Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking (51 page)

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. with the rack set in the lower third. In a mixing bowl combine the cilantro, basil, parsley, and garlic. Toss the mixture with ½ teaspoon of salt, generous gratings of black pepper, paprika, and pepper flakes.

2. Rub the lamb chops with salt, black pepper, paprika, and pepper flakes. In a mixing bowl toss the lamb with the onions. Add a large handful of the herb mixture and the oil, and toss to coat.

3. Place the lamb and the onions as snugly as possible on the bottom of a very large enamel cast-iron pot with a tight-fitting lid. Set the pot over high heat and cook until steam begins to rise from the bottom, about 3 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover tightly, and cook until the lamb is opaque and has thrown off a lot of juice, about 12 minutes. Turn the lamb, cover, and cook for 3 to 4 minutes longer. Add the chopped tomatoes, another handful of herbs, 1 cup of the tomato juice, and 1 tablespoon of the vinegar, and bring to a vigorous simmer. Cover and transfer the pot to the oven. Cook until the lamb is tender, 1½ to 1¾ hours, checking periodically and adding a little water if it looks dry.

4. While the meat cooks, place the three eggplants directly on three burners set over medium-high heat. Cook, turning and moving the eggplants until the surface is lightly browned and begins to char in spots but the flesh is still firm, 2 to 3 minutes total. Watch out for drips and flame sparks. Using tongs, transfer the eggplants to a cutting board. When cool enough to handle, cut each eggplant crosswise into 4 sections. With a small sharp knife, make a slit in each section, and stuff some of the herb mixture into each slit. In two separate bowls, season the potatoes and the quartered tomatoes with salt and a little of the herb mixture.

5. Remove the lamb from the oven and stir in the potatoes, using tongs and a large spoon to push them gently under the meat. Add the remaining tomato juice and vinegar, another handful of the herb
mixture, and enough boiling water, if needed, to generously cover the potatoes and meat. Scatter the eggplant sections on top, nestling them in the liquid. Cover and bake for 30 minutes longer. Add the tomatoes, scattering them on top without stirring, and sprinkle with the remaining herb mixture. Cover and bake for another 20 minutes.

6. Raise the oven temperature to 400°F. Uncover the pot and bake until the juices are thickened, about 15 minutes. Remove the stew from the oven and let cool for 5 to 10 minutes. Serve straight from the pot, sprinkled with additional herbs.

Moldovan Cornbread with Feta

S
ay “Khrushchev” and a Russian will laugh and immediately cry
kukuruza
(corn)! And so, in memory of Nikita “Kukuruznik” (Corn Man) Khrushchev and his loony crusade to hook our Union on corn, Mom and I wanted to prepare a maize tribute. The notion of cornbread, however, struck Mom as odd. To a northern Slav, she insisted, bread made from maize sounded oxymoronic; it verged on sacrilege. Bread was sacred and bread was
wheat
. The breadlines that sprouted during the 1963 crop failure helped push Khrushchev into early retirement, and after he’d gone, corn was either forgotten or recalled as an agricultural gag in northern parts of the Union. But not so in southwestern USSR, I reminded my mother. There cornmeal had been a staple for centuries. Georgians prepared it into
gomi
(white grits) or
mchadi
, griddled cakes to be dipped into stews. Western Ukrainians and Moldovans ate
mamalyga
, the local polenta, as their daily kasha (gruel).

I myself discovered the bounty of the Union’s corn recipes when researching my book
Please to the Table
. And I fell in love with this fantastically moist, extra-savory Moldovan cornbread—enriched, local-style, with sour cream and tangy feta cheese. Recently, I made it for Mom. It came out so yummy that we ate it straight from the pan—warm and topped with fire-roasted red peppers. Mom recalled how in breadless 1963 she’d thrown out a bag of cornmeal someone had given her.
What am I to do with this yellow sawdust?
she’d wondered back then. Well, now she knows. Here’s the recipe.

CORNBREAD FOR KHRUSHCHEV

Serves 6

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. with the rack set in the center. In a large bowl, thoroughly stir together the first four ingredients. In another bowl sift together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda. Whisk the dry ingredients into the egg mixture until smooth. Add the feta and whisk to blend thoroughly. Let the batter stand for 10 minutes.

2. Butter a 9 by 9 by 2-inch baking pan. Pour the batter into the pan and tap to even it out. Bake the cornbread until light golden and firm to the touch, 35 to 40 minutes. Serve warm, with roasted peppers, if desired.

Russian Potato Salad with Pickles

S
ine qua non of socialist celebrations, this salady Soviet icon actually has a fancy, bourgeois past. The name? Derived from one Lucien Olivier, a French chef who wowed 1860s Moscow with his swank L’Hermitage restaurant. The Gaul’s original creation, of course, had almost nothing in common with our Soviet classic.
His
was an extravagant still life of grouse, tongue, and crayfish tails encircling a mound of potatoes and cornichons, all doused with le chef’s secret Provençal sauce. To Olivier’s horror, Russian clients vulgarized his precious arrangement by mixing up all the ingredients on their plates. And so he retooled his dish as a salad. Then came 1917. L’Hermitage was shuttered, its recipes scorned. All Soviet children knew Mayakovsky’s jingle: “Eat your pineapples, gobble your grouse / Your last day is coming, you bourgeois louse!”

The salad gained a second life in the mid-1930s when Olivier’s old apprentice, a chef known as Comrade Ivanov, revived it at the Stalin-era Moskva Hotel. Revived it in
Soviet
form. Chicken replaced the class-enemy grouse, proletarian carrots stood in for the original pink of the crayfish, and potatoes and canned peas took center stage—the whole drenched in our own tangy, mass-produced Provansal mayo.

Meanwhile, variations of the salad traveled the world with White Russian émigrés. To this day, I’m amazed to encounter it under its generic name, “Russian salad,” at steakhouses in Buenos Aires, railway stations in Istanbul, or as part of Korean or Spanish or Iranian appetizer spreads. Amazed and just a little bit proud.

At our own table, Mom gives this Soviet staple an arty, nonconformist twist by adding fresh cucumbers and apple, and substituting crabmeat for chicken (feel free to stay with the latter). The ultimate key to success, though, she insists: chopping everything into a very fine dice. She also obsessively doctors Hellmann’s mayo with various zesty additions. I think Lucien Olivier would approve.

SALAT OLIVIER

Serves 6

1. In a large mixing bowl combine all the salad ingredients and season with salt and pepper to taste.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together all the dressing ingredients, season with salt, and taste: it should be tangy and zesty. Toss the salad thoroughly with the dressing, adding a little more mayo if it doesn’t look moist enough. Adjust the seasoning to taste. Serve in a cut-crystal or glass bowl.

Borscht with Beef, Mushrooms, Apples, and Beans

T
o my childhood palate,
borshch
(as Russians spell borscht) was less a soup than a kind of Soviet quotidian destiny: something to be endured along with Moscow tap water and the endless grayness of socialist winter. Our Soviet borshch took on various guises. There was the private borshch, such as Mom’s frugal vegetarian version, endearing in its monotony. There was the vile institutional soup of canteens, afloat with reddish circles of fat. In winter we warmed our bones with limp, hot borshch, the culinary equivalent of tired February snow. In summer we chilled out with
svekolnik
, the cold, thin borshch popularized here in America by Eastern European Jews.

Parallel to all these but ever out of reach was another soup: the mythical “real” Ukrainian borshch we knew from descriptions in State-approved recipe booklets authored by hack “gastronomic historians.” Apparently
that
borshch was everything ours wasn’t. Thick enough to stand a spoon in, concocted in myriad regional permutations, and brimming with all manner of meats. Meats!
That
borshch represented the folkloric propaganda Ukraine, our wholesome Soviet breadbasket and sugarbeet bowl, envisioned as though never clouded by the horrors of famine and collectivization. Not once during my childhood did I taste anything like this chimerical “real” Ukrainian borshch. Neither was I that interested, really.

It was the dinner my dad, Sergei, prepared to impress Mom during our 1987 Moscow reunion that changed my mind. Convinced me that borshch could be something
exciting
. Never in my life had I tasted anything like Dad’s masterpiece, with its rich meaty broth, the deep garnet color achieved by juicing the beets, the unconventional addition of mushrooms and beans, the final savory flourish of pork cracklings. Even after sampling many authentic regional versions on my subsequent trips to Ukraine, I still hold up Dad’s borshch as the Platonic ideal.

Here’s his recipe. My only tweak is to replace fresh beet juice with baked beets, which deliver the same depth of color. A rich homemade stock makes the soup special, but if the effort seems like too much, omit the first step, use about 11 cups of store-bought chicken stock in Step 3, and instead of boiled beef, add about a pound of diced kielbasa or good smoky ham. Like most peasant soups, borshch improves mightily on standing, so make it a day ahead. A thick slice of pumpernickel or rye is a must. Ditto a dollop of sour cream.

DAD’S UBER-BORSHCH

Serves 10 to 12

1. Combine beef and water in a large stockpot and bring to a boil over high heat. Skim and reduce heat to low. Add the whole onions and carrots and the bay leaf and season with salt and pepper to taste. Simmer partially covered, until the meat is tender, about 1½ hours. Strain the stock, removing the meat. You should have 11 to 12 cups of stock. Cut the beef into 1½-inch chunks and reserve.

2. While the stock cooks, preheat the oven to 400°F. Wrap the beets separately in aluminum foil and bake until the tip of a small knife slides in easily, about 45 minutes. Unwrap the beets, plunge them into a bowl of cold water, then slip off the skins. Grate the beets on a four-sided box grater or shred in a food processor. Set aside. Strain the mushroom soaking liquid and save for another use. Chop the mushrooms.

3. In a large, heavy soup pot, cook the bacon over medium-low heat until crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon and reserve. To the bacon drippings, add the chopped onion, mushrooms, diced carrot, and green pepper, and cook until softened, about 7 minutes, adding a little butter if the pot looks dry. Add the remaining butter and cabbage, and cook, stirring, for another 5 minutes. Add the paprika and stir for a few seconds. Add the stock, potatoes, tomatoes with their liquid, apple, and the reserved beef, and bring to a gentle boil. Skim off any froth, season with salt to taste, cover, and simmer over low heat until potatoes are almost tender, about 15 minutes. Stir in half of the reserved beets and the beans, and add a little water if the soup looks too thick. Continue cooking over medium-low heat until all the vegetables are soft and the flavors have melded, about 25 minutes more. (The borshch can be prepared a day ahead up to this point. Reheat it slowly, thinning it out with a little water if it thickens too much on standing.)