Day of the Northern Fleet of Russia/День Северного флота России: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Day of the Medical Workers/День медицинского работника: Breezes, Bribes, and Bubonic Plague

Day of the Beer Brewers /День пивовара: Quantity Trumps Quality

Day of the Beer Brewers /День пивовара: Quantity Trumps Quality

"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."


~Frank Zappa

 Today is the second Saturday in June and since 2003, that has meant one thing:  Beer Brewer’s Day!

I’ve been writing, for my sins, a monthly cooking column about Russian food, which I don’t actually like to either make or consume, but I have found it interesting to learn that most dishes that we think of as “classic Russian,” are, in fact, not native to Russia at all. We don’t know that, because Russia has so claimed these meals as their own, that it doesn’t occur to us to question their origins.  Take Beef Stroganoff, which seems to account for an astonishing number of hits to this blog, which is French; or shashlik, which comes from the Caucuses, or, indeed, Russian pelemeni, which were brought to Russia originally by the Finno-Ugric tribes of the North.

And so it is with beer.  Russians certainly did not invent beer, in actual fact the Iraqis did (for all the good it did them), but today Russia is the third largest beer market in the world!  Russians stumbled upon beer fairly early on in the form of kvass which beer expert Michael Jackson argued is an early form of beer.   Kvass is a lightly fermented drink made from any old grain or stale dark bread, yeast, and flavored with berries and other fruits.  It’s mostly consumed in the summer by the older generation, whereas everyone consumes beer in Russia, 24/7, 365 days a year.  

Russians like their beer strong, and I was interested to learn that the strongest stout ever, was made for Catherine the Great, and called “Imperial Stout.”  The theory was that the high alcohol content of the stout ensured that the sub zero temperatures in winter would not freeze the beer as it made its way from Great Britain to Russia.

Today, Russian beer is a dynamic sector of the economy.  The national brands of Baltika, Siberian Crown, Stariy Melnik and others are never going to win any prizes for quality, but they remain viable because, in Russia, the main driver, as the economic geeks say, is quantity rather than quality.

I know this, because, like most women in Russia, I live with a beer expert.  

HRH is very fond of beer, and, because he’s been exposed to beer in countries like Switzerland and Jamaica where they focus more on the quality, rather than the quantity of beer production, he’s discerning.   He prefers European draft beer to American bottled beer, which he feels is on a par with Sprite or 7-UP in the beverage line up.  The happiest I have ever seen him was in the Sultanate of Oman, where we spent one Christmas.  Slightly concerned about our dwindling reserves of Duty Free gin and whiskey, we were invited to Christmas lunch by a charming couple, who ran the (tightly controlled) alcohol concession in the Sultanate.  Tipped off by our friend Annie, Debbie and Samir unearthed a case of Heineken, which they wrapped in festive paper and presented to him as the, hands down, best Christmas present he ever received.

So, to an industry facing possible crippling tax hikes and the ever-menacing specter of another government-sponsored anti-alcohol campaign (because the last one went so well), let’s raise a glass of imported Newcastle Brown Ale and wish the Beer Brewers a very happy profpraznik!

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Author's Note:

The wonderful picture of Russian beer and dried fish (the peanut butter and jelly of Russian summers) was found on the Google by Mr. Kunglay. 

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Hey Readers!

How are you enjoying Beer Brewers’ Day?  Does your country have both beer and an airline?  Mine does, but both are pretty lame.   What’s your favorite tipple?  Leave me a comment and let me know!  Thanks for stopping by.

Did you enjoy this post?  Here are some others you might also enjoy:

Day of the Northern Fleet of Russia/День Северного флота России: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Horse Shows: Don't Forget The Maps and The Martinis!

Russians En Route

Day of the Northern Fleet of Russia/День Северного флота России: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.

~ Benjamin Franklin

Today is Northern Fleet Day!  Put on your party hats, let’s play pin the tail on the submarine, because the Northern Fleet is the baby of our bunch.    Construction of a northern naval base was begun under Nicholas II in 1895, but like so many things started by Nicholas II, it was left to Josef Stalin to finish it off.  The Northern Fleet considers its founding dates to a visit to the Zapolarniy (meaning just below the Pole), in 1933, which makes it 77 years old today.  

Young they may be, but the Northern Fleet has distinguished itself as a formidable force, winning numerous battles in the Great Patriotic War and the recent unpleasantness with Chechnya. It is, however, their continued ability to literally make me wave a white flag of surrender each June that is the subject of today’s post.

HRH, who went to military school and served as an officer until 1991, has a bunch of friends who are still actively serving in braches of Russia’s military, all over the country.  We see a lot of some of them, and less of others, but summer is always ushered in by the simultaneous arrival of Borya from Zapolyarniy and the pukh.

Pukh, (pronounced “pooo-kuh”) which fellow blogger Potty Mommy described very well in a recent post, is the fluff from a sexually frustrated female poplar tree.   After World War II, Russian authorities hastened to make Moscow green again, by planting a large amount of poplar trees.  It was one of those moments when the people who knew better were afraid to speak up, and so the authorities planted only female trees.  Poplars, like holly, are both male and female, and you need a few of each to keep the others happy.  Moscow has only female trees, which each June release their snowflake-like pods into the atmosphere where they swirl and whirl in a summer snowstorm, like a million Carrie Bradshaws looking for Mr. Big.  Muscovites rush to close their windows, since the pukh gets into nooks and crannies, wily evades the vacuum cleaner, the broom and the duster.  It creeps into your nostrils and down your throat.  You find it lurking in corners, and if you are at all prone to allergies, you don’t even go outside until the week or so passes.

As soon as the first bit of pukh sails through the air, HRH announces that Borya is on his way down to from Zapolyarniy and will be staying a few days.  

I have learned that, in the case of HRH’s friends, it is better not to lead with polite chitchat about their work, such as “So, Borya, how goes it with the Northern Fleet?”   Though we’ve not discussed it, this is what I assume Borya does for a living, and one does not need to be the Head of the CIA to work that out.  The clues are there:  the naval tank top, the fact that he hails from Zapolyariny: apart from the Naval Base, there isn’t a lot else going on. There isn’t, for example, an IKEA at Zapolyarniy, despite its relative proximity to Sweden.   Then there is the final and clinching evidence: Borya enjoys an annual summer vacation of forty days.

That’s right, forty days.  People who work for the government in Russia, who live above a certain latitude (and Zapolyarniy is so far north that it tends to be obscured on any globe by the knob one uses to rotate the globe) get a government subsidized vacation of obscene length to the Black Sea resort areas of Russia: the theory being that they need to soak up the vital vitamins contained in the sun’s healing rays.  So down they go, unencumbered by sun hats or sunscreen, to lie flat on their backs, turn beet red, and gorge themselves on fresh fruit and sweet Crimean champagne.  Borya had stopped off in Moscow en route from Zapolyarniy to Sochi to change trains and catch up with some of his childhood friends.

That first year, I had just started working at The Bank and was putting in 15-hour days trying to figure out the difference between Fixed Income and Asset Management.   Nevertheless, when HRH told me his friend would be arriving for dinner, I spent some time the night before to make what I thought was a good menu for a scorching June evening:  gazpacho and raspberry chicken salad. I left two bottle of wine chilling in the fridge, emptied the ice trays into precious zip lock bags and refilled them.  The next morning, I extracted a promise from HRH that he would shut all the windows against the pukh and buy whatever staggeringly large amount of beer he felt was appropriate, grabbed my coffee mug and headed into the pukh maelstrom.

Fast-forward fifteen hours.  Tired and limp in my crinkled linen suit, I dug my car out of pukh spores, climbed in and cranked up the air-conditioning.  Switching on a book on tape, I eased into the evening Moscow gridlock, looking forward to a cool shower and the nice dinner I’d prepared.

 I opened the door of our flat and was flattened by a gust of hot air and a cloud of pukh that immediately settled in my inner ears and nostrils with the precision of a Murmansk nuclear submarine.  But the overwhelming sensation was one of affixation by a lethal combination of dried fish, flat beer and human sweat.

“Darling,” I called out in English, “what’s up?”

HRH poked his head around the living room door.

“Hi Sweetie!” he said, “Come on in and meet Borya!”  He enveloped me in a clammy, shirtless embrace.

The shirtless thing is one of the first hurdles you face making your marriage to an HRH work.  You have To Be Very Firm about that not being acceptable outside the bedroom, or before you know it, there will be a coterie of nearly naked men in your living room. Like not in a good way.

Which is what I had that night.  Resplendent in only a pair of Turkish track suit bottoms, hunched over a coffee table spread with newspaper and what looked like most of last month’s catch-of-the-day from Murmansk, sat Borya, his round face shining with sweat.  With some difficulty, he focused his Windex-colored eyes on me disapprovingly, making a “tsk tsk tsk” noise with his tongue and shook his head.

“What time do you call this?” he shouted over the boom of the television, tuned to Russian MTV.  

I didn’t know him from Adam.

I wondered if it was a trick question and consulted my watch as I picked up the remote control for the air-conditioner.

“Nine thirty?” I responded.

“Not any time for a woman to be getting home from work,” boomed Borya, “I don’t let my women come home at this time.”

“I see,” I said, moving towards the window to shut it.  HRH bounded over the coffee table to stop me.  

“Borya is concerned about getting sick from the air-conditioner…the breeze,” he explained.  

“But it’s like 92 degrees and the pukh is everywhere,” I said in English.

HRH gave me one of those Slavic shrugs that speak volumes.  Wordlessly, I retreated to the kitchen, opened the fridge and poured myself a hefty glass of the chilled wine, adding a few of the untouched ice cubes (also very bad for your health) for good measure.  After a long cold shower and another glass of wine, I cranked up the a/c in my bedroom, pulled a Nancy Mitford book down and climbed into bed wearily.

I am no match for the Northern Fleet.

Congratulations to Vice-Admiral Nikolai Mikhailovich Maksimov and all those who serve under him!  

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This post is part of The Stunt.

Author's Note:  I found that superb picture of the pukh on hub by Jim Sheg. It's actually China, where apparently they have the same problem, but it is a great visual!

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Dear Reader:

Be honest, men shouldn't go shirtless in the public areas of the domicile should they?   Have you ever come home to find an impromtu male bonding thing going on?  What did you do?  Leave a comment and tell us about it!

Shashlik: It Doesn’t Tolerate A Woman’s Touch

Another article in Figaro this week, courtesy of Russia Beyond The Headlines French edition! Originally appeared in French, but here is the English version: 

People who read my columns are very special, so when reader Laura, wrote to ask if I would do something on beet salad, I was more than ready to accommodate.

But the lilacs distracted me.   Spring comes quickly to Russia: one moment the world is a jar of dirty water full of muddy paint brushes, and then, overnight, it blossoms into the vibrant pastel colors of spring.   Up from Central Asia and the Crimea come the first of the fresh strawberries and ripe tomatoes, sold by peroxide blonds in pinafores and dirty fingernails.  

Beets: at this time of the year?   No, beets in Russia are part of the musky bounty of autumn, not the budding promise of spring.

Spring in Russia comes with the first whiff of the pungent smoke of the “kostor” the barbacue grill.   As the lilac blooms, the “snowdrops,” those rickety, rusty, banjaxed cars used only to get to country houses, or “dachas,” from May to August bounce out to the dachas, where, even if the dacha has electricity, and many do not, the menu is traditional and unchanging:  shashlik: skewers of marinated pork or lamb grilled over an open wood fire.   

Like so many of its cultural fulcrums, shashlik is not native to Russia, but Russians have made it their own.    That is to say, Russian men have made it their own.  Russian men are not natural cooks: cooking is a bit effeminate, is not associated with world domination, and involves cleaning, multi-tasking and long-range strategic planning.  Not madly them.  The big exception is shashlik, which, Russian men assert “cannot tolerate woman’s touch.”  I’ve noticed shashlik seems able to tolerate a woman’s touch during preparation and clean up, but Russian men do throw themselves into their sole culinary endeavor with gusto: spirited debates over the exact chemistry of the secret ancestral marinade (consisting of vinegar, oil, salt and pepper), and the proper arrangement of kindling in the “kostor” last as long as it takes to consume a bottle of vodka.   Tenderly and lovingly, they spear the clammy chunks onto lethal meter -long shashlik imaplers, and carefully lower them onto the flames.   I sometimes think that if Russian men lavished this kind of attention on their wives, the burning issue of Russia’s declining birthrate could be solved.    

    What to serve with shashlik?   Very simple:  tomatoes, cucumbers, dill and lavash, the chewy bread of the Caucuses.   No dressing, save salt, and when the produce is fresh, and the sun is in the sky until after 9 pm, what else, really, does one need?

Shashlik:

Ingredients:

1 kilo of pork or lamb, cubed

2 yellow onions cut into 1/8 half moons

1 cup of red wine vinegar

cold water

The juice of one lemon and/or 12 cup of fresh pomegranate juice

Chopped fresh parsley

5 sprigs of dill

4 Tbls of peppercorns, coarsely crushed in a mortar and pestle

4 Tbls of coarse sea salt

4 scallions, diced

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

1/8 cup of fresh coriander

½ a cup of olive oil

Trim the meat of all fat, and cut into 5 cm cubes.   Place the meat in an airtight wide dish with a lid.  Combine the remainder of the ingredients except for the onion, olive oil, coriander and the water together in a jar and combine by shaking vigorously.   Pour the marinade on top of the meat, using water to top up so that the meat is covered.  Refrigerate, covered overnight, or, if you are in a hurry, let stand at room temperature.  Toss the meat at intervals, making sure that all the pieces are well marinated.  

Using long skewers, spear the meat cubes and onions in a pattern of your choosing.  Grill the skewers until the meat is browned and the juices run pink.  Turn frequently, and baste with the olive oil.     Serve immediately garnished with the chopped fresh coriander.

A Note on Sauces:  For the many kinds of shashlik, there exist an equal number of traditional garnishes.  The sauces of the Caucuses combine the tartness of citrus, musky flesh fruits and salt with fresh herbs to make Tkemali (sour plum sauce) or the pungency of walnuts, pounded with garlic and the tang of coriander to make Satsivi (walnut sauce).  Other sauces take their cue from the Balkans: garlic yoghurt sauce and a diced tomato salsa.  Be creative!  

Shashlik Sides

Traditionally, shashlik stands alone – not accompanied by any fancy salads or complicated garnish.  Russians serve fresh vegetables of the season such as tomatoes, peppers or cucumbers with only salt for seasoning.  The reasons for this are primarily practical:  shashlik is prepared and eaten in the outdoors, or in the back garden of a dacha which may well lack refrigeration, sharp knives, or electricity to facilitate preparation and storage.   Russians are wise to avoid heavy, starchy accompaniments such as potatoes or the mayonnaise-based salads that grace a Russian indoor zakuska or hors d’oeuvre course.   Complicated accompaniment can also take away from the pure flavor of the freshly grilled meat, tinged with the smoke of the kostor, freshly mown grass and hint of pine.   In our Russian/American family, we’ve experimented with different culinary traditions to find side dishes that compliment shashlik.   Lighter, citrus-based salads with tangy herbal dressings seem to be the perfect match for enhancing shashlik without stealing its thunder.  Note: these are not traditional Russian salads, but they made from ingredients readily available in Russia and make frequent appearances at our table in Moscow.

Gingered Lentils:

I brought this recipe with me to Russia from my childhood in New England, where it was always referred to as “Lentil Sludge,” and I don’t think there has been a piece of lamb on my table without these for the last twenty years.   When I first came to Russia in the early 1990s, puy lentils were almost impossible to find, so I made do with the abundant green lentils.  The tang of ginger and the red wine vinegar are a perfect foil to lamb, while the fresh scallions and peppers provide the essential “crunch” to the meal’s ensemble.

2 cups of puy or black “beluga” lentils

2 bay leaves

3 tablespoons of grated fresh ginger

4 cloves of garlic

1/3 cup and 1/8 cup of olive oil

¾ cup and ¼ cup of red wine vinegar

Malden salt and pepper to taste

½ cup of chopped dill

5 scallions chopped

Diced orange, red, or yellow peppers

Preparation:

Place the lentils and bay leaves in a large pot of cold, salted water and bring to the boil.   Reduce heat, and simmer until lentils are tender.

Drain the lentils and return to pot.  Add the 1/3 cup of olive oil, and ¾ cup of vinegar, ginger, garlic and Malden salt and pepper.   Set aside, uncovered, and allow lentils to come to room temperature.   This can be made ahead of time 1-2 days before serving and stored, covered, in the refrigerator.

To finish the lentils, add the remaining olive oil and vinegar.  Toss dill, scallions, and peppers and correct seasoning to taste.

Lemon, Tomato and Basil Salad:

In Moscow, we are lucky enough to have a roof garden with a grill, where we eat some form of shashlik or grilled meat most evenings from May to September.  This salad appears with every dinner during the summer, and when it doesn’t appear on the table, family and friends protest violently!  They all ask for the recipe, which makes me laugh, since it is so easy!

Ingredients:

1 kilo of small fresh tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, or sliced beef tomatoes

A drizzle of good quality olive oil

Juice of one fresh lemon

2 Tbls of sugar

Generous handful of basil leaves, coarsely chopped

One loaf of French bread

Preparation:

Slice the tomatoes into quarters or halves, depending on their size and your taste.  Lay them on a large, flat platter.  Scatter basil leaves generously around the tomatoes.  Drizzle with olive oil, squeeze the lemon juice on, and just before serving, and add sugar and sea salt and cracked pepper to taste.

Why the bread?   To soak up the delicious juices from this salad, mingled with the drippings from the meat.   Delicious!

“Granny Pasta”

My nieces are vegetarians, so when we are together, we often to serve some form of this light, but nourishing pasta dish for them, and this is my daughter, Velvet’s favorite picnic dish for her horse shows.   As the name suggests, my mother – their grandmother – invented this and it’s great as a side dish to shashlik, as well as on its own.  I made it for a group of guests recently and a very polite, but I think sincere 14 year old looked down at his plate of Granny Pasta and barbecue, sighed deeply, and said, “This is the perfect meal.”  And so it is!

500 grams of penne pasta

½ cup of olive oil

1 cup of fresh green basil leaves

Malden salt

Pepper

1 cup of grated cheese:  we use Asiago or Parmesan Reggiano, but I’ve also used goat cheese, sheep’s cheese, or just the ends of the cheeses left in my fridge! 

Preparation:

Place the olive oil and basil leaves in a food processor or blender and pulse 6-7 times, so that the basil is finely chopped but not fully combined as in a pesto.

Bring a large pot of cold, salted water to the boil.  Skim surface with a teaspoon of olive oil and add the penne.  Cook according to package instructions until al dente.  Drain the pasta and quickly return to the pot.  Place the pot over low heat and add the grated cheese and combined olive oil and basil mixture.   Toss vigorously until the cheese begins to melt.  Remove from the flame.  Can be served immediately or at room temperature.

Make this your own family recipe by adding your favorite ingredients some ideas include:  cherry tomatoes, black olives, fresh asparagus, peas, 

Priyatnogo Appetitita!

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Dear Reader:

Do you know a man who thinks only he knows how to grill?  If so, leave me a comment about it by clicking the button below!  Tell me what you'd like to learn how to make next.  I'm being encouraged to try okroshka which is a cold, kvas and cucumber soup.   I'm panting for an alternative...so weigh in!!

Siberian Pel’meni for a London Yummy Mummy

My friend Susan casually asked me if I knew how to make Siberian pel’meni, which she, bathed in the innocence one who has never attempted them, wanted to make.  “My daughters had a Russian nanny who used to make them these incredible meat dumplings,” she said, “and after she left us, we haven’t really found anything else they like quite so much.”

I could not imagine clever, chic, artistic Susan, who works as a TV producer, up to her elbows in flour and pel’meni filling, nor indeed, that Susan could spare the entire day and a half the process entails.  Pel’meni and Susan didn’t seem like a match made in heaven when I looked at it objectively.   Susan’s life little resembles that of the women of the ancient Finno-Ugric tribes who brought pel’meni to the Ural Mountains. Although she’s often on the go, she’s not necessarily on the move; so is not forced to carry her entire food supply on her back, which means she isn’t choosing pel’meni because of the protection they provide to her family from savage animal predators: the dough on the outside of the dumpling masks the smell of the meat inside, an early, and indeed enduring appeal of pel’meni to the local tribes of the Ural Mountains. 

The climate Susan lives in (Fulham, London) doesn’t get cold enough to facilitate the natural flash freezing capability which made pel’meni such a hit with Siberian housewives.  These sturdy women gathered after an animal had been slaughtered to create an assembly line Henry Ford would have envied: parlaying the fresh meat and simple dough into hundreds of delectable pel’meni, which they then buried in the snow.  This locked in the freshness of the meat and provided an ample stockpile of food for the long Siberian winter ahead.  What does a chic yummy mummy need with this kind of fodder?

But then I thought: Susan is, after all, a mother, and mothers through the ages have known that you’ll never be stuck if you have some frozen pel’meni on hand: be they buried in the -40 degree Siberian perma-frost, or tucked in the back of your SUBZERO freezer.  So, Susan, if you can find a two-day break in your hectic life, here is your pel’meni recipe:

If you are going to go to the trouble of making pel’meni, so the Russian saying goes, you might as well make a lot.  And, take your time, because, “pel’meni ni terpyat speshki,” or pel’meni don’t tolerate rushing.  And, take a leaf from the Siberian villagers, rope in some like-minded friends, and make it a community effort.

Ingredients: 

For the dough:

3 cups of flour

1-teaspoon salt

3 whole eggs

1/3-cup warm water 

For the Filling:

250 grams of beef

250 grams of pork

1 yellow onion

1 tablespoon of salt

3 grinds of black pepper

A pinch of marjoram or spices to your taste (note: classic Siberian dumplings do not have any spice, but rely on the garnish to give the dumplings their flavor, but the Baltic version of pel’meni does include marjoram, and I think it adds much to the meat, so I include it here.)

To make the dough:  Sift together the flour and the salt in a large bowl.   Create a shallow well and add the eggs and the water into the flour.  Work the dough together and turn out on a floured surface, kneading with your hands until the dough holds together.  Cover with a bowl and leave to set for an hour.

 
 
 
 
 

To make the filling:  For ancient nomadic women, this was the labor-intensive part, as they minced the meat into tiny slivers.  I used my food processor, which took about 45 seconds.   Process the meat, onion, salt, and spices together in the food processor until smooth.  Cover and set aside.

 
 
 
 

To assemble the pel’meni: At this point, I put “pasta roller” on the list of things I wanted for Christmas, and if you have one, by all means, dust it off and use it.   I rolled my dough out with a rolling pin until very thin (no more than 2 millimeters).  Using a cookie cutter or the rim of a glass cut out circles approximately 7 cm in diameter.  Into the center of each circle, place a ball of filling.   Fold the dough circle in half over the filling, and crimp the edges together.  Then fold the crescent into half again, and pinch the two edges together to form the final dumpling.  The comprehensive web site dedicated to the history, art, and traditions, pelemeni.ru notes a time-honored tradition of sneaking a “surprise” into the last pel’meni of the batch: and the one who gets this dumpling, receives the good fortune implied by it: a small coin for wealth, sugar for love etc.

 
 
 

 To cook the pel’meni: Bring a large pot of cold, salted water to a vigorous boil.  Add a tablespoon of oil to the boiling water, and then drop the pel’meni in, one by one, taking care not to overcrowd the pot, and keeping the pel’meni from sticking to one another.   Cook for 4-6 minutes, or until the pel’meni bob up to the top of the water.  Drain.

 

To serve, garnish, and eat pel’meni:  Siberians eat pel’meni with tangy vinegar and hot mustard; Russians in the western part of Russia smother them with melted butter or sour cream.   Pel’meni are also often served in broth as a soup, in which case the cooked pel’meni are gently lowered into the hot broth, and stirred gently to warm them through, serving immediately.

 Priyatnogo Appetita!

Author’s notes:  

This article first appeared in French in La Russie d'Aujourd'hui, a supplement in Le Figaro on April 21, 2010.  A link to this article's pdf version is available by clicking on the link.

Recipe adapted from A Gift To Young Housewives by Elena Molokhovets’ and A La Russe, by Darra Goldstien.  

I'm indebted also to www.pelemeni.ru.

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Dear Reader:

Thank you for visiting my blog and reading this article.  It means a lot to me, as does your feedback.  Tell me, did you try the recipe?  Did it work?  Are you a Yummy Mummy?  And if you are, do you think this recipe would fit into your repertoire?   What other Russian classics do you challenge me to try and publish here on Dividing My Time?

Leave a comment by clicking on the comment button below, and I'll attempt it next month!

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Horse Shows: Don't Forget The Maps and The Martinis!

So, today, I'm off to a horse show, for my sins, and not just any horse show...a Dressage Show, which, as I pointed out to someone in the home improvement biz, "is beyond watching paint dry...its like watching polyurethane dry!" 

I'll be off to a horse show most weekends for the next two months, so it seems, to watch Velvet compete.  I love to watch Velvet do her thing, but this joy doesn't come without a certain amount of hardship: horse shows are deadly dull, terribly uncomfortable, and incredible time wasters unless you come prepared.  If you are like me, you don't want to get remotely involved in the back-breaking work that takes place before, during, or after the horse is ready for his or her 3 minutes in the spotlight, you are relegated to the sidelines with very little to do.

As a public service announcement, here are two lists to enable the horse show visitor to sally forth, ready for a long hard day in the field:

10 Things To Bring With You When Attending An All-Day Horse Show:

1)            Your own seating arrangement: Never, never, never go to a horse show without your own seating.  Seats at a horse show are never plentiful, and most often wildly uncomfortable.  This doesn’t bother the riders, who can’t sit down anyway because of those insane pants they have on, but if you plan to attend, invest in a comfortable folding chair with a back and, ideally, a beverage holder. Money well spent. 

2)            Your own food and drink: most of the food at a horse show is for the horses.  Riders are happy to grab the occasional tepid Diet Coke or a synthetic, re-heated pepperoni burrito, or something equally disgusting, but this doesn’t mean you have to lie down and submit to this kind of culinary terrorism.   Make a picnic, and, depending on the weather, bring a cooler with ice, or a thermos of hot soup, and, if you’re lucky enough to avoid being the designated driver, bring cocktails. While overt consumption ringside might be frowned upon, that’s why God invented the back seat of your station wagon. I always channel my inner Auntie Mame when heading out to a horse show, “Don’t forget the maps and the martinis!”

3)            Copious Reading Material: horse shows go on forever, and since your rider is only going to be on for about 7 minutes out of a 34 hour day, it’s advisable to bring a book you can sink into, or 3 weeks worth of Sunday New York Times you didn’t get round to.  Or The Yellow Pages.   Anything…

4)            Mud-proof footwear: Whatever the weather, horse shows are muddy, and nothing will piss you off like ruining a good pair of shoes, or spending the day with ooze between your toes.

5)            Clariten-D 24-hour capsules.  All kinds of crap in the air, even in January.

6)            A Black Sharpie.   This is for writing pertinent info on the back of the ribbons your child wins.   A Black Sharpie at a horse show ensures you’ll never be lonely.

7)            Hygiene facilitators: hand sanitizer, wipes, napkins, and towels.  Lots and lots of towels.  Someone always needs to towel something.
 

8)            Someone interesting to talk to.  Because, God knows, you’re not going to meet anyone there who wants to deconstruct the latest episode of Mad Men, indulge in some healthy Republican-bashing, or who finds the announcement for all the participants in “Maiden English Pleasure,” remotely funny.

  This is a picture of someone who is very interesting to talk to

9)            A fully charged cell phone and camera.   When either looses power, your boat has well and truly sunk.

10)            An exit visa: have the thing you have to get to next firmly in place, even if you’ve completely fabricated it.  Mention it frequently and loudly.   Stick to it.

10 Things You Can Do At An All-Day Horse Show to Stave Off Utter Boredom:

1)            Catch up on your chic, intellectual, lefty, liberal reading, like “The New Yorker” which, apart from being good for your soul, will also ensure that none of the horsy set bugs you.  Save “O” and “Real Simple” for plane rides. 

2)            Home Administration: Make shopping lists, make an enormous 6 page to-do list that you can later throw away, plan party menus, pay your bills, which will ensure that everyone bugs you, since they will assume you are one of the organizers.

3)            Have lengthy phone conversations with friends you haven’t seen for a while, assuming, which you should never do, that the horse show venue has cell phone coverage.

4.)            Address and sign your Christmas cards (for any year, any time of the year)

5.)            Go for a long, long, long brisk walk along the muddy muddy muddy roads surrounding the venue, which guarantees solitude, but is risky since there is never an exact time for when your rider will be “on-deck.”

6)            Knit, embroider, crochet, or any other kind of sewing project, which will ensure that the horsy moms besiege you all day long.

7)            Put in some much-needed time on that very-neglected self-improvement project, by making a list of resolutions beginning with “Reduce number of days I attend horse shows.”

8)            Write novels.  Many novels.  Like Trollope.  You’ve got the time.

9)            Read novels.  Many novels.  Like Tolstoy.  You’ve got the time.

10)            Open an alternative to the existing food concession stand, charging $10.00 per homemade muffin.  You will be able to retire in comfort to the Bahamas that evening.

 

Around the World with Beef Stroganoff

It's always fun to be in FIGARO, via Russia Beyond the Headlines, where I don't write about humor, I write about another passion - cooking.   This month I'm delving into the polyglot aspect of Beef Stroganoff.   Figaro chose not to use my carefully constructed photo essay, but rather a very odd looking version of the dish with an inexplicable wooly glove, which makes very little sense to me.  So I'll use the pictures here.   

I was surprised at how quick and easy this Russian classic can be. Special thanks to Philip and Ben who helped in the process by eating up the results.

Around the World With Beef Stroganoff

“Oh, Dad, I can’t talk long,” I said to my father when he phoned me last night.  I tucked the receiver between my shoulder and my ear and continued to stir the sauce on the stove, “I’m in the middle of testing a new Beef Stroganoff recipe for a piece I’m writing…it’s a shame you won’t be here to have it.”

My father groaned in frustration.   Like all American men in their 60s, his cardiologist has removed most of the ingredients of Beef Stroganoff permanently from his diet. 

“When your mother and I were first married,” he said longingly, “we had Beef Stroganoff at least once a week…I loved it.”  He sighed deeply, and added in disgust, “now I’m only allowed lentil soup and sea bass.” 

This got me thinking: my father was married during the height of America’s anti-communist paranoia known as the “Red Scare.”  How then, did this most Russian of dishes end up as an immensely popular favorite at dinner parties across the USA?

The answer takes us almost all the way around the world, and back to that dish’s appearance at aristocratic Russian tables in the 18^th Century.   Beef Stroganoff’s origins are clearly French, and most culinary historians, such as Darra Goldstein, author of “A Taste of Russia,” agree that it was gourmet Count Pavel Stroganoff’s renowned French chef who adapted a textbook French beef fricassee to the palate of his Russian employer by adding sour cream, and christening the dish for the Count, in the accepted tradition of the time, which married rich aristocrats with rich food: the tradition that gave us Veal Orlov, and who knows, could eventually gift us “Ravioli Abramovich” or “Goose Deripaska.”    By the mid-19^th Century, Beef Stroganoff was firmly established, holding pride of place in the 1861 first edition of the classic Russian pre-revolutionary culinary bible, “A Gift To Young Housewives,” by Elena Molokhovets.’ It made its way into L’Art Culinaire in 1891, and shortly after into Larousse Gastronomique, where it has remained. 

The 1917 Revolution scattered Russia’s nobility and their traditions around the world. From the White Russian community in Harbin, China, Beef Stroganoff was adopted by local Chinese cooks, who removed the sour cream, spiced it up, and served it over rice.  From there, the recipe was exported by American servicemen in the 1940s to the US, becoming firmly entrenched as a dinner party staple until cholesterol replaced Communism as the demon stalking America.  In America, Beef Stroganoff is served over egg noodles, which is a good idea, but the recipe was somewhat spoilt by the American passion for time-saving devices which introduced an unfortunate mix of canned cream of mushroom soup and Heinz ketchup as the sauce, rather than the original robust sour cream, mustard, tomato and sautéed mushroom combination that had so won over Count Pavel.

To rescue Beef Stroganoff, and complete the circumnavigation of the globe, we take it back to Europe, restore the original ingredients, and serve it in the traditional Russian way: to the accompaniment of sautéed potato straws and tart cucumber pickles.  Christopher Kimball in the March/April 2010 issue of Cook’s Illustrated  provided a number of helpful steps that both save time and enhance the flavor or the meat and the sauce, and a version of this recipe follows:

Ingredients:

 

600 grams of sirloin steak tips, marinated in soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce for one hour

400 grams of white mushrooms, quartered and sautéed in butter and white wine

1 tsp of dry mustard powder

1 tsp of sugar

Ground black pepper

1 tsp of vegetable oil

1 medium-sized onion chopped finely

2 tsp of tomato paste

4 tsp of unbleached flour

80 ml of white wine or dry vermouth

350 ml of beef stock

120 ml of sour cream

1 Tbls chopped parsley

To prepare:

Sauté the mushrooms in white wine and butter and set aside.

Combine the mustard powder and sugar with 2 tsp of hot water until it forms a paste

Skim a 30-inch sauté pan with the oil and heat until smoking.  Pat the marinated meat dry, and sear until   brown on both sides.  Set aside

    Add the onions, mushrooms, ground pepper and ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and brown for 5 minutes.  Then add tomato paste and flour and cook until vegetables are coated.

 Add the bouillon, wine and mustard paste.  Bring to a simmer and scrape the bottom of the skillet to loosen browned bits. 

Reduce heat and cook until sauce begins to thicken (5 minutes)

      Slice cooked sirloin diagonally, approximately 7 ml thick.

 Add meat and any juice to the sauce and cook until beef is warmed through.

  Remove the skillet from the flame and allow to cool until simmering stops.  

Add sour cream and 1 Tbls of wine.  

 Serve garnished with parsley.

 

Note: Classic Beef Stroganoff does not call for any additional spice, but I take a leaf from the Chinese cooks, and add paprika or a dash of cayenne pepper to give it a slightly more exciting flavor. Correct seasoning to your own taste.

Serve with sautéed straw potatoes and pickled cucumbers, red wine, or, as Count Pavel would:  with a shot of icy cold vodka!  Invite your father over – only don’t tell his cardiologist!

Priyatonogo Appetita!

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Dear Reader,

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this post about Beef Stroganoff.  Did you try the recipe?  I'm always interested to hear what kind of Russian food foreigners would like to learn more about, so drop me a line at [email protected] or, better still, post a comment below with your thoughts, and I'll look into it, cook it, photograph it, and Ben and Phil will oblige by eating it!

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Photos by Jennifer Eremeeva.  All rights reserved.

I packed my TUMI bags and in them I put...

 Remember that game "I packed my Grandmother's Trunk and in it I put.." where you go through the alphabet?  

Here is my version as I head off to Moscow for the next few weeks...

I packed my TUMI suitcase to return to Russia and in it I put…

Ambien CR: a three-month supply wheedled from the woman at the Pharmacy who once spent 3 months in Tomsk trying to adopt a kid.

Benadryl, in capsule form for Tancy, who I don’t think is using it to make drugs…

Contact Lenses, a scandalous waste of space, since the Moscow air is so gritty, I can only wear them for four minutes at a time.

Dandruff Shampoo for HRH: don’t be fooled…those FMCG people have one quality for the first world and another for the third.

Eileen Fisher’s washable stretch crepe pants, in basic black. Four pairs.

Five Dollar bills (500 USD worth) – for tipping in UAE, Thailand, and Sheremeytevo II airport.

Grill Cleaner from WEBER, wrapped in bubble wrap and sealed with duck tape…just in case.

Hanna Anderson clothes for Velvet…an entire year’s worth

Itsy-Bitsy Red Mini Altoids boxes, 6

Jewelry Cleaner

King-Sized medium warmth duvet, which takes up room, but saves us 900 USD by not getting it at Stockmann’s.

Love In a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford (never leave home without it).

Marshmallows (4 bags) for Velvet’s Girl Scout camp out.

Neti Pot: nasal salt sachets (400 items) for clearing sinuses four times a day.

Oven Mitts: (fireproof, extra long) from Williams Sonoma

Pantyhose/Knee-Highs: (30 pair in nude, black, and brown from Wolford).

Questions You Should Ask If You Aren’t Fulfilled, which is absolutely the last self-help book I am ever buying.

Real Simple Magazine, for contrast.

Sudafed Cold & Flu (10 packets of 24), a standing order for Sergei Bykchuk, who swears it’s the only thing that works.

Tylenol Cold & Flu: (10 packets of 24) a standing order for Tancy who swears it’s the only thing that works.

Undergarments, which support, lift and smooth. Many.

Vanilla Extract (6 bottles), which simply does not exist in Russia

Wright’s Silver Polish: (4 tubs), which, apart from being the best in the world, does not exist in Russia.

X-Files: The Complete Season 5 to give to Mike.

Yeast Infection cures: 10 packets

Zip Lock bags: 10 boxes of gallon sized, 4 boxes of assorted XL, XXL and XXXL, 4 boxes of quart sized, which simply do not exist in Russia.

The Borscht Wars

I write the monthly cooking column for La Russie D'Aujourdu'hui, where I focus on Russian classics, and the stories behind them. These columns appear originally in French, and you can find the French version under "Columns and Articles" of this blog, or at Russia Now! or Figaro

 Beautiful borscht!  The calling card of Russia: a magnificent purple soup like no other in color and taste; infinite in its manifestations, ecumenical in its ownership: served hot with potatoes in Ukraine by Orthodox Christians, and stone cold with sour cream on hot days in New York City by Jewish deli owners.    As long as you have the essential ingredient of beets, which gives the soup its stunning color and unique taste, then regardless of what else you put in – it is still borscht.   But this doesn’t stop people from passionately arguing the details.

A dramatic borscht war was waged in 1994, in preparation for a visit to Russia by Queen Elizabeth II, who graciously indicated she wished to try Russian food.   St. Petersburg was absolutely  “thrown into panic.”   A prominent European chef at the city’s only 5***** hotel slaved away on a nouvelle cuisine version of borscht:  delicately poached new beets and baby carrots in a clear, light broth, which turned a delicate pink color when homemade crème fraiche was added.  At a senior staff taste test, the Russians revolted.   Someone produced his Russian babushka from a dacha with her famous version: thick, almost gelatinous with meat, a fine film of grease adding sheen to the purple broth, redolent with garlic and dill, with chunks of salted cabbage bobbing amongst the potatoes and carrots.    The Chef threatened to quit on principle. Finally, an uneasy truce:  the babushka’s broth was strained off, and the Chef’s baby beets and carrots were added.  Or was it the other way around?  No matter, Her Majesty sent compliments to the kitchen.

There is really only one secret to good “Babushka” borscht, and here it is: a cup of “rasol” or brine, which creates the tangy and sour zing, and also locks in the signature purple color.   Be creative about your rasol: the juice from the sauerkraut will work, as will the brine from a jar of French cornishons.   If you are stuck, use 1/3 of a cup of red wine or apple vinegar.

Classic Borscht

Ingredients

4 large beets, peeled and cooked whole until tender and julienned

Water from the beets

1 large yellow onion, diced

3 garlic cloves, mashed

3 large tomatoes seeded and diced.

2 liters of beef, chicken or vegetable stock

300 grams of meat (lamb, pork, beef or a mixture of the three) cubed.

1 cup of sauerkraut, coarsely chopped

3 large carrots, julienned

1 cup of “rasol” 

Salt, pepper to taste

½ cup fresh dill

½ cup fresh parsley

Garnish

Sour cream

Chopped fresh dill and scallions

Preparation:

1.    Prepare the beets ahead of time: place peeled beets in a large pot of cold salted water and bring to a boil.   Reduce heat, cover, and let simmer until the beets are soft enough to pierce easily with a knife.   Drain beets, retaining the water and let cool completely. Julienne the beets.

2.    In a heavy-bottomed soup pot, sauté the diced onions and mashed garlic until translucent.  

3.    Add the diced and dried lamb, pork and beef, and brown gently.  

4.    Add the carrots, sauté briefly, and cook mixture covered for 10 minutes.

5.    Add the stock, a liter of the retained beet water, beets, tomatoes, and sauerkraut. Bring to a gentle boil.

6.    Simmer on low heat until the carrots are soft.

7.    Add rasol and simmer for an additional 5 minutes

8.    When ready to serve, taste, correct season and add dill and parsley

Borscht keeps for several days in the refrigerator, though it does not freeze well.  Serve in a wide soup dish, garnish with sour cream or crème fraiche, chopped dill and scallions.  

Priyatnovo Appitita!

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Dear Reader:  Thanks so much for reading this post -- it means a lot to me, as does your feedback.  If you would like to leave a comment, just click on the teeny tiny "comment" word below, and an easy-to-use pop up comment window will appear.   Thanks again!

National Cholesterol Week

     Winter in Russia is a marathon, not a sprint, and it is vital to have intermittent water stations along the way, particularly coming into the home stretch.  At this point, in marathon terms, we are roughly at mile 18, and the end is nowhere in sight.   But there are a few bright spots on the horizon, and we do best to train our focus on them: Men’s Day (February 23rd), about which more next week in my column in Russia Now!   Men’s Day, a sort of one-way Valentine’s Day, is just a warm up for the main event coming later in the Spring: International Women’s’ Day on March 8th, and I’ll be writing about that too.  

    These are secular and Soviet holidays, which, when I look at them from the point of view of a historian, I see were invented to wean Russians off the massive rush served up by Orthodox Christian Lent, which began last week.  Lent, of course, is no one’s idea of fun, but in agrarian pre-revolutionary Russia served as a handy spiritual excuse for a Spartan diet, excluding meat, dairy, oil, eggs, fish, meat, or anything else that might make life slightly more bearable, like alcohol, which taste great accompanied by only turnips and oatmeal.   The forty days that Lent covers is just that time when the staple of Russian winter stores dwindled down to the bare minimum.  Nowadays, you can get mangos and quail in aspic at any supermarket year round, but many Russians proudly go through “The Great Fast,” as a way of clawing onto some moral high ground and dropping twenty pounds in less than two months: both goals easy to achieve if you are subsisting on buckwheat porridge and cabbage soup.

    Russian culture is all about extremes, so the feast/famine cycle is inbred into the rolling cycle of the year.   Fun-filled Maslenitsa otherwise known as “National Cholesterol Week,” precedes Lent.  Maslenitsa – or “butter week” is the same thing as Mardis Gras, Shrovetide or Carnivale: a traditional gorge before the austerity of Lent begins.  Maslenitsa, which lasts a week, is a time for feasting and drinking, eating traditional pancakes or bliniy, which not only use up all of the forbidden foods, but also represent the spherical sun, central to Maslenitsa’s ancient forerunner: an early spring pagan festival heralding the end of winter and the return of the sun.

    The anti-religious campaign that characterized much of the previous century did not seem to make much of a dent in Maslenitsa – though the celebrations were less public, confined to mothers making pancakes for their children, as their mothers had made for them.  Now that religion is the new red in Russia, Maslenitsa has been reinstated with terrifying enthusiasm by the authorities, in large-scale public celebrations: open-air festivals, concerts, pancake stands on every corner – you get the idea.  My friend and colleague Evy Hua wrote a great piece on it – it was her first Maslenitsa and she got into it.  

    I’m not a fan.  I’m not pining Lent or anything (I’m not a masochist), but Maslenitsa is associated in my memory with a truly scary afternoon, getting separated from HRH and Velvet as we strolled through Moscow to try and get down to Red Square to see the public Maslenitsa celebrations, and what on earth were we thinking?  I had my large camera and telephoto lens with which I hoped to catch some of the national merriment, and I foolishly did not transfer my wallet, keys, or mobile phone into the large camera bag – not a mistake I will ever make again.  As we got down towards Red Square, we encountered the usual public holiday scene: a plethora of policemen, 

 

 backed up by raw army recruits looking baffled and angry,

  and glowering hostile senior citizens with retro-Soviet red armbands proclaiming them “Friendly volunteer.” 

 

 The temperature was hovering around freezing, it was sleeting steadily, and, as we progressed, we joined swelling crowds who were pushing, shoving, and breathing stale beer fumes on one another.   The police had blocked off the usual traffic and pedestrian routes, sending the crush of people about one and a half miles out of their way.

    “Comrades!”  One woman shouted above the din, “Turn back!  There are no bliniy on Red Square…we’ve been hoodwinked!” 

    The scene reminded me of Khodynka Field – the tragic event which tainted Nicholas II’s coronation, when hundreds of poor peasants were killed in a stampede for the traditional free beer, woefully mismanaged by the authorities.  It was also reminiscent of "Bloody Sunday," in 1905, when peaceful demonstrators marched on the Winter Palace to ask the Tsar for bread and were fired upon by the palace guards. It was like every public holiday in Russia: a dangerous place to be with menacing law enforcers everywhere, too many people and no system.  In the push and shove, I got separated from the family and couldn’t find them anywhere.   

    With no money, and no phone, I tried to find police station where I could borrow a phone.  There was no meeting point, no first aid station…nothing except thousands of policemen brusquely directing human traffic through metal detectors, flanking Red Square, where cheerful sponsorship banners from the Campbell Soup company fluttering in the breeze.

    I approached a policeman. 

 

 I had always told Velvet to do this if, God Forbid, she’d ever got lost in Moscow.  HRH had agreed, but qualified the advice by saying it was much much much better never to get lost.  This turned out to be excellent advice.

    “Can you help me?” I asked the policeman.

    He looked at me, confused, as if he’d not heard that request before.

    “Help you?” he grunted. 

    “Yes, I need some help.”

    He furrowed his eyebrows, lifted a cigarette in gloved hands, dragged deeply, blew smoke at me, and then gestured with the cigarette to another, slightly older man.

    “You must address the ‘starshiy’ (meaning literally – the elder, which also indicates a higher military rank).  I shuffled over.

    “Can you help me?” I asked him.

    “Help you?” he barked, “what do you think I can do?” asked the starshiy defensively.

    “I’m lost – separated from my family.  I don’t have a phone, and I don’t have any money.  Can I go to your precinct and phone my husband so he can come and find me.”

    “Nyet…nyet…” he said, making a shooing gesture with his sawn off Kalashnikov rifle.

    There was nothing for it.  I wasn’t, of course, lost at all, just slightly overwhelmed by the situation.   So, I walked back home, all the way around the inconveniently re-routed pedestrian traffic, trudging up Tverskaya Street, slipping and sliding on the ice, swerving to avoid groups of drunken Tadzhik migrant workers in bright orange coats, 

 

lugging my heavy camera case.  I kept my eyes down, as I walked the three miles to my apartment building.  The 300-year-old lady concierge, who provides the critical line of defense against criminal elements at our building, informed me that HRH and Velvet had not yet returned.  The phone rang, and she disappeared into her glass hut, picked up the receiver, turned her back to me and began to exchange lengthy holiday greetings with a relative.  I crossed one leg over the other, suddenly aware in the relative warmth of the entresol, that I needed the bathroom rather urgently.   She finished her conversation and turned to me in an annoyed manner.  I explained my predicament, and asked her if she could phone the Commandant (which is how you refer to the Super in Russia, can you imagine) to let me inside the apartment, she looked horrified, threw her arms out wide, wailed that the Commandant wasn’t at work 

    “Eto zhe praznik!” she stated.  “It’s a public holiday, you know!” 

    And then she told me the thing that really, in the end of the day, sums up the attitude that keeps Russia out of the WTO – that it was way outside the ‘framework of her competency’ to do a single, solitary, thing.

    This story has a happy ending.  Velvet wasn’t lost, and I turned my back on Ninel (Lenin spelt backwards – truly) Alexandrovna, and sought help from a more trusted source.  I trudged back down the stairs.  I left our courtyard and shuffled my way down a well-worn path.   I pushed open the door of our neighboring Starbucks.  Katya, the barista gave me a big smile.

    “Katya,” I gasped, crossing my legs in desperation to hold in my bladder,  

    “Could I please use your phone – I got separated from the family and I don’t have any money or my keys.”

    “Of course!” she said, proffering the store’s landline and pouring me a cup of coffee.  “On the house,” she said with her charming smile.  “For the holiday!”

    Later, I learned that the last day of Maslenitsa is called “Forgiveness Sunday,” during which everyone bows down low in front of one another and asks forgiveness of one another, so as to start Great Lent out with a clean heart and in the spirit of reconciliation and Christian love.

    So, forgive me, reader. Next week we'll find a much funnier side...

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Oh, Do You Know The Muffin Mom?

    Oh Happy Day!

      I made it!  Or rather, I made them.  The muffins.   It’s official – I’m a bona fide American Mom!

 

    Velvet’s current school, despite being a classic New England boarding school, has a group of very dedicated Moms.  To be fair, it seems to have a group of very dedicated Dads too, though, as per usual, one sees rather less of the dads, and certainly not at “Make A Muffin,” an annual tradition of bringing fresh homemade baked goods to the school for morning snack.  It is organized and executed by the Moms of current students who live close enough to the school to be there at 08:45 in the morning, complete with homemade muffins, which sounds easy, but is it?  It’s a well-oiled machine, “Make A Muffin,” and I was roped into it at a Parents’ Committee meeting, and before I knew what I was doing, I had rashly agreed to make 36 muffins.

    36 muffins is all in a day’s work for a typical American soccer Mom, but I was secretly sweating.  I had never made muffins!  You can search high and low in Russia and you won’t find anything that looks like a muffin.  Except, of course, in that place that pretends to be a BA Executive Club Lounge at Moscow’s Domeodedevo Airport, where they have these small, tight, dry, and slightly tinny-tasting muffins.   But I don’t count them as food, let alone anything as specific as a muffin.

    The world is, of course, divided into cooks and bakers, and I am definitely a cook.  I can make soup without consulting a recipe, I can, and often do, take the contents of my fridge that look like its time they saw the light of day, and make a fantastic pasta sauce from them.  I roast haunches of beef, I can dauphinoise a potato or julienne a carrot, and, thanks to Mom’s recipe book, I make the best chicken liver pate in the universe East or West of the Iron Curtain, but my track record of making baked goods is blotchy.   I worried about it, I tried to work on it, but nothing ever seemed to turn out the way the recipe suggested.  Cakes were flat, pies underdone, quiche dough refused to “set,” and my one attempt to make Yorkshire pudding made me feel that a second attempt would not time well invested.

    My friend Michelle, who went to the Cordon Bleu and can make anything, told me it wasn’t altogether my fault: there is something, and this should surprise no one who has spent time in Russia, about Russian sugar that is heavier than the sugar in the rest of the world.    She said the flour was dodgy as well.    So, I stopped worrying, and whenever someone would say, “what can I bring?” when I’d invite them over, I’d say “Oh bring a dessert,” and we’d end up with a Russian cake…which is made out of spun lard.  Looks super.  Tastes awful.

    Velvet’s school in Moscow was, I confess, uphill work.  Nominally British, it taught subjects in English to the children of the employees of Samsung, New Russians who wanted their kids to learn English, and the children of mixed marriages, like Velvet.  HRH refused to go to any school events after Velvet was 8, because it enraged him so.  This left me all alone on “international day,” when all the children were told to wear their national costumes and bring their national dish for a communal meal.  Parents were allowed – though not necessarily encouraged – to attend, and I would stand around, clinging to my friend Nora, who was the only American in the mix, trying to make polite conversation with Korean women, who nervously clutched their Louis Vuitton bags and nodded vigorously.   We all stood around with the 27 year old Russian moms doing nothing because we weren’t Scottish.  The Scots women had the monopoly on parent participation and they didn’t let anyone in the inner circle.  For her national costume and dish, Velvet diplomatically split the difference, dressing up in her Russian sarafan, the long and elegant traditional Russian folk dress, and elaborate kokoshnik, the beaded, tear-shaped head dress, which we all agreed was altogether more flattering than an Annie Oakley, Laura Ingalls Wilder, or Pocahontes outfit.  For balance, I made chocolate chip cookies, which is the only baked good item I ever managed in Moscow.  Of course, you can’t get chocolate chips in Russia, but we used M&Ms (try it) and I stuck little American flags into them, which I thought were festive, until I overheard one Scots woman, who had brought a store-bought packet of shortbread say to another, who had sent her sons to school in plaid skirts, “isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you ever saw?”    

    It was that kind of event.  Mind you, the Korean noodles were amazing, but I yearned for a more interactive kind of school: where they’d be glad to see you, with a Head Teacher who was a.) Sober, and b.) Could identify your daughter in a police line up.  A school where they’d be dying to get you on a committee even if you weren’t from Scotland.

    Be careful what you wish for!  At the current school, I had hardly got Velvet’s hardhat and boots unpacked, but I was immediately drafted onto the “Riding Committee,” which to be perfectly honest I had heard as the “Writing Committee,” and so was pleased and proud to be asked.  And then, before you know it, I had committed to sift the dry ingredients and make muffins.  

    I was cautiously optimistic, despite having always felt that muffins were kind of cupcakes with an attitude problem.   I went to Target and purchased, without any particular difficulty, two non-stick muffin tins.  This kind of retail slam dunk still leaves me breathless and giddy – time was I would have to go to three or four shops to get exactly what I wanted, and ended up with something that would do well enough.   I started to research muffin recipes, and realized that the active ingredient in most of them was buttermilk, which I had never been able to find in Russia (if any readers know – please please please let me know, only it isn’t RYAZHENKO), and this, too, seemed a good sign.  Buttermilk, I knew from my southern relations, was an agent of light and fluffy.

    I settled on lemon poppy seed for my flavor, collated different view points from cyber chefs, bought a lemon zester, and found poppy seeds at the local Stop & Shop.  I was all set to go, when I was brought up short by one of the Senior Administrators at Velvet’s school, with whom I’ve got chummy.  I was telling her all about suiting up to make the muffins.

    “You do know,” she idly threw in to the conversational batter, “that these muffins have to be bite-sized.”

    I took a hefty swig from my martini.

    “”Bite sized?” I gasped.

    “Oh yes,” she said.  “They are always bite-sized.”

    The next day I was up at dawn: making a beeline for Target, where, without any particular trouble, I acquired mini-muffin tins.  Back to the internet for more council and caution.   Back to the Cook’s Resource for mini-muffin paper thingys.    I queued up some unchallenging podcasts on the iPod and dove in to the deep end.

    Muffins, it turns out, are a synch.  They are a lot like living in America: simple, inclusive, uncomplicated, and optimistic.   I made the lemon poppy seed mini-muffins, then I made some full sized Linzer muffins, with raspberry filling, and then I rummaged in the vegetable and cheese drawers of my fridge and culled together scallion, thyme and goat cheese muffins.   Four hours later, I mixed up a fresh pitcher of martinis, collapsed in an exhausted heap, and gazed lovingly at the sheer yardage of muffins gracing my new kitchen island.   I downloaded some more muffin recipes – cheddar and jalapeno, crystallized ginger, sour cream coffee cake…

    Lord, preserve me from scrapbooking.

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Bon Appetitski

 The late and much lamented American Chef, Julia Child is enjoying a resurgence of popularity, thanks in large measure to the film “Julie and Julia,” starring Meryl Streep as Julia.   The film chronicles Julia’s (and her legions of fans always refer to her by her first name only) life in Paris in the 1950s, where she fell head over heels in love with la cuisine bourgeoisie.  Though she knew nothing about food and couldn’t speak French, Julia set out to master both, ultimately becoming America’s first and best known celebrity TV chef, on the strength of her timeless cookbook on French cuisine “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” which has re-taken its rightful place on the bestseller list, as a new generation of Americans (including my 12 year old daughter Velvet) struggle to debone ducks, find the stamina to spend three days making a classic cassoulet, and perfect the impossible art of turning eggs, butter and cheese into a lofty soufflé.  Julia’s signature ending to each of her programs was to raise a glass of good French wine, smile broadly at the audience and wish them “Bon Appétit!”  Julia was the best model of what an expat should be: adventurous, gregarious, ready to adopt the best of her adopted country and fuse it with her own culture.  

    A battered and butter-smeared version of Julia’s cookbook crossed the Atlantic with me seventeen years ago to Russia, as I set off to begin my adventures in expat living, as well as setting up fledgling housekeeping with HRH (my “horrible Russian husband.)   Taking Julia with me in 1993 was more an article of faith than a practical measure: I was to find out a lot about Russia in the ensuing years, but I was under no illusions that I would be able to locate, with ease, items such as crème fraiche, bouquet garni, or mange tout in my Moscow neighborhood.    Russia in the 1990s was no gastronomic hotspot: the currency was all over the place and food imports consisted of “Bush Legs” (dark meat of chicken) and Amaretto from Italy, which, trust me, do not work well together.    Local food stores had sketchy supplies and surly service.   The first year, in the run up to a dinner party, I would flip through the pages of Julia’s book for inspiration, only to slam it shut with frustration when she cheerfully enjoined me to “ask your butcher to butterfly your lamb leg, removing the bone.”  What butcher?   The only meat I could find was frozen, and sold by scary looking women in shops that were always about to close.

    Good food, however, is universal.   Slowly, but surely, I ran it to ground in Russia.  I scoped outrageously expensive dollar stores for diplomats and businessmen, hoarding my money to splurge on French cornishons and Modena balsamic vinegar.   I discovered Moscow’s magnificent farmers’ markets, full of pungent tarragon, basil, thyme and rosemary, sold by cheerful Azeri women with gold teeth and snapping black eyes.  I made friends with Pasha, a lamb and pork salesman from Vologda, who not only took the bone out of a leg of lamb, but actually taught me how to do it myself; and I arranged for Tanya, a stunning Ukrainian poultry farmer, to keep back double-yoked eggs and fresh chicken breasts for me each Saturday.  Velvet grew up greeting her favorite vendors with a huge smile each visit; bombarded by free samples of strawberries in season, sour pickles, and every kind of imaginable smoked fish.  

    Russia has turned me into a very confident and creative cook.  I learned to experiment, substitute and adapt, because what was written in the recipe was not always to hand.    Ukrainian “salo” (pork fat) works really well in Bouef en Daube, Russian gooseberries make outstanding American cranberry sauce, and nothing beats homemade Russian sour cream for thickening and enriching any French sauce.     Russia showed me how to celebrate what was in season, and Julia’s book is now spattered with chicken livers from every cocktail party, inestimable Russian smoked salmon, and rich and creamy Russian tvorag.

“Good Americans,” so the saying goes, “when they die, go to Paris.”  Julia was a great American, so I am sure she is there, but I think she loved the challenge and the rewards of coming to Russia with me.  I’m glad she did. 

 “Priyatnogo Appetita!”

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Author's Note:  This column first appeared in French in La Russie d'Aujourdhui and Le Figaro on November 18, 2009 under the title "Fusion Imposee," a link to the original can be found here.