The river sparkled at night when the light filtered in rays of hope with golden sunlight glinting streaming across the midnight waters, and Tatiana touched the rough speckled granite with her hand and it was cool to her touch, and as she bent over the wide ledge she saw in the water the reflection of the golden spire and knew that for an instant, before the next siren, warning of the Luftwaffe bombs, she was at peace.
The Metanovs lived life loudly and to the full, though not always peaceably. They yelled, boisterously recollected, drank, put on their shoes, crowding in the narrow hallway, threw on their coats, grumbling, and rumbled down the corridor, lighting cigarettes, tying up scarves, elbowing the aunt and uncle who came to visit, pinching the cousin, pulling the fraternal hair. So loud, so crowded, so gloriously alive.
And as they lived, they ate. When there was meat, they cooked it, and when there was sugar, they baked with it. They made bread and buttery desserts, and poured cream over layers of flaky dough, piled blueberry jam onto their plates. They drank heavy black tea with lots of sugar, and it was good, and the pancakes and blinchiki were good. They bought black caviar by the kilo from Yelisey gastronome store on Nevsky Prospekt, and fried their thin, crêpe-like pancakes called blini in butter, had sour cream, hard-boiled eggs and onions as condiments on the side. Even in the village of Luga, on the shores of a river where meat was scarce, they happily ate the fish freshly caught that day. They caught the fish early in the morning or late at night and fried or boiled it, simmering the heads for soup on a Primus stove lit by kerosene. They had cucumbers from the gardens, eggs from the chickens and drank warm milk to bursting morning and night. Instead of butter they rubbed sunflower oil and salt on their black bread. They thought they had so much, had it good, all things considered. And they were right, for all too soon came 1941 and Hitler, war and winter.
Then, even dried stale bread toasted in the oven was a luxury. The Metanovs called them toast points, and ate them without caviar, without butter, without oil.
Fade, fade. Little by little they all faded.
Only one small Metanova girl remained, carrying in her soul the soups and salads, the blueberry pancakes and cabbage pies; carrying them with her to distant continents far away from the white-night canals and the troubadours, oceans carrying them away from the four-story pastel-green building built in the 1800s with the plumbing to prove it. Away from the Luftwaffe bombs. Through frozen Karelian marshes and iced-over Bothnian gulfs, through Scandinavian ports and across the North Sea she came, crawling on her belly to another world, carrying the old world within her.
Continents and oceans took long to traverse, but what separated Tatiana from the place where she once lived with her family and the place she lived now, was the blink of an eye. Blink, and there they are. As if there is just a swinging door between them. She can hear the arguing and yelling, hear the boisterous clean-up, the fiery discussions around a small table, glass falling, and laughter. The difference was: she lived. And as it turned out, that made all the difference.
The boy they had made in the old world came with her into the new, carrying on his little shoulders the weight of generations of Metanovs and Barringtons. The recipes came with her. And something else too: the inextinguishable love she felt for one man.
Together out of the ashes of despair, Tatiana and Alexander’s son clawed out a new life, tried to build another family of just two where once there had been twenty. And in this life, in time, the old recipes were supplanted by the new. Tatiana carried Russia inside her, but other immigrants carried Italy, Indochina, and India. Thus, next to meat pirozhki in her repertoire appeared a risotto and curry, and later sauces from Naples and challah bread from Germany.
The poetry came with her, too, words painted like rivers by Osip Mandelshtam and Anna Akhmatova. I’ve come back to my city, wrote Mandelshtam, eight years before he was silenced for good. These are my own old tears, my own little veins, the swollen glands of my childhood …
And Akhmatova, Leningrad’s poet laureate, prayed in verse: O Lord, help me to live through this night—I’m in terror for my life, your slave: To live in Petersburg is to sleep in a grave.
The bread of life. Flour, water, salt, sugar; milk, eggs, yeast, butter. A complete food, bread.
“Darling, what can I make you?”
“I’m full, Tania.”
“You haven’t eaten since lunch. You must be hungry.”
“Lunch was barely two hours ago, and we’ve had a kilo of blueberries since then.”
“Maybe some tomatoes with bread?”
“No, thank you.”
“I have some cold potatoes from yesterday. I can make salad Olivier—well, salad Olivier without the eggs. Or the kolbasa. Or pickles. Or peas. Just a little potato salad with onion—and a piece of bread?”
“Funny, but no, thank you.”
“Some blueberry jam with bread?”
“I’m sick to death of blueberries.”
“I have salted fish. Would you like some fish between two hunks of bread?”
“Tatia …”
“Some cucumbers with tomatoes and onions and salt? With black bread?”
“Come here.”
She came.
He draped his big arms around her, pulling her down on his lap. “I will have,” Alexander said, “a big hunk of black bread, dipped in sunflower oil and rubbed with salt.” He didn’t let her jump up. “I will get it. Okay? You sit, you jumping bean. I’ll be right back.”
Tatiana sat and waited for him on the bench, a moment, two. Then got up and went inside the hut after him. The door closed behind her.
The bread of life. Oat flour, linseed oil. Water, glue, cardboard. A complete food, bread. Take, eat.
She tried to scrape off the ice with her nail so she could see out the window, it was noon and there was a bit of sunshine now. If only she could scrape off the ice, some of the hour-long daylight would filter through the pane. Her nail broke as she tried. Not just the top of her nail, no, her whole nail slid off her finger as if it were nothing but a piece of loose skin. There wasn’t even blood in its place. She studied it in the dim light. My body is falling off me, she thought. There will be nothing left for him when he comes back next. If he comes back next.
She reminisced of the years before, the late thirties, when there was flour, milk, and yeast, all taken for granted as she lived, went to school and ran around in Luga. They ate bread and never thought about it, almost like breathing, and suddenly here they were, thinking about something so fundamental as bread. They made all sorts of deals with themselves as people in despair do. Please, if you give me bread now, I promise I’ll never take it for granted again. I’ll never leave a crumb of food on my plate, I’ll never take more than I can eat, I’ll treasure bread, every hunk of it, just … give me some now. Please. I’m hungry. Feed me. Please.
Who were they praying to in the blizzard days of 1941? Who were they hoping would intercede on their behalf? Many of them never prayed. This just goes to show you, they said. This is what we always believed, and this just proves it. We are all alone, as we suspected. Look what’s happening to us in this godless world.
Still they dreamed of a better life where they could make bread and rejoice in it. Please, o Lord, feed me.
“Dasha,” Tatiana said. “Why is there something so comforting about bread?”
“This bread?” Dasha couldn’t believe it. “This isn’t bread.”
“No, not this bread. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“So what are you talking about?” Dasha was in no mood to discuss the various merits and demerits. She was soundlessly counting down from a hundred, three times in a row, before she allowed herself to give in and have the last piece of her sawdust bread at five o’clock in the evening, instead of at seven.
Tatiana stopped talking. There was something about bread that transcended cultures and values and time. This became clear only when the bread was gone. From bagels and brioches, crumpets and croissants, from sourdough bread and French baguettes, to won-tons and dumplings—not to mention sweet pastries, pies and pancakes.
To go without was unthinkable.
And yet, here they were. Without.
“Let’s eat the bread, Dasha,” said Tatiana.
“It’s not even five.”
“I know. I’ll get more tomorrow morning. Or maybe Alexander will come back late tonight, bring us something. Let’s eat.”
She broke the cube of bread, the size of half a deck of cards, broke it in half, then in quarters, and bowed her head. A complete food, bread. Flour, water, salt, sugar; milk, eggs, yeast, butter. A complete food, bread.
Butter, for greasing
3 teaspoons dried yeast
7 teaspoons sugar
3 tablespoons warm water
4 cups (500g) all-purpose (plain) flour, sifted or 3¾ cups (450g) bread flour, sifted, about a pound of flour
1 teaspoon salt
1¼ cups (275ml) milk, boiled and cooled to warm
2 eggs
⅓ cup (75g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled to warm
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon melted butter
Butter a mixing bowl.
Prove the yeast: stir it with ½ teaspoon sugar and 3 tablespoons warm water in a small cup and place under heat lamp for 10 minutes, or let stand in bowl of warm water for 10–15 minutes.
Meanwhile, in the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the flour, salt, and remaining sugar, then add the risen yeast and the warm milk, and beat with the standard beater attachment for 1–2 minutes on low. Add the eggs and beat for 1 minute more. Add the butter and continue to beat for another minute on low, then change the attachment to a dough hook and beat on medium for 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and comes off the beater as soon as you turn it off. Remove from the bowl and knead by hand 3–4 times. If it peels easily off your hands, it’s ready to rise. If it’s still sticky, put back in the bowl, and beat for 2 minutes more, or knead by hand for 3–4 minutes, and test again.
Roll the dough in the buttered dish so that it’s coated with butter on all sides. Cover with a clean dish towel (tea towel), and let rise in a dark, warm place (80°F/27°C) for an hour until doubled in size. Lift the dough 1 foot out of the bowl and let it fall. Repeat. Then re-cover and let rise again for a half hour in the same place, until doubled in size.
On a floured board, roll out the dough with your hands to elongate it. Cut into thirds. Roll each piece with your hands until it resembles a rope about 15–18 in (37.5–45cm) long. Attach the three strands of dough at the top by twisting them slightly, then braid the rest, and twist-tie the bottom the same way as the top. Cover and let rise another hour. Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Grease a cookie sheet.
Prepare a glaze: 1 egg yolk, a tablespoon of melted butter, a tablespoon of water. Mix well.
Uncover the bread, place on prepared cookie sheet, brush with glaze, let stand a couple of minutes, and bake for 40 minutes until the bread is rich golden in color. Let cool for 30 minutes before slicing.
That is what Tatiana dreamed of in darkness. But this is what she made:
She took the scraps from stale bread and toasted them for two hours in a 250°F (120°C) oven until the bread was all dried out. When it cooled, she transferred the toast into canvas bags, tied them and kept them in a safe place, allowing her family to take one or two scraps from the bag after all the other bread was gone and all the rye flour was gone.
Soon the toast points were gone, too.
Other bread products she dreamed about while down on the floor breathing in the heady fumes of dried toast: pie crusts, pirozhki pastry, shortbread pastry. Others: pancakes, thin, thick, buttermilk. Dumplings: bread filled with meat and boiled. And still others: cookies, Napoleons. Then the king of them all: bread pudding—just bread, bread, and more bread covered with butter and milk, sugar and eggs. The antithesis to the blockade, to the siege, to war, to toast points. Too much of all the good things. But mostly, bread.
When making this, prepare the dough with one hand while holding a copy of Aleksandr Pushkin’s book of poetry in the other. The pie just won’t taste the same without Pushkin’s conflicted contemplations on sacrifice and civilization in his epic poem, “The Bronze Horseman”.
The first time Tatiana made cabbage pie, in August 1941, she made it without a copy of Pushkin’s book. She was too busy trying to add enough onion to the meat to fill one pie to feed her hungry family. There wasn’t enough. She had to barter with the woman next door, a suspicious sort who always thought Tatiana was up to no good. But she managed to convince Zhanna to give her a cabbage, for which Tatiana would give her a quarter of the finished pie. So, that evening she made her meat pie mostly with cabbage. Cabbage, onions, and a little meat. It was good. It was all gone. What they didn’t know then: that was the last meat and the last cabbage the Metanovs would lay their eyes on.
In the dead of winter, saved by a diminished but unvanquished Alexander, Tatiana had managed to claw her way out of Leningrad, out to the Ural Mountains. And under unrestrained bombing, spring came to a diminished but unvanquished Leningrad. It was too late for the Metanovs, but this time, the other Leningraders prepared for the worst. What if the blockade wasn’t broken by next winter? Onions, potatoes, turnips, cabbage were hearty things that grew with ease in the earth. The citizens planted them in the shallow squares and gardens in the middle of their city, and along their canals and rivers and next winter, when the blockade was still not broken, they had more food.
And in Lazarevo, their place in the sun, there was cabbage, and marriage, and Alexander was content to eat the pie his young wife made him, teasingly lamenting her lack of interest in fishing. He would have preferred stuffed cabbage, the unlazy brother of lazy cabbage, but stuffed cabbage required it be stuffed with something like meat, and there was none. Or rice. So instead they ate Tatiana’s cabbage pie by the banks of the Kama River, quoted Pushkin to each other, argued about his not-so-hidden meanings, and privately dreamt of an impossible future, where perhaps cabbage with meat might be possible.
Little did they know that the impossible future indeed would come, in another life, but with two people so changed, that though he ate meat, he could never touch cabbage again despite being given a second chance at life, and she, though she ate everything, could not stop trudging to a hospital fifty hours a week to heal the unhealed, to save the unsaved.
This is an all-purpose pie crust, good for places where there is refrigeration. So if you live in a place where there’s refrigeration, this one’s for you.
The key is cold butter, cold shortening, cold egg, ice water. Because we have creature comforts like Ziploc bags, you can chill the flour mixed with the salt in a Ziploc bag. To make the butter as cold as possible, cube it and put it in the freezer for an hour before adding to the flour.
During the coldest Leningrad winters, Tatiana’s grandmother made this recipe by hand without a refrigerator. She put the butter and the flour on the windowsill to freeze. And, as she had no Ziploc bags, she used wax paper.
This will be enough for two round 9-in (23cm) pie crusts.
3 cups (400g) all-purpose (plain) flour plus extra for dusting
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
2 sticks (225g) unsalted butter, frozen, plus extra, unfrozen, for greasing
2 tablespoons shortening, chilled
1 egg, cold ( you can omit the egg if you wish. The Russians like the egg.)
½ cup (125ml) ice water
3 teaspoons cider vinegar
Place flour and salt inside bowl of food processor. Take the butter out of the freezer and shortening out of the fridge, slice with a sharp knife, add to the flour, and pulse for 10–20 seconds, until the butter mixes with the flour and looks like small ground peas or coarse oatmeal. Beat the cold egg and add to the mix. Add ¼ cup (55ml) ice water and pulse again for a few seconds, until mixture becomes more like pastry, and forms a solid ball. Add the rest of the ice water and the vinegar, and pulse for a few seconds more until all the water and egg is absorbed and the dough holds together. Don’t overpulse, you’ll toughen the dough. On a cool, lightly floured surface, divide the dough in two and form two flat cakes, like thick plates or shot putter discs. Cover each with plastic wrap (clingfilm) and refrigerate at least 2 hours.
Though there was no ice water or Western-style shortening, this is the one Tatiana made in Lazarevo when she made cabbage pie for Alexander. She used lard. She placed flour into a bowl, made a cavity in the center, dropped the lard inside, and chopped it with two knives. When the dough was crumbly, she added cold water from the river, mixed, and then formed the dough into two balls, wrapped them and placed on a window sill in the early morning when it was cold. The food processor and a freezer takes out the guesswork, and shortening greatly improves the quality of the pastry, but the point is, you can make it by hand too, if you live in a remote summer village with no refrigeration and want your beloved to be your friend.
2 cups (250g) all-purpose (plain) flour
2 sticks (225g) shortening, chilled
½ cup (125ml) ice water
Pulse flour and margarine in a food processor until just crumbly. Place this mixture in a large bowl, add ice water and use a pastry blender to form a dough. Don’t use your hands, they’ll warm the dough. When the ice water has been blended through, form into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate as long as possible, preferably overnight.
4–5 tablespoons butter, plus extra for greasing
1 onion, finely chopped
1 cabbage, shredded
salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup (165g) cooked white rice if you have it.
By all means, if you have meat, include 1 cup cooked and salted ground sirloin. And it goes without saying, if you have bacon, add crisp-fried and chopped-up bacon.
Melt butter in a large heavy-bottom frying pan. Add onion, cook on medium till golden. Add cabbage, turn up heat to medium-high, cook until cabbage softens. Reduce heat, continue sautéing for 10–15 minutes, stirring frequently, until cabbage is fried golden and soft. Add rice, meat or bacon if you’re using it, mix, cook for a few minutes, turn off the heat.
butter, for greasing
flour, for dusting
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons water
Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Grease and flour a 9-in (23cm) pie dish. Take one disc of pie crust 1 out of the fridge, roll out on a lightly floured surface into a 12-in (30cm) round, and press into the prepared pie dish. Pile the cabbage filling into the pastry, heaping it slightly in the middle. Roll out the other half of the pastry into a 12-in (30cm) round. Cover the pie and press tightly all around with your fingers to seal the edges. Brush with a yolk/butter/water glaze. Cut a 2-in (5cm) cross in the middle, place on the bottom oven rack, and bake for 45 minutes until golden brown on top. Serve with soup.
“Oh, Babushka, what are you making?” Tatiana squealed.
“What does it look like?” Babushka Anna barked, sweaty and frustrated with her task.
Tatiana looked. There were mushrooms and onions in the pot. It could be any one of a dozen things. She had to be careful not to undermine Babushka’s efforts. She could say one wrong word and …
“My favorite—mushroom pirozhki?” Bite-sized pies with meat.
“Pirozhki? In the summertime? You’ve lost your mind!”
“Alexander and Dimitri are coming to dinner,” Tatiana said. “They’d love some pirozhki.”
“This is not a restaurant. They’ll eat what they’re given and be grateful for it. You want to stand here two hours and help me make pirozhki? Ah. I didn’t think so. Now leave my kitchen and stop bothering me. Help your mother set for dinner.”
Sighing, Tatiana left, noting that she had not gotten an answer to her simple question: “Babushka, what are you making?”
Not pirozhki, that was for sure.
2½ lb (1.15kg) fresh mushrooms
2 large yellow or brown onions, very finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, very finely chopped
2 slices rye bread with or without caraway seeds, or 1 cup (165g) cooked white rice. Or both.
salt and pepper, to taste
oil and butter, for frying
Optional:
3–6 tablespoons very finely chopped fresh dill. (Dill has a strong taste. If you love it like the Russians do, by all means use it.)
1 egg yolk 1
tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons water
Wash the mushrooms thoroughly. Pat them dry and chop finely. Sauté in an oil and butter mixture, in four batches so they don’t steam. Place mushrooms in mixing bowl while you sauté the onions in a little butter until golden. Add garlic, sauté for 20–30 seconds more. Return mushrooms to the frying pan, reduce heat and cook for another 5–7 minutes until the liquid has evaporated. Take off heat, cool slightly. Your pirog is now ready to be assembled.
Remove the crusts from the rye bread and pulse bread in a food processor until it forms fine crumbs. In a medium bowl combine the breadcrumbs, cooked white rice and the mushroom mixture. Mix well.
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). Grease a cookie sheet.
On a floured board roll out the dough into a rectangle 13 × 18 in (32.5×45cm). Place onto the cookie sheet. Arrange the mushroom mixture lengthwise down the middle of the pastry. Fold the edges over the top, and seal well, moistening your fingers with milk and pressing the seal closed. Brush with the yolk, butter and water glaze. Bake for 40–50 minutes until golden.
Pirozhki: little balls of yeast dough wrapped around a meat filling and baked in an oven until golden and crispy.
Many times, Babushka Anna tried to teach Tania how to make these pirozhki before the war, before even any intimation of war. To say Tatiana had no interest would be like saying a pine tree had no interest. Her curiosity extended only to science experiments. If she put in three cups of flour instead of two, what would happen to the pirozhki? If she put in four cups of sugar instead of one, what would happen to the dough? What about if she made the filling with just onion? Onion pirozhki! Now that was funny to Tatiana. No one else thought so. She got sent to bed, Babushka and Dasha made the pirozhki, and another year passed, and another. And then war came.
And now the sisters were lying in bed under the covers, whispering, shivering, waiting for Alexander to come. There was no heat, no light, no food. Everyone else was gone.
“Tania, what are you suddenly so upset about? Like you have anything to be upset about. What’s wrong with you?”
Tatiana was mouthing the words, trying to get them out, trying to find the voice.
“What?”
“Dasha … why didn’t I learn how to make pirozhki when Babushka tried to teach me?”
“Because you didn’t care.”
“That’s right. But now she’s gone, and I don’t know how to make it.”
“Tania, I hate to point out the obvious,” said Dasha, “but I think we have bigger problems than you not knowing how to make pirozhki.”
“A minute ago you said I had nothing to worry about.”
“Certainly not this!”
“Tell me how to make it, Dashenka, milaya,” whispered Tatiana.
“That’s what you want to talk about? Making pirozhki? Pastry with meat?”
“What do you want to talk about?”
And as heavily as she could muster under the scratchy woolen blankets, Dasha sighed and rolled her head from side to side to show her exasperation at her impossible sister.
2 teaspoons dried yeast
4 teaspoons sugar
⅔ cup (150ml) lukewarm milk
1 cup (225g) butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1 egg, beaten
3½ cups (450g) all-purpose (plain) flour
¾ teaspoon salt (if you’re using salted butter, reduce salt to ½ teaspoon)
Combine yeast and sugar in a large bowl, blend in milk, let stand 5–10 minutes until frothy.
Pour in butter and egg, beat with a wooden spoon.
Sift in flour in several batches, stir well. Knead dough for at least 10 minutes on a floured surface until soft and smooth. At first it will be lumpy. Keep going. Get comfortable, look at it as great exercise for your arms and knead away until it becomes like elastic.
Shape into a ball, cover lightly, let stand in a dark place 15–90 minutes. You don’t have to let it rise for 90 minutes. It’ll taste great even after 15 minutes of rising. You can make the dough first and while it’s rising, prepare your filling. But, if the dark place you choose is the inside of your oven, don’t forget to remove the dough before preheating the oven to 425°F (220°C). (Tatiana says this as someone who speaks from bitter experience.) You can make the pirozhki either with a mushroom filling (recipe below), or with the meat filling here.
It’s hard to go wrong with this pastry recipe; it’s forgiving of all mistakes.
20oz (570g) fresh mushrooms
1 large yellow or brown onion, very finely chopped
1 garlic clove, very finely chopped
1 slice rye bread
½ cup (80g) cooked white rice
salt and pepper, to taste
oil and butter, for frying
Optional:
4 tablespoons very finely chopped dill
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons water
Wash the mushrooms thoroughly. Pat dry, and chop finely. Sauté in an oil and butter mixture, in four batches to let the steam evaporate. Set aside while you sauté the onions in a little butter until golden. Add garlic, sauté for 20–30 seconds more. Return mushrooms to the frying pan, reduce heat and cook for another 5–7 minutes until the liquid is gone. Take off heat, cool slightly.
Remove the crusts from the rye bread and pulse bread in a food processor until it forms fine crumbs. In a medium bowl combine the breadcrumbs, cooked white rice and the mushroom mixture. Mix well.
While nearly a pound of flour sounds like a lot it’s not really that much. This recipe will make you two cookie sheets of pirozhki, if you make them small, possibly sixty in all.
Preheat oven to 425°F (220°C). Lightly grease cookie sheets. Break dough into pieces, roll thinly, cut with a cookie (biscuit) cutter or with a glass into 2½in (6cm) rounds. Spoon a teaspoon of filling on one-half of the round, brush the inside with a little milk, fold over, pinch with your fingers to close tightly, or use a fork dipped in milk. Arrange on the cookie sheets. In a small bowl, combine an egg yolk, 2 tablespoons water, and 1 tablespoon melted butter, and brush the pirozhki with the yolk glaze. It will make the pirozhki golden, shiny and buttery. Bake 17 minutes, check after 15. Enjoy. With soup. To warm up, you can wrap the pirozhki in a paper towel and nuke (microwave) for 10–15 seconds per pirozhok (singular); be careful not to overheat, easy to do. The microwave will make the dough soft.
Babushka Anna was not as patient as Babushka Maya, that is to say, not at all. In July of 1941 she was making soup after standing in line for beef bone and being lucky enough to get one with some meat on it.
Tatiana walked into the kitchen, but she wasn’t bubbly tonight. “Are you making blinchiki, Babushka?” she asked tiredly.
“I might, sunshine. If you help me, I might. What say you?”
“I think I’ll be fine with just the soup,” said Tatiana.
“I’m not asking you to make them, God forbid, Tatiana Metanova!” boomed Babushka. “Just to help me.”
Oh, how Tatiana regretted asking. To come into the kitchen and to ask the cook what she was making, why that was simple politeness. To walk by would have been rude. And yet …
Anton, her friend, had asked her to go to the roof tonight. She had just worked ten hours at Kirov, making flamethrowers; she still smelled of nitroglycerin. She had also walked four kilometers with Alexander by her side before he finally saw she was exhausted and they caught a tram back home.
“Okay,” said Tatiana. “What do you want me to do?” It was said in the tone of one saying, “Would you like me to pick up these twenty bricks and walk twenty kilometers with them in bare feet over rusty nails?”
“That’s the spirit,” said Babushka. “First, let’s make the batter. Because it’s got to rest while we make the meat filling.”
“OK.” She wished she could rest.
“Go get me some rice.” “Can you take the meat off the bone and put it through the meat grinder?” “Can you chop an onion?” “Tatiana! What are you doing? You’re holding that knife as if you’ve never chopped an onion before.”
“Um—I’ve never chopped an onion before.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Here. Give me that.”
Tatiana gave her that—gladly. She boiled some eggs, watched the water boil, and the rice simmer. She ground the meat, twice—both times badly. Anton was already on the roof. She hadn’t even changed from work yet. And was she mistaken, or did Alexander, as he was reaching over to grab the strap on the tram, let his hand slow down as it was traveling past her hair? It almost seemed like he was—
“Tania! Are you paying attention? Look—the rice is burning at the bottom. You had one thing to do, and you can’t even watch the rice?”
Tatiana tried to separate the eggs but couldn’t, running through three precious eggs in the process. Babushka’s loud imprecations made it impossible for Tatiana to daydream effectively, but when her hands were dry, she did touch the back of her head, to see how her hair might feel to someone who perhaps wanted to linger on it a moment or two.
When they were making the thin pancakes, Tatiana was unable to flip them over. They were too thin. They kept breaking.
“Tatiana.” Her grandmother spoke slowly, as if controlling the imminent implosion. “We have enough batter for twenty-four blinchiki. No more, no less. If you ruin three blinchiki, we will only make twenty-one. Who’s going to have three fewer blinchiki because your head is in the clouds?”
“I guess me, Babushka.”
After they cooked the pancakes, Tatiana had to assemble them, put meat filling inside each one and fold it over. That took another half hour.
“Are we done?” she said. She was too tired now even for daydreaming.
“Go away,” said Babushka. “I still have to fry them. You go away. I can see you’re not up to this. Go set the table.”
Tatiana went, set the table. But by the time the blinchiki were ready, just fifteen minutes later, she had fallen asleep, in all her clothes, on top of her bed. No one woke her, and the next morning when she got up to go to work, all the blinchiki were gone.
I will never make these as long as I live, Tatiana said to herself. I’d rather make bullets and tanks all day.
But they were her favorite food. They were everyone’s favorite comfort food. Blini without yeast: French crêpes into which you spoon a meat filling, traditionally made to accompany beef bouillon, with ground meat from the soup.
To make blinchiki is a labor of love. To make twenty-four takes Tatiana two hours. If Tatiana is also making soup, or doubling the recipe, it takes even longer. Blinchiki are a special-occasion-only king of meals. But maybe worth it if you’re trying to get the man you love to love you back, or perhaps if you want to tell him you’re pregnant. Or perhaps when your firstborn child is nominated to become Chairman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Make them once, feed your family, and then decide if they’re worth it.
(for 24)
2 eggs, separated
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3 cups (675ml) milk
2 cups (250g) all-purpose (plain) flour
In a stand mixer, process the yolks with the salt and sugar. Then beat in the butter. Alternate adding the flour and milk to the batter, then leave the mixer on for 10 minutes. This makes the batter very smooth, like heavy cream, and the blinchiki come out tender when cooked. Cover and let rest for an hour while you prepare the meat filling, or your soup, or both.
1 cup (165g) cooked white rice, add a little extra butter to the rice
2 hard-boiled eggs, cooled
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
1¼lb (570g) ground beef sirloin
salt and pepper, to taste
A couple of teaspoons of chicken stock if you have it on hand, or light cream if you don’t, or both if you feel like it. It’s all good.
In a large frying pan, fry the onion on medium-high in a little butter until lightly golden. Add the ground beef, fry on medium-high, until cooked through. Lower heat. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add the cooked rice, mix thoroughly, continue cooking on low, for 5–10 more minutes, adjust seasonings.
In two batches, add the meat filling into the bowl of your food processor fitted with a standard blade, add the chicken stock and/or light cream, add the eggs one at a time, replace cover and pulse carefully, maybe 3–4 times. Do not overpulse, or you will be eating pâté on crackers instead of a chunky, uniform meat filling.
Preheat an 8-in (20cm) non-stick frying pan on medium, grease with a little butter. Tatiana learned how to grease her pans from the Russians—they cut a raw potato in half, dip the potato in a little melted butter and rub it over the pan. This method greases the pan just enough and no more.
Pour a small ladleful of batter into the pan and swirl around to spread evenly. Cook for 30 seconds or so. Flip the pancake and cook for 10–15 seconds, until just barely set, then lightly and carefully slide out onto a wooden board, the more cooked side up.
Grease and pour another ladleful onto the frying pan. While the second pancake is cooking, assemble the one on the wooden board. Put a tablespoonful of filling in the middle and fold it over four times like a present. Place the assembled blinchik (singular) on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil or wax paper. Don’t forget about your cooking pancake. It’s ready to be turned out.
Continue in this fashion, until all the blinchiki are cooked and assembled.
One caveat: be careful not to talk, to turn away from the stove, to get a drink, to yell at the kids, to use the facilities, to change the CD in the player, and especially not to answer the phone. There is not a second for mistakes, and no extra batter to spare. You’ve slaved over a hot stove too long and too hard to chat with your girlfriends now. Don’t think you can leave the frying pan empty while you attend to your other life either. If you leave the pan empty, it will get too hot and burn your next pancake. If you turn it off, it will get too cold and your next pancake will be glue. Perfection demands attention.
You’re almost done. After the blinchiki are on cookie sheets like little packages, get out a few more frying pans, and prepare to fry the blinchiki. Heat the pans to medium, perhaps even medium-high, for 2–3 minutes. Add a few tablespoons butter. Make sure the butter sizzles but does not burn; the blinchiki will taste horrible cooked in burned butter. If this should happen wipe the pans clean and start again. Fill the pans with the blinchiki, and cook for a minute until golden and crisp on the bottom. Brush a little melted butter on top of each one right before you flip them over so the topside can get golden crisp. Flip, lower the heat, and cook for 2–3 minutes longer.
Set your crisp golden blinchiki on large plates and serve immediately, with soup or with a light tomato and cucumber salad, and a little sour cream on the side if you wish. Tak vkysno! So delicious!
What’s for dessert?
“You know what I feel like right now?” The girls were lying in their bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was night.
“What?” It was winter.
“Napoleon. Babushka’s Napoleon. God, it’s so delicious. That’s what I want.” There was snow outside. A moon perhaps—or flares from rockets? The flash of blue light reflected the snow into the windows, allowed them to see the contours of things: dressers, chairs, cracks in the ceiling, barely breathing mouths.
“Did you hear me, Dasha? I feel like Napoleon.”
Dasha paused. She was mulling. Silent. Then she said, “Funny, but you don’t look like Napoleon.”
“Oh, hah. Tell me how to make it.”
“I told you last week.”
“Tell me again.”
Sigh. “It’s so delicious, isn’t it, but such a fuss to make,” said Dasha. “Six layers of flaky dough with pastry cream in between. So much work. Babushka made it only on New Year’s.”
“If it had been up to her, she would have cooked only on New Year’s. Babushka thought everything was such a fuss to make. Every single thing.”
“Easy for you to say. You never made anything.”
Tataina had to defend herself. “I cooked some things in August.”
“You call that cooking?” But Dasha said that mildly. She had no fight in her. “You were always such a naughty girl.” It was said with tenderness. “Every New Year’s Babushka made Napoleon and would put it covered on the dining table for the cream to soak through, you would tip-toe down in the night, and eat a dozen squares, readjusting it so no one would notice.”
“If no one noticed, then why did you holler at me?”
“Well, you did eat a third of the family Napoleon all by yourself!”
“It was so good.”
“Yes.” They fell silent. “What day do you think it is?” Dasha asked.
“I don’t know. Late December sometime.”
“Yes, but when?”
“I don’t know. Very late December. Why do you ask?”
“I’m wondering if New Year’s is coming up. New Year’s Eve, 1941.”
Tatiana stared at the ceiling, as if expecting to find the answers there. “You want some Napoleon, Dasha?” she whispered.
“Yes, Tanechka. It’s a good dessert to make for a feast, to celebrate. Alexander used to like sweet things.”
“Yes,” said Tatiana, still staring upward. “Maybe we already missed it.”
4 sticks (450g) unsalted butter, softened
1lb (450g) all-purpose (plain) flour
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, chilled
¼ cup (55ml) ice water
3 large egg yolks
Cream the softened butter for 1–2 minutes in an electric mixer. Add flour and beat on low speed for 1–2 minutes. Add lemon juice and ice water to the mixture. Add egg yolks. Replace beater with a dough hook, and beat for 2–3 minutes on medium. Shape into a large ball, cover with plastic wrap (clingfilm) and refrigerate for at least an hour. While it’s refrigerating, make the custard.
1 quart (900ml) half-and-half, or 1 part cream and 2 parts milk
2 vanilla beans, split lengthwise, seeds scraped out
7 egg yolks
1¼ cups (250g) sugar
5 tablespoons butter, plus 8 more tablespoons
5 tablespoons all-purpose (plain) flour
¼ cup (50g) butter
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Heat the half-and-half with the vanilla beans and their seeds until bubbles just start to form. Take off heat, let stand while the half-and-half infuses with the vanilla.
Meanwhile, in an electric mixer with the balloon attachment beat the yolks and sugar for 10 minutes. Turn the speed to low. Remove the vanilla beans from the half-and-half and slowly add the liquid to the egg mixture. Or stir in with a hand-held whisk, until fully blended.
In a 3-quart (2.7-liter) saucepan, melt 5 tablespoons of butter and add the flour, stirring constantly for 3–4 minutes until it forms a roux paste. Slowly add the custard, stirring constantly on medium-low heat, until the mixture comes to a boil. Custard will be thick by now. Simmer for a minute or two, stirring occasionally, then take off heat. When it’s cooled down to about 170°F (77°C), add the remaining 8 tablespoons of butter stirring until fully melted. Add vanilla extract, stir, cool, and refrigerate before use.
Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). Separate dough into 6 even-sized balls, cover each one, and refrigerate those you’re not using. On a floured board, roll out one ball into a rectangle about 9 × 13 in (23 × 32.5cm) and ⅛ in (3mm) thick. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 10 minutes until pale yellow. Do not overbake. Remove to a piece of wax paper, let cool. Continue in this way until all six layers are baked, stacking them one on top of another, separated by wax paper.
Reserve one for crumbling on top of the Napoleon. Take the best, strongest layer, place it on a rectangular board covered with wax paper, and with a spatula spread a layer of cream on top. Place another pastry layer on top, spread with more cream. Continue until all the cream is gone and five layers are used. Crumble the sixth layer into small crumbs, and sprinkle on top of the cake. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight, so the pastry has a chance to absorb some of the cream. Keep refrigerated. It keeps and cuts very well, and is wonderful with morning coffee. Or tea, like the Russians do.
Just like that, from one life to another. Barely even a breath. Just a struggle, a collapsed lung, tuberculosis, a nighttime burial, and unconsciousness for four months. Then suddenly, it’s spring again, and there is a little black bread, the cows are giving milk, there are fish in the water and canned pickles from the summer before. Soon there will be potatoes. When it rains there are mushrooms in the woods, and with some fried onion she can make something hearty, like potatoes and mushrooms. Then one more breath, and a grimy man in an officer’s uniform with a rifle slung on his back walks incongruously down the dusty road, looking for her in Lazarevo.
And there is only breathlessness between running to him and standing in a church, waiting for the priest to marry them. The iconostas is in front of her. The church smells of incense. It’s quiet, not even her breathing breaks the silence. All that echoes in her heart, besides dread fear for the future, are his words. “Tatiana, will you marry me? Will you be my wife?”
“I’m hungry,” he whispers, before the priest arrives.
“You’re always hungry,” she whispers back.
“Isn’t that the truth.” He tries to keep his expression even, but his pupils dilate, his eyes dance. He leans to her. Blushing she tries not to lean away.
“When we get back, can you make potatoes with mushrooms? I love how you make it.”
Dasha used to make this dish for Tatiana in Luga when there was nothing else to eat, no fish, no cabbage pie. Tatiana’s heart continues to hurt. “Hmm. We’ll have to go into the woods to pick the mushrooms.” The priest arrives at last to marry them.
Alexander straightens up. “Perhaps another time. We won’t be picking mushrooms tonight.”
6 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons canola oil
1 medium onion, cut into paper-thin strips
8oz (225g) mushrooms, sliced
6 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into thin strips, about ⅛ in (3mm) thick
salt and pepper, to taste
Optional:
½ cup (125 ml) sour cream, or half-and-half
In a large skillet, on medium-high, heat 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon canola oil, add the onion, cook until golden. Add 1 more tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon oil, when butter melts, add the mushrooms and cook until these too are golden. Add the rest of the butter and oil, and when butter melts, add the potatoes, mix thoroughly with the onions and mushrooms. Lower heat to medium, and cook, turning occasionally so the potatoes don’t burn on the bottom, until cooked through and soft. If you like your potatoes crunchy, add a little more butter and oil and turn up the heat. If you like them a little softer, turn the heat down to medium-low and partially cover. Serve with sour cream if you want to be like the Russians.
“Shura! I need your help.”
Alexander drops his axe, comes to stand near her. He had been chopping wood. There is a bowl between her legs, egg whites in the bowl, a fork in her hand. “What do you need?”
“I need you to whip these egg whites to a fluffy stiffness.”
“Um—why?” He takes the bowl and fork from her.
“Because.” She stands up. He sits down. “There is no pancake recipe on earth that some whipped-up egg whites cannot make better.”
He starts mixing the eggs slowly with the fork. “Who told you this?”
Dasha had taught her this, as she had taught her many things. Tatiana doesn’t answer him. “Shura, faster. I can do it slow myself. I need your strength. You have to do it really, really fast.”
“Why?”
“Otherwise they won’t get fluffy. I wish I had a proper beater. Faster!”
He is moving the fork in circles as fast as he can. After five seconds he stops. “It’s not working.” The egg whites are still runny and translucent.
“Where’s the Red Army endurance? Three to five minutes!”
“Three to five minutes? Are you kidding me? I don’t do anything for three to five minutes.”
She stares at him. He stares at her. The fork falls to the ground.
“Shura, no! Breakfast! Pancakes!”
She runs away. He chases her.
When he catches her near the shoreline and lifts her into the air, she tries to persuade him. “Shura, listen to me.”
“I’m listening.” He kisses her neck.
“Flour, buttermilk, sugar, fluffy egg whites. Yum, right?”
“Yum, yes.” He kisses her face.
“With grated apple. Buttermilk pancakes with grated apple.”
“Sounds very good.” He kisses her lips.
“Shura …”
“Yes?”
1 egg yolk, plus 2 egg whites
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled, plus extra for greasing
2 cups (450ml) buttermilk
2 cups (300g) flour (Tatiana has only buckwheat flour. By all means use white instead.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract, or fresh lemon juice
1 apple—Granny Smith or Cortland are best
maple syrup, to serve
Preheat the oven to 200°F (100°C). In the bowl of an electric mixer beat the egg yolk with the sugar and salt. Add the butter, then alternating amounts of buttermilk and flour.
Grate one apple, mix through. Add vanilla or lemon juice.
In a medium bowl, whip the egg whites until fluffy, fold carefully into the batter. It’s now ready to be cooked.
Preheat griddle or shallow frying pan on medium, grease with butter. Drop small ladle fuls of batter onto the griddle, leaving a 2-in (5 cm) space between them. Cook a minute on one side, flip over, cook 15–30 seconds on the other.
Transfer the pancakes to an ovenproof dish and place in the preheated oven. Continue cooking the rest of the pancakes.
Serve with warm maple syrup.
Alexander and Tatiana didn’t have any maple syrup. They didn’t mind. He dreamed of syrup from the sugar maples of New England, and she dreamed of bananas that she’d never tasted, but wished she could put into her buttermilk pancakes. “Served with warm maple syrup,” added Alexander.
In Russia they had Granny Smith apples, which made the best apple pie. Sometimes, if the export market had been good, the Metanovs stood in line to buy Red Delicious. Softer apples, like Macintosh make the worst pie—too soggy, like mashed apples. There were no Macintosh apples in the Soviet Union.
Tatiana preferred blueberry which took no cinnamon at all—of which there was little, and certainly none in Lazarevo—but lemon juice, zest, sugar, cornstarch and a tiny bit of salt. Alexander was sick of blueberries. Tatiana could tell because every time she made anything with blueberries—blueberry pie, blueberry pancakes, blueberry jam, he said, “I’m sick to death of blueberries.”
“Well, I have no apples.”
“Oh, fine, let’s have blueberry. But apple pie would have been nice. Apple pie with a little cinnamon.”
Use Pie Crust 1 (see here.)
4 cups (570g) fresh blueberries, stems removed
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
½ cup (100g) sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch (cornflour)
⅛ teaspoon salt
Roll out one pastry disc into a 12-in (30cm) diameter ring. Line a greased and floured pie dish with it, cover with plastic wrap (clingfilm), and refrigerate while you make the filling.
Set a pizza stone or a cookie sheet (baking tray) lined with greased foil at the bottom of the oven and preheat to 425°F (220°C).
In a bowl toss blueberries with lemon juice, zest, sugar, cornstarch and salt. Mix well, but carefully, so as not to break the blueberries.
On a floured surface, roll out the other disc large enough for a 12-in (30cm) top crust. Take the pie dish from the fridge, place the blueberries into it, cover with the top crust, seal the edges with a fork moistened with water. Cut a crisscross in the middle of the pie crust to allow air to escape.
Bake on top of the greased preheated stone or cookie sheet for 40–45 minutes until the blueberries bubble through the open slats. After 30 minutes, cover the edges of the pie with a foil ring to prevent burning.
Cool before serving.
Tangy wild strawberries in season are fantastic for preserves. Blueberries are also excellent. Since they’re not as sweet, they require a little more sugar, one pound of sugar per one pound of blueberries. Blueberry jam is Tatiana’s favorite, but she makes strawberry for her husband who is “sick to death of blueberries.”
The foam that rises as the jam cooks is Alexander’s favorite part of the preserves. He stands at the hearth, bent over the cast-iron pot, waiting for the jam to boil. At the critical point he pushes Tatiana aside so he can skim it himself.
Tatiana forges her way back to the pot, admonishing him for removing actual preserves along with the foam. He never listens.
Tatiana likes the preserves over bread in the morning, or at night with tea instead of sugar, in the Russian tradition. Alexander just likes the skim off the strawberries, any time of day or night.
Use 1¼ lb (570g) of sugar per 2lb (900g) of berries. Make sugar syrup first.
1 cup (225ml) hot water
2¼ cups (570g) sugar
In a 3½-quart (3.15-liter) heavy-bottom saucepan, pour hot water over sugar until it melts, then bring to boil and simmer, stirring constantly for 2–3 minutes. Take off heat. Skim with a skimming ladle.
Use 2 pounds of fresh strawberries, uniform and undamaged. Cut off the leaves and stems. Add strawberries to the hot sugar syrup, and leave for 3 hours. Then bring to a boil, and cook for 7 minutes, making sure the foam doesn’t spill over the top of the pan. Skim as necessary. Turn off the heat and leave for 2 hours. Bring back to boil, and cook again for 7 minutes, skimming as necessary. Take off the heat and leave a further 2 hours. Finally, bring back to boil a third time, and cook for 20 minutes, skimming thoroughly, as necessary, until the strawberries are cooked through and translucent in color. Take off the heat, skim for the last time, cover with two layers of cheesecloth, and cool completely. Place in jars, seal, and, because you can, refrigerate.
Tatiana was so young and silly when she made these for the first time—awkward, shy, with no confidence in her cooking abilities—because she had no cooking abilities. She had never heard of potato pancakes before, but Alexander suggested them, and she made them for him. Usually in the context of telling Tatiana why she was doomed to die an old maid, her Babushka Maya had been imparting the knowledge of generations of women, telling her that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and so Tatiana made Alexander potato pancakes to get into his heart.
He said they were great; even her family approved. They had them with homemade apple sauce and sour cream.
In Lazarevo, when Tatiana and Alexander got married, they had only a few things to cook. Blueberries. Cucumbers and fish. When Tatiana could get flour, she made pie with cabbage, onions and mushrooms. They ate pancakes, or black bread for breakfast. They had milk, they had tea. They had potatoes. And so she made him his favorite pancakes, and here’s the recipe for them, though Tatiana maintains that if you’re newly married and are making these for your smitten and grateful groom, there is no guarantee you will get to eat them hot.
But they taste good cold, too.
2½ cups (560g) raw potatoes, peeled, grated and squeezed dry of liquid
¼ cup (40g) grated onion
3 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons all-purpose (plain) flour
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup (55ml) canola oil
Optional:
sour cream
red caviar
apple sauce to taste
In medium bowl, combine potatoes, onion, eggs, flour, and salt. Heat oil in frying pan on medium-high heat. Drop potato mixture onto griddle and spread into 3-in (7.5 cm) pancakes. Reduce heat to medium. Cook until brown on bottom, flip with spatula, cook on the other side until crisp. Serve with sour cream and red caviar, or with some apple sauce. Alexander also liked his pancakes just plain with scrambled eggs on the side, or sunny-side-up eggs right on top.
Years later, in New York, and years later still in Arizona, Tatiana’s friends, her children, her children’s wives, and their children, and their teachers, and their children would ask her, “Where did you learn to cook like that?” And often she didn’t know what to say. She wished she could say what other people say. Oh, my mother taught me, or, my grandmother taught me. But she just said, “Oh, I picked it up here and there.” Or, if speaking to her children, said, “I learned to cook to please your father.”
What she didn’t say was this. I never would have known how to cook a single thing. Cooking was adult. And I was a child, and content to be a child until I had to grow up. I didn’t want to because all the grown-ups I knew weren’t happy, and I was happy. But there came a time in my life when there was no food to cook, no food to eat, and no food to buy. Nor were there lines anymore for anything, except for bread made of sawdust. Soup was just boiled water with salt. There was no flour for pies, no cabbage, no potatoes. There were no mushrooms and no apples. There was a blizzard outside our broken windows and not much else. During that time when we were without electricity, I lay in the dark next to my sister, with our mother and father dead, our grandparents dead, our brother gone, when it was just the two of us, and, to pass the minutes and hours while we were waiting for death or Alexander, whichever came first, I asked her to tell me how she made blinchiki, mushroom soup, apple pie, Napoleon, and Beef Stroganoff. And Dasha told me. We felt a little better talking about the food. She felt a little better talking about the food she would never have again. That’s how I know how to cook.