Читать книгу The Soviet Diet Cookbook: exploring life, culture and history – one recipe at a time - Anna Kharzeeva - Страница 8

My second Soviet breakfast was a meal with which I was very well acquainted. Every Russian kid I knew grew up on it, and I’m pretty certain all Russians have loved it at some point in their lives. It’s grechka, the ubiquitous buckwheat porridge that is served not only for breakfast but also appears as a side dish at lunch or dinner.

Buckwheat has to be sorted before cooking, and as a kid, I always had the task of picking out all the bad grains. I remember sitting at a table filled with uncooked buckwheat, talking to my mother, grandmother and brother while sifting through it – it was a bonding experience for every Soviet family.

There are many different ways of cooking buckwheat, and someone adept at a particular method will insist religiously that his or her is the only way. The Book seems to take this into consideration, suggesting several options for additions to buckwheat, including cooking it with butter, eggs, liver, mushrooms and onion or even brains.

After the buckwheat is fully cooked, you’re supposed to wrap it with blankets and leave it in a warm place for a few hours. My grandmother would often disappear into the bedroom before serving breakfast or lunch, where she would unwrap a pot of porridge that had been lovingly tucked in her bed. I remember as a child learning that it was important to check the bed for pots before settling in for a nap – it was a mistake you only made once.

In preparing my buckwheat porridge, I went for the simplest version: grechka with butter. It seems like all the ingredients for it should have easily been available in the Soviet era and yes, they were, but mainly in Moscow.

As a typical Muscovite, I tend to forget about the existence of the rest of Russia (of which I am not proud), but while my mother and grandmother are from Moscow, my dad is from Kursk, a city about 525 kilometers (325 miles) south of Moscow, reachable by overnight train.

His mother was born in Moscow, but was evacuated from the city during World War II and wasn’t able to move back, as it was very difficult to get permission to live in Moscow after the war.

The life of my dad’s parents in Kursk was quite different from that of my mom’s parents in Moscow. My Kursk grandparents couldn’t even get such basics as butter, sour cream or salami. So, my Moscow grandparents would go to the train station and bring a package of food to give to the train conductor, which the Kursk grandparents would collect on the other end.

Trains between Moscow and Kursk would leave around midnight and arrive early in the morning, so this transfer of goods naturally required quite an effort from both sides to put that piece of butter on their morning buckwheat porridge.

I can imagine my paternal grandfather on a dark winter morning taking the bus to the train station to pick up the food before going to the local university, where he taught medicine. He probably kept his butter in a fridge at work before he could take it home.

Overall, the distribution of food across the Soviet Union was appalling.

“There were tour buses full of people from other cities pretending to be interested in the Kremlin and Red Square,“Granny said. “They all came to Moscow to shop for food – salami, sausages, tea, everything. All the things they couldn’t get at home. We locals would always be annoyed at the out-of-towners snatching up the last piece of bone with a trace of meat on it in the shop.”

There was even a joke that U.S. President Jimmy Carter asked Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, “How do you distribute food in such a big country?” Brezhnev supposedly replied, “That’s easy. We just bring it all to Moscow and then the people come here and distribute it themselves.”

Another famous Soviet-era joke is about the forbidden books secretly reprinted at home – “samizdat” (which just means self-published in Russian). “Samizdat books would go around town pretty quickly. When you got your copy, you’d read it overnight,” Granny said. She remembers a friend calling her to say he had read the book and was ready to pass it on to her – but of course he couldn’t name the book, so instead he used the code word “grechka.” The conversation went something like: “Hi, so I ate the buckwheat and am now ready to give it to you.”

The grechka I made turned out nicely – although not as good as my grandmother’s: I didn’t have the time to let it steep in warm sheets. It does need a lot of butter, as otherwise it’s very dry. But it doesn’t need stirring – you can just put it in the pot with some water, close the lid and let it simmer on low heat for 15—20 minutes and use the time to read some forbidden (or not) literature.

Recipe:

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add buckwheat and cook, stirring, until thick – about 15—20 minutes. When the porridge is thick, cover tightly with a lid and remove from heat. Let sit in a warm place 3—4 hours. Add butter before serving.

For 2 cups of uncooked buckwheat, use 3 cups of water, 1 teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoons butter.

Granny’s method:

1 cup buckwheat

2—2.5 cups water (depending on how soft you want it)

30gr butter, or more to taste

Salt to taste

Sift out any bad grains by spreading the kernels evenly on a table. Heat kernels in a pan for 2—3 minutes, stirring to make sure they don’t burn. Add water, bring to boil and reduce to medium to low heat, salt and cover with a lid and leave for about 15 minutes or until all water is absorbed. Add butter. Wrap in your best blankets and leave for a few hours, or at least 30 minutes.