Читать книгу The Soviet Diet Cookbook: exploring life, culture and history – one recipe at a time - Anna Kharzeeva - Страница 6

I remember when I took on this project hoping that all the meals I was going to make would be quick and easy. After all, one of the clearly stated reasons for creating the Book was to let women spend their time on self-education and family.

I guess the authors’ definition of “quick and easy” is different from mine – in part, no doubt, due to general laziness and the ease with which we are used to cooking these days.

The Book has recommended lists of lunch options for winter, spring, summer and fall. The Book’s introduction specifically notes that “you have to keep in mind the influence of the season.”

I chose an autumnal suggestion, as it was fall, and then a Sunday, since this was likely the only I would have time to make four – yes, four! – courses for lunch. I know that traditionally Sunday lunch in many countries was a big meal, but to me, it’s a sandwich, leftovers, or a brunch invitation from friends.

The Book instructs housewives: “before starting to make lunch, breakfast or dinner, one must estimate by what hour they should be ready, and count how long the meal will take to prepare.”

In contrast to my typical lunch, the Soviet lunch took just under two hours to make and included baked mushrooms with cheese, baked eggplant with vegetable stuffing, cream of chicken soup and the omnipresent apple kompot, which is a drink made out of fruit, berries or dried fruit, and served as juice, with some fruit at the bottom of the glass.

Here it also should be noted that my cooking time was no doubt helped by my well-equipped, enormous 9.5-square-meter kitchen. For comparison, Granny’s Soviet-era kitchen is about 4.5 square meters.

Nevertheless, in this space, she manages to cook for any number of people and also seat and feed three. The kitchen still feels palatial to her since until the 1960s she shared a kitchen with four other families in a communal apartment, a kommunalka.

“The house belonged to a merchant before the revolution,” Granny said, remembering the apartment where she lived for 27 years. “It had one-and-a-half floors, and each was turned into a separate kommunalka. There were five families in ours, including a former countess who lived in the entryway, sharing one kitchen, no fridge, one toilet and one sink. Before World War II, we used a primus stove [a kind of burner heated by compressed kerosene], and after the war we had gas stoves, which were fabulous. Our neighbor, an old lady from a village, would gasp each time she walked into the kitchen: ‘Thank you Comrade Stalin for providing us with gas!’ When we wanted to keep something cold, we would get a big bowl, fill it with cold water (the only kind there was), place a pot in it with a little bit of butter, or salami, or soup, or whatever, cover it with a cloth and put the ends of the cloth into the cold water.”

I don’t think the kind of lunch described in the book was a typical one for my grandmother. When I described the feast-like lunch to her, she said: “Wow! Amazing! We never had cream soups though – didn’t have the equipment to make them.”

Fortunately I did have the equipment to make everything and it all turned out more or less ok. I followed the Book’s recipes to the letter for the mushrooms and eggplant, and I was pleased with both of them.

The recipe for the cream of chicken soup comes from the “healthy” section of the book, which is recommended for people “malnourished after difficult diseases and surgeries.” It doesn’t specify that in the menu though, which is a shame. My recommendation: unless malnourished, don’t make it. The consistency is really strange, I don’t think chicken is meant to be turned into cream. It looks like it’s already been eaten and the flavor is pretty dull.

The recipe for kompot is also pretty standard. It’s still made frequently for schoolchildren in Russia, except that now, some moms sneak in some ginger and cinnamon to add a little extra flavor.

I enjoyed the mushrooms, eggplant and kompot, and felt like a proud Soviet housewife having made it all. But not enough to give up my regular Sunday brunch spot!

Recipes:

Stuffed eggplant:

Wash eggplants, take ends off, cut open (not to the bottom), and take seeds out with a teaspoon. After that, put eggplant into salted boiling water for five minutes, stuff with chopped vegetables or mushrooms. Put in a greased, oven-proof baking dish, cover with sour cream and bake approximately 1 hour.

Mushrooms in sour cream:

For 500 grams (about 1 lb) fresh mushrooms, use 1/2 cup sour cream, 120 grams (1/4 lb) cheese, 1 teaspoon flour, 2 tablespoons oil

Clean, wash and pour boiling water over mushrooms. Drain, chop up, salt and fry in oil. When almost fried, add a teaspoon of flour and mix, then add sour cream, boil, add grated cheese and bake.

Before serving, sprinkle mushrooms with parsley or dill. You can also bake pickled mushrooms. In this case, drain the marinade, wash and chop up the mushrooms and fry.

Continue as with fresh mushrooms.

Apple or pear kompot:

Peel apples, remove the core and cut into 6—8 pieces each. So that the apples don’t go brown, before boiling, put them into cold water with a little lemon juice. Put sugar and 2 cups hot water into a pot, then add the apples and boil on low heat for 10—15 minutes until apples are soft.

Creamed chicken soup:

100 grams chicken meat; 15 grams butter; 10 grams onion; 10 grams white root vegetables; 10 grams flour; 50 grams cream; 1/2 egg yolk; 750 grams water

Boil chicken until ready. Fry onions and root vegetables in oil with flour until yellow, add broth and boil 15—20 minutes, then strain.

Mince the chicken meat twice then add it to the broth. Mix well. Add cream mixed with egg yolk.

You can serve with white bread croutons or meat pies (pirozhki).