On the White Star headed from Liverpool, England, to Ellis Island, Tatiana whispered lines of Pushkin to herself for perverse comfort. “Eugene looks round—boat on a station!/He greets it like a revelation/ Calls to the ferryman—and he/ with daring unconcern is willing/ to take him for a quarter-shilling/across that formidable sea.” She whispered this like a mantra to herself until she got sick and weak and couldn’t whisper anymore. Only her mouth moved, continuing to make the soundless words. “Eugene looks round—boat on a station!/He greets it like a revelation/ Calls to the ferryman—and he/ with daring unconcern is willing/to take him for a quarter-shilling/across that formidable sea …”
She was convinced that the rest of her life was going to be lived without Alexander. It took her a long time to lift her head, to raise her eyes, to agree to leave Ellis Island, to take a ferry across New York Bay to New York Island. It took her a long time, too, to get used to the idea of living. She didn’t want to do it, but little by little, day by day, she put her feet forward, bought a carriage for her son, took him to New York. She did it for him. Ellis Island was no place for a little boy, living among the wounded and rejected, among the refugees; he didn’t deserve it.
So, when her new friend, the beautiful and self-absorbed Vikki Sabatini, fellow nurse at the Ellis Island Hospital, invited her to the market on the Lower East Side, she went. And when Vikki invited Tatiana and Ant for Sunday dinner at her grandmother’s, Tatiana went. She met Isabella. She tasted delicious food, and liked Vikki more because Vikki was so adored by her grandmother. When one Sunday Edward Ludlow, a doctor at the hospital, asked her to come play softball in Central Park, she took her boy, sat on the grass and watched a joyous American game. Edward offered her fresh strawberries. He had gone out to the farms and picked more than he could eat, so Tatiana ate them, and then made jam with the rest. The jam was good, and Edward was pleased, Vikki’s grandparents, too, when Tatiana brought some for them. Vikki was pleased when she placed Anthony on her lap, the first time she had ever handled a child, and fed him a piece of soft white bread that he sucked on with his toothless gums, making a mess of her blouse but she didn’t care.
This is how Tatiana, minute by minute and against her will, was pulled back into life.
Anthony kept growing, and his mother’s milk was no longer enough. He loved food, and needed to be fed. He also needed to play with other kids, not stare at wounded soldiers. He needed life.
For Anthony’s sake, Tatiana moved out of Ellis Island where she had eaten cafeteria food since his birth and found an apartment with Vikki. She started to cook again, things she remembered, things other than strawberry jam. She learned how to make Italian stuffed shells and Jewish challah rolls, chicken soup, and Chinese rice. She did as well as she could with her boy, a young widow living in New York. She tried to distance herself from the eager soldiers returning from war, yet not so far distant that she didn’t peer into the faces of all the veterans to whom she brought her own blinchiki, her own pirozhki. Here, take this, she would say, take this, and tell me where he is. Tell me whether he’s dead or alive, so I can walk as his widow or his wife.
No one would, or could, tell her, and so she continued to cook, and to learn new things all the while searching for an answer among the outcasts.
The way he carried his body, the way he walked in my life, Tatiana thought, declared that he was the only man I had ever loved, and he knew it.
And until I was alone without him, I thought it was all worth it.
Isabella, Vikki’s grandmother, was from northern Italy unlike Alexander’s mother who had been from Naples in the south, but one thing they both had in common was having made tomato sauce since before they could speak.
Tatiana had never tasted tomato sauce before she had dinner at Isabella’s. Tomatoes grew poorly in Luga, were rarely grown, and were not often available in Leningrad. There was no olive oil, no basil, no parmesan cheese and all these tastes were unfamiliar to Tatiana. But after she went to Isabella’s, she had second helpings and wondered if Alexander’s mother had made something this delicious for him when they’d been living in Boston. How could she not have known this about him? How could he not have told her that once upon a time, he’d had this for dinner every Sunday? Sauce with meatballs and Italian bread.
½ cup (120ml) olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium or large onion, very finely chopped
10 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
58oz (1.65 kg) canned peeled tomatoes
16oz (450g) canned tomato sauce, or 2 cups (450ml) passata
3oz (75g) tomato paste
fresh basil leaves, uncut, or dried basil, 2 tablespoons
½ cup (50g) grated Parmesan cheese
½ cup (120ml) red cooking wine, or Marsala, or sherry
salt and pepper, to taste
Open the cans of tomatoes ahead of time. In a 9-quart (8.1-liter) heavy saucepan, heat the olive oil on medium-high. Melt the butter, then add the onions, cook 5–7 minutes until golden. If you’re pressed for time, you can omit the onions and go to the next step—garlic.
Add garlic, cook in hot oil for no more than 30 seconds (garlic burns like that), then immediately add the peeled whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. Stir thoroughly, breaking up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon. If you don’t like chunky sauce, use a hand-held mixer right in the pot to purée the tomatoes, onions and garlic to a creamy consistency. Add a cup of fresh basil leaves, stems removed. Isabella added a cup of grated parmesan directly into the sauce. Bring the sauce to boil, turn down the heat to the lowest setting, cover, and cook for as long as you can, preferably a few hours. Or you can cook for an hour, then take off the heat, and when cooled, refrigerate overnight. The sauce will taste even better the next day. Reheat slowly. Don’t burn it, don’t boil it, don’t cover it completely.
Add the wine, Marsala or sherry half an hour before serving. Remove the fresh basil leaves.
Serve with meatballs and garlic bread—Italian bread sliced lengthwise, buttered and sprinkled with garlic powder and grated parmesan cheese—and a pinch of salt, then toasted in a 400°F (200°C) oven.
2lb (900g) ground beef sirloin
1 small onion, grated
2 garlic cloves, grated
1 teaspoon dried basil or oregano
2 eggs
1 cup (50g) breadcrumbs, either homemade or store-bought. (To make fresh, take 4–5 slices of white bread and put through food processor. Makes beautiful breadcrumbs.)
salt and pepper, to taste
ice and ice water
olive oil or butter, for frying
Mix all together, then add two or so ice cubes. Stir until mixture is nice and cold. Leave the ice in the mixture while you make the meatballs. Make the meatballs from meat closest to the ice, small or big to your liking, and then either fry in a little olive oil or butter until they’re nice and golden brown, or drop them straight into the sauce to cook. Either way the ice will make them nice and moist and the onion gives them a fantastic taste. Use fresh onion instead of onion powder. It tastes much better.
For sausage, use a pound of Italian sweet. Fry the sausages whole on medium heat until brown and crispy on all sides, drain lightly, drop into sauce. Don’t poke holes in the sausage.
To everything Isabella made, she added parmesan cheese. “It’s an Italian thing,” she said. “Yes,” agreed Tatiana. “The way Russians add sour cream.” The way, later, her friend from Mexico added lime. The way Tatiana herself added onions. “It’s a Tatiana thing,” Alexander once said.
Vikki said, “Pass some more of that stuff with cheese.”
“You cook, Vikki?” asked Tatiana.
“You know I don’t,” Vikki breezily replied. “Why ask?” Anthony was on her lap and she was feeding him tiny spoonfuls of rice with cheese.
Isabella shook her head. “It’s hopeless, Tania. Don’t even try. I’ve tried for years. She refuses to learn.”
“I don’t refuse to learn,” said Vikki, doing her best to ignore them. “I choose not to. Right, Anthony? Right, little guy?”
“Well, someday,” declared Isabella, “you’re going to fall in love, and you’ll learn how to cook so that he will love you.”
“Indeed, Grammy. But how do you explain that I fall in love every five minutes and have not learned yet?”
“Is that what you call it, Viktoria Sabatini? Love?”
“Oooh, Grammy! Cutting. Biting.”
“What do you think, Tania?” asked Isabella.
Tatiana wanted to be in on the joke. But she remained silent for a few moments. Then she spoke. “I think,” said Tatiana, “that if he will not love her because she doesn’t know how to make Parmesan risotto, he will not love her even if she learns to.”
1 quart (900ml) chicken stock
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion, very finely chopped
1 cup (200g) Arborio, or other Italian short-grain rice
2 garlic cloves, very finely chopped
3 tablespoons butter
⅓ cup (40g) grated Parmesan cheese
2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
black pepper, to taste
½ cup (50g) crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
Optional:
a few fresh, chopped sage leaves, or some fresh basil.
In a medium saucepan, bring chicken stock to boil, reduce heat. In a large heavy-bottom skillet, heat the olive oil on medium-high. Add onion, sauté for a few minutes, stirring. Add rice, stir to coat evenly. Add garlic, stir, continue to cook 30 seconds. Lower heat to medium and add half a cup of stock. Stir until liquid is absorbed but rice is not sticking to the bottom of the skillet. Continue adding stock, a little at a time, and stirring until all the liquid is absorbed, about 20 minutes.
Remove from heat, add butter, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Stir. Serve risotto in bowls or on plates, sprinkled with Gorgonzola cheese.
Mama used to make it. When Pasha got sick, it was all she made. It was so good, Tatiana used to wish Pasha would get sick more often; it was the only time she had the soup. “You’re not sickly enough, Pasha,” she used to say to him. “Unlike you, Tania,” he would reply.
But in New York, the Jews on the Lower East Side made it, too, and it tasted just like Mama’s. Tatiana liked that, the continuity of the recipe across the oceans. When Anthony got sick, that’s what she cooked for him. When Vikki got sick, that’s what she made for her. Although Vikki didn’t get ill that often, she did get blue, breaking up with her beaus, looking for just the one, and when Vikki felt low, she wanted bread and soup. So, Tatiana made it for her friend and tried to teach her how to make it, too; it was so simple! When they no longer lived together, and Vikki had newly remarried, Tatiana asked if she made this soup for her husband, and her husband, Tom Richter, rolled his eyes and said, “I would die of a heart attack if my wife ever cooked me a single thing,” and Vikki sheepishly said, “But, Tania, you know that it always tastes better when someone else cooks for you.”
“Yes, like a wife,” said Tom.
“Like Tania,” rejoined Vikki.
“Tania can’t be everybody’s wife,” stated Tom. “There are some wives that are just for one man,” he added pointedly.
Next time Vikki and Tom came to spend a few days with her in Scottsdale, Tatiana made chicken soup for her friend who did not cook for her husband.
1 large, fat chicken with all the bones, the neck, and giblets. Throw the liver out.
10 cups (2.25 liters) water
1 large onion, peeled and left whole
2 bay leaves
1 small bunch parsley, tied with a piece of thread.
6 large carrots, peeled and sliced or cut into small chunks
3–4 stalks celery, leaves removed, sliced into ½-in (1 cm) pieces
1 medium parsnip, washed and peeled or not peeled. If you’re planning to eat it, peel it. If you’re planning to throw it out, leave the skin on for taste.
2 cups (330g) cooked white rice, to serve
salt, to taste
Wash chicken, place into large—at least 9-quart (8.1-liter)—pot. Add water, onion, bay leaves, parsley, and salt, and bring to boil. Turn down to a simmer, cover and cook for 45 minutes. Add carrots, celery, and parsnip, bring back to boil, cover again, and cook for another 45 minutes. Throw out the onion, the parsley, and bay leaves. Adjust salt as necessary. Separate the chicken from the bone and shred. Leaving the chicken on the bone is a very Russian thing to do.
Serve with the cooked rice. Don’t add raw rice and cook in the soup: it changes the taste of the broth—for the worse.
If America is the country of immigrants, then New York is the city of immigrants, and they all cook. Tatiana, who greeted them at Ellis Island, got the grain not the chaff of their cooking, and the people she met living downtown were happy to share their lifeblood with her, to share with her a little of what they’d carried with them into the new land. And she, when she learned to cook from the Italians, the Jews, the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, carried a little bit of their past into her bright, new, lonely life.
Prithvi from the Punjab taught her to make curry and, it was astonishing how Anthony devoured it, though the tastes were strong and unfamiliar. This recipe has quite a lot of liquid in it, so if your family doesn’t like that you can reduce the two cans of chicken broth to just one. Tatiana’s son loved the liquid, the more the better. He ate it with a spoon, like soup, but with more rice. And the next day, when there was no chicken left, he ate the rice with just the curry broth.
The curry Tatiana learned from a Punjabi man, the rice to go with it from a Cantonese. Chang Hao taught her about rice while recuperating from corneal scarring at Ellis Island. Tatiana couldn’t pronounce his name. He told her to call him Tony. “Like your boy.”
“My boy not Tony. He Anthony.”
Chang Hao called for Anthony by waving his hand through the air and calling, “Tony, Tony, come here.”
Anthony, eighteen months, on the floor playing with two trucks, never even looked up. Chang Hao tried to focus, then gave up. His highly contagious trachoma refused to get better, and he was facing certain deportation. Tatiana kept Anthony away but changed the man’s eye dressings, gave him antibiotic faithfully every four hours and managed to save one eye. He was given a visa, opened a tiny place in Chinatown, and twice a week walked to Church Street to bring Tania and Anthony dinner. He brought her hot and sour soup and cold noodles with sesame sauce. He brought Anthony sesame chicken and shrimp Kung Pao. And he was the one who taught Tatiana how to make perfect white rice. “Americans, they overthink it,” he said. “They wash, they rinse, they measure. They stir.” He shook his head. “Rice is best left alone.”
“You don’t need to measure?” asked Tatiana, skeptically squinting as if optically damaged Chang Hao were her Babushka Maya.
“You don’t need to measure,” he confirmed. “You want perfect rice every time? Put your rice in the pan, pour cold water on it until water level reaches the first knuckle on your finger, about an inch above rice, add salt, add butter if you wish, I don’t, but you can, then bring to boil on high heat. As soon as it boils, reduce heat to lowest low, cover, and forget about it for twenty minutes.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Chang Hao’s business thrived in Chinatown for forty-five years and then was passed down to his grandchildren. And his way of making rice went just fine with chicken curry.
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoon butter
5 garlic cloves, grated
5 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
1 large onion, very finely chopped or grated
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon garam masala
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
2lb (900g) chicken breast fillets, cut into 1-in (2.5cm) pieces
1 tablespoon salt
1 Granny Smith apple
2 tablespoons all-purpose (plain) flour
4 cups (900ml) chicken stock
16oz (450g) canned tomato sauce, or 2 cups (450ml) passata
1 cup (225ml) half-and-half or yogurt
In a large, wide-bottom, heavy-bottom saucepan, heat 2 tablespoons oil and 2 tablespoons butter. Add garlic, cook briefly add ginger, cook for 1 minute. Add another tablespoon butter, add onion, cook until lightly golden. Add curry powder, cumin, garam masala and cardamom. Add the rest of the butter and olive oil, and the chicken. Cook on medium, turning occasionally until chicken starts to brown, 4–5 minutes. Add the salt and stir well. Peel and core apple, cut into quarters, add to the chicken. Add flour, stir to coat. Slowly add chicken stock and tomato sauce, stir well, cover and cook 30 minutes while you prepare the rice. After 30 minutes taste the curry and adjust the seasonings. You might need to add some more curry powder. Stir, cook for another minute or two, and take off the heat. Let stand for a minute or two and then add 1 cup of yogurt or half-and-half. Yogurt is delicious, but tends to separate inside the hot liquid, so stir constantly with a whisk until it’s fully incorporated. Half-and-half goes in easily. Stir all to make creamy.
Serve with Chang Hao’s basmati rice, here.
Was Anthony suffering? Tatiana worked too much, and the hours were long. Isabella looked after the boy, but he was too often in the company of older people. Sometimes he went to the playground, but Tatiana feared it was not enough, couldn’t be enough to make Anthony well. He was by nature too introspective, too solemn a little boy. She thought it was the food he ate. It wasn’t American enough. He was always eating eggplant or peppers, or ossobucco. She wanted to learn to cook something fun for him, and perhaps in this way transform him into a fun American boy, his widowed Soviet mother notwithstanding.
When he went to nursery, her anxieties were realized. Anthony would come home and say the other kids were eating something called peanut butter and jelly. He had never had peanut butter and jelly. Butter made with peanuts? They had tunafish; what was that? They had snack items like pretzels; not Anthony.
Tatiana knew: working at Ellis Island, New York University and the Red Cross office was both too much and not enough. She needed to learn to do something else. What if Anthony’s friends came over to play? She didn’t want to be the kind of mother who served her son and his friends roasted peppers and rice for an afternoon snack.
So she bought peanut butter, and served him that on bread. She put some of her homemade strawberry jam on it. He liked it okay, but liked it even more when she cut an apple into cubes and let him dip the cubes into the peanut butter. She needed a tub of warm water to de-glue Anthony afterward, but he liked it, and this pleased her.
She began to experiment. She mixed apple cubes with cubes of muenster cheese. They were both white, and that was part of the fun—trying to figure out which was which before you touched a piece. She made Anthony tunafish with mayonnaise, a little lemon juice, salt, and instead of celery, which he didn’t like, small slivers of apple. He loved it and asked for it every other day.
And because Tatiana believed there was no food that was not improved—to an incremental or revolutionary degree—by bacon, and because she assumed everyone else felt the same way, she served Anthony bacon. In the morning, she made him bacon and egg sandwiches. For lunch, grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches. She toasted bread, grilled the bacon to crisp and served it to him cut into quarters. For herself she added lettuce and tomato. For dinner she made macaroni and cheese—with bacon.
Tatiana had to grow into her macaroni and cheese recipe. It was too plain for her—and she couldn’t imagine it as a meal in itself: where was the meat? So to make it more interesting, she tried different kinds of cheese, different spices, tried adding things to it, like bacon. Or ham. Or both. Finally, she devised a recipe that was so excellent, she started being asked to bring it to the nursery school for potluck afternoons and to Isabella’s house on Sundays. Vikki requested it on a weekly basis. Mothers of her son’s friends would call and ask how she made it, because little Billy was still talking about having it when he came to play. Tatiana started making American friends because of her macaroni and cheese.
1lb (450g) elbow macaroni, cooked
5 cups (1.125 liters) milk
1 large onion, peeled and left whole
5 tablespoons butter
5 tablespoons all-purpose (plain) flour
1lb (450g) extra sharp cheddar
8oz (225g) Swiss or Gruyère cheese
1lb (450g) mozzarella
1 teaspoon salt
pepper, to taste
½ teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Optional:
bacon, cooked crisp, and chopped, or thick ham, small-cubed, and lightly fried
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Butter a rectangular ovenproof casserole dish, 9×13 in (23×32.5cm).
In a medium saucepan heat milk and onion until bubbles just form around the edge of the pan. Turn off heat, and let onion infuse in the milk. Shred all the cheeses into separate bowls.
Meanwhile, melt butter in a 5-quart (4.5-liter) saucepan on medium heat. Add flour, and cook, stirring gently in a clockwork fashion 3–4 minutes. Discard the onion from the milk and slowly add milk to the roux paste, stirring constantly. Heat until milk mixture thickens and starts to bubble slightly. Add salt, pepper, paprika and cayenne. Remove from heat and add cooked macaroni. Add half the cheddar cheese, half the Swiss cheese, and half the mozzarella and mix thoroughly. Spread into the prepared ovenproof dish. Sprinkle with the rest of the cheddar, Swiss, and mozzarella cheeses. Bake for 30 minutes until cheese is bubbling.
Optional:
Crumb 8 strips of crisply-cooked bacon and fold it into the mac’n cheese before you sprinkle with cheeses and bake.
Cube 8oz (225g) thick ham, brown for a minute or two in a frying pan and add to the mac’n cheese.
Add both, bacon and ham. It’s pretty unbelievable. Alternatively, serve the mac and cheese with ham on the side.
Anthony came home bringing the moist remains of a thoroughly chewed cookie and said, almost accusingly, “Rebecca’s mother made these for Friday snack.”
Tatiana looked, tasted. “What is it?” she asked suspiciously.
“A cookie, Mama.”
“Hmm.”
“A chocolate-chip cookie.” It sounded even more accusing because it was said in Russian.
So Tatiana tried. But in Russia there had been no brown sugar, and so she didn’t put any in, not knowing it wasn’t a chocolate-chip cookie without the brown sugar.
“Mom, what is this?” Anthony said. “It’s a sugar cookie with chocolate chips in it.”
Tatiana tried again. She put in an extra cupful of chocolate chips. Anthony was critical. Vikki less so, but she said, “Tania, where’s the brown sugar?”
“The what?”
“See, that’s your problem right there. Buy some brown sugar, and you’ll fix these right up.”
Brown sugar? White sugar was what the aristocracy ate in Russia because it was refined and expensive, just right for their delicate palates. Centuries were spent in technocratic morass trying to work out a way to make brown sugar white. And now, suddenly, when she had the kingly white sugar in abundance, she needed brown sugar, in America?
Dutifully she went and bought brown sugar.
Anthony declared them too chewy.
“Anthony, you too picky,” Tatiana said to him in English. “Just eat cookie and say thank you.”
But the next evening, she made them crispy by adding a tiny bit of water to the mix. A finally approving Anthony wanted to bring some for snack the next day, but he and Vikki devoured them.
It was Rebecca’s mother who called Tatiana and asked if Rebecca could come over. “Oh, and she’s raving about the cookies your son brought to school the other day. You wouldn’t happen to have the recipe, would you?”
“Oh, sure.”
“And what about the little ones with the jam in them? She brought one home last week, it was excellent.”
“Sure, you come, I give you cookies.”
“May I have the recipe? I want to make them for my husband. He just came back from war and has a terrible sweet-tooth. You’d think they didn’t feed him in the army.”
Quietly Tatiana said, “Probably they not give him cookies with jam.”
2 cups (250g) all-purpose (plain) flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 sticks (225g) unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup (150g) dark-brown sugar
¾ cup (170g) white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½–1 teaspoon water
1¼ cups (250g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Grease 2 cookie sheets (baking trays).
Gently stir together flour, salt, baking soda.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together butter, white sugar, dark-brown sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and mix lightly. Add water, mix lightly. Carefully stir in the flour, followed by the chocolate chips. Don’t overstir, or the cookies will harden.
Drop onto cookie sheets using a teaspoon and a tablespoon. For the little tots, dropped teaspoons will do. For the adults a tablespoon might be better. Make them as big or as little as you wish. Cookies will spread while cooking so give them plenty of room.
Bake for 10–12 minutes (less for smaller cookies) or until the edges have browned. Leave for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
With jam. For Anthony. And for Rebecca’s father who had recently returned from war and didn’t get much dessert in the army.
Anthony only liked the jam. The cookie was just a receptacle for the fruit and sugar.
1 stick (110g) unsalted butter, softened
½ cup (100g) sugar
1 egg, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (125g) all-purpose (plain) flour
1 cup (110g) walnuts
raspberry jam
powdered (icing) sugar, for sprinkling
Preheat oven to 325°F (170°C). Grease cookie sheets.
In the bowl of an electric mixer cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolk and vanilla and beat well. Carefully stir in flour, either by hand or on lowest setting of the mixer.
Roll dough to the size of small meatballs. Process the walnuts in a food processor, or crush into fine crumbs in a mortar and pestle. Spread out on a piece of waxed paper. Dip dough balls in unbeaten egg white, then roll in the walnuts. Place on cookie sheet and push the middle down with your thumb. Bake for five minutes, then press the centers down again with the back of a spoon. Bake for 15 minutes longer until golden.
Fill the middle with half a teaspoon of raspberry jam. Plum jam is good, too, as is cherry. The slightly sour jams work better to contrast with the sweetness of the cookie than, say, strawberry or apricot, though by all means, try the one you like best.
When the cookies cool, sprinkle with powdered (icing) sugar. They won’t last the night. Anthony would eat the tray of them. Actually, what he did was eat the jam out of the centers and lick the sugar off every cookie, then nibble around the edges, pretending to leave them behind. It was like a little mouse had gotten to the Christmas pastry when the family wasn’t looking, thinking no one would notice.
“Anthony, you just like your mama,” Tatiana said to him.
“I don’t want to be like you, Mama,” said Anthony. “I want to be like my dad.”
When Tatiana knew she was going to Germany to find Alexander and leaving her son behind with her best friend, one of the things she worried about was what Anthony was going to eat. Tatiana knew Vikki would love him, she knew she would take care of him, that he would be clean and dressed, that he might even make it to school on time, certainly more on time than Tatiana could make him, but the food concerned her. What would Ant and Vikki do every evening, every weekend?
“Vikki, be honest with me. Is there anything you know how to cook?”
“Tania, I’m insulted. I won’t even dignify that with an answer.”
“Tell me. Do you know how to boil an egg?”
“God!”
“Do you?”
“If you’re so concerned, why don’t you just stay here and cook for us instead of hopping off on a suicide mission?”
“Vikki, I repeat my question. I will repeat as many times as necessary. Do you know how to cook an egg?”
“I don’t like eggs,” Vikki said loftily.
“Well, Easter is coming soon.”
“Easter? And where is this Easter coming? Are you joking with me? Easter is not for two months!”
“Like, I said. Soon. How are you going to color eggs—”
“Wait, wait.” Vikki started to hyperventilate. “Are you telling me you’re not planning to come back until after Easter?”
“Vikki, you ask me unknowable. How I know when I come back? If I find him in two weeks, I come back in two weeks.”
“Yes, but …” Vikki almost didn’t know how to ask. “What if you don’t find him for two years?”
Now it was Tatiana’s turn not to answer.
“And Tania …” Vikki had to sit down for her next question. “What if … what if … you don’t find him at all?”
Tatiana sat down herself. Finally she answered. “Better let me teach you how to make eggs, Vikki.”
“Anthony has never asked me to cook for him,” Vikki said many years later. “What a blessing.”
“Not just for you,” said Anthony. “Besides, it’s not true, Vik. Sometimes you cook. You make eggs.” They were sitting in Tatiana’s kitchen. It was the mid-seventies.
“Yes. But you never asked me to make eggs.”
Alexander and Tatiana exchanged looks.
“What eggs? You mean hard-boiled eggs?” Tatiana asked slowly. “The kind Ant liked when he was little?”
“Mom, I never liked them.”
“He still likes them,” Vikki said defiantly.
Anthony rolled his eyes. “I hate them.”
Alexander said, “Vikki, what have you done all these years when men expected you to cook for them?”
“I avoided men that did.”
“Well, I suppose you had to narrow the field somehow.”
“Tania, reign in your husband,” returned Vikki without pause, as if they were in an ad-lib comedy troupe. “Besides, I know how to cook. I told you, I can make eggs.”
“Do eggs even count as a recipe?”
“Ask Ant. He loves eggs.”
“I hate eggs.”
Vikki continued undaunted. “Besides, you said so yourself—it’s a blessing I don’t come anywhere near a stove.”
Anthony deflected diplomatically. “Your hard-boiled eggs are pretty good. After all, you’ve gotten a lot of practice. It’s the only thing you know how to make.”
“It was the only thing your mother taught me!”
“Don’t lie, Vikki,” said Tatiana. “It was the only thing you remembered how to do.”
“For your information, you smart-ass Barringtons,” said Vikki, “because I can see you’ve forgotten a few things yourselves—the only reason I had to learn how to cook at all is because someone, I won’t mention any names, galloped off to Germany to find someone, I won’t mention any names and left me with—”
“Vikki!” That was Tatiana, Anthony, and Alexander. She laughed. They fell quiet.
Unapologetic, ignoring Anthony’s glaring eye, Vikki said, “Last time we’ll be talking about my lack of cooking abilities, then? That’s too bad. Because I was just beginning to enjoy this conversation.”
eggs
water
salt
Place eggs in cold water that covers them just to the top. Add salt to keep the eggs from cracking, a heaping tablespoon or two. Bring to boil. As soon as water boils, turn off the heat, cover completely, and let stand for 10 minutes. Drain, cool, eat, color, use in recipes.
To color eggs, use food coloring, a dozen drops mixed with three tablespoons of white vinegar and half a cup of cold water. Use more drops for more intense color, and place the eggs right into the cup. The longer the eggs are left, the darker their color will be. Take them out and let them dry.
Tatiana was in Germany, and Anthony and Vikki were alone in the apartment. He had been such a verbal boy, but after his mother left, he behaved as if he’d lost his ability to speak. He played with his friends, on the swings, in playgroup. He played hide-and-seek with Vikki. She read to him. He let her hold his hand when she took him to her grandmother’s, when she took him to nursery school. He walked to her when she came to pick him up. When she asked what he wanted for dinner, he, almost as if knowing that Vikki would have trouble cooking, said, “I don’t care.”
“How about bacon?”
“Just bacon?”
“Bacon on bread?”
“OK.”
Often they ate out. Chang Hao still brought his Chinese food twice a week. Isabella cooked one weekly meal, plus her dinner on Sundays. Saturdays they went out for pizza. The rest of the time they had bacon sandwiches.
With Easter coming up, Vikki managed to boil the eggs the way Tatiana taught her, to color them. And then Anthony said, “What about Paskha?” Paskha was the traditional cheesecake-like Russian dessert prepared to celebrate Easter.
“What about it?”
“Aren’t we going to make Paskha?”
“Anthony …”
“Mama told you how. I heard her.” That was more than he had spoken in weeks. Encouraged, Vikki said, “Of course we’ll make Paskha. To celebrate the Feast of Feasts, why not? It just doesn’t say Easter if we don’t have cheese dripping water onto our floor. But you’ll help me, right? I’m going to need your help, Ant.”
“That’s what Mama said.”
“She said that, did she?”
3lb (1.35kg) farmer cheese or ricotta
4 sticks (450g) unsalted butter, softened
2½ cups (560g) sugar
8 egg yolks
1 cup (225ml) heavy whipping cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
Optional:
1 cup (175g) golden raisins or sultanas
Run farmer cheese through the ricer twice into a large mixing bowl to make it as smooth as possible.
In the large bowl of a stand mixer cream butter with 1 cup (200g) sugar until the mixture becomes like thick sour cream.
Fold into farmer cheese until smooth.
Cream the egg yolks with 1 cup (200g) sugar until white. Fold into the cheese mixture.
Whip the heavy cream with the remaining ½ cup (100g) sugar until it becomes soft and thick.
Fold carefully into the cheese mixture.
Add vanilla and cardamom, and golden raisins or sultanas if using.
Fold the mixture into a cheese cloth, folded over two or three times, and hang like a hanging plant over a pot to catch the liquid for 12–24 hours. After it’s set, refrigerate. Or, you can rig something up in the fridge, as long as it’s hanging a few inches off the bottom shelf. Using a prepared Paskha mold doesn’t drain it properly and leaves it too soggy. It’s good to get as much moisture out as possible.
Anthony and Vikki sat at the table. Easter had come and long gone, it was miserably wet and cold outside, and they hadn’t been to the playground for a week. This Saturday they remained in the apartment, cleaning, reading, playing hide-and-seek. Now it was dinner time. She was glaring at him, he stared back, unfazed. He would soon be three. She tried humoring him. But Anthony would be humored only when he felt like being humored. The dinner remained untouched on his plate.
“Come on, bud, you got to eat something. Eat a little.”
“Don’t want to. We had it five hundred times and forty-six. We had it for eighty-seven minutes in a row. Don’t want to.”
“Anthony, we’ve had it twice!”
“All the time. I want cabbage pie.”
“I don’t know how to make cabbage pie.”
“I want fresh bread.”
“I don’t know how to make that.”
“I want mushroom soup.”
“I can’t make it.”
“I want cookies with jelly in the middle.”
“Can’t make those. I’ll give you some jelly, though. It’s the only thing you eat anyway.”
“Didn’t my mama tell you how to make them?”
“She told me how to make eggs. She told me how to make tuna.”
“I don’t want tuna!”
“Well, it’s on your plate, Anthony, and there’s nothing else. So eat it.”
“Don’t want to.”
“You’re not doing anything else until you finish it.”
“Fine.”
They sat for a few minutes longer.
“Ant,” said a defeated Vikki, “want to go to Grammy’s? I’m sure there’ll be pasta.”
“Don’t want pasta.”
“So what do you want?” Vikki snapped. And looked away. Anthony was quiet. They didn’t speak while the water dripped from the faucet, while the rain dripped outside. “Ant,” Vikki said, brightening, “want to go up to Aunt Esther’s?”
“Yes,” the boy said instantly. “Yes! Rosa makes bread pudding. I love bread pudding. And the meat thing. Meat in a pot. I like that.”
Aunt Esther was Alexander’s father’s sister. She lived near Boston with her housekeeper Rosa, who had taken care of Alexander when he had been a small boy himself.
When they were walking in the rain under an umbrella to take the bus to Grand Central Station to spend a week with Aunt Esther, Vikki, holding Anthony’s hand, said, “I’m doing the best I can, bud. It’s not easy, you know.”
“I know. When is Mama coming home?”
“Soon, bud. Real soon.”