“ARE YOU READY?” roared a loudspeaker.
“ALWAYS READY!” cried the kids, giving the Young Pioneer salute. Was I hallucinating? Or were the girls really wearing the big Soviet white bows in their hair?
“Vzeveites’s kostrami sinie nochi …”
The relentless choral cheer of the Young Pioneer anthem filled Red Square. A scarlet myth blazed once more in the distance.
“My pioneri deti rabochikh,” Rahmat and I sang along. “We’re Young Pioneers, children of workers!” With no anti-Soviet mother there to tug at my sleeve, I sang at the top of my lungs.
“Frigging Young Pioneer Day,” a guard was explaining to someone nearby. “Every frigging year, the frigging communists with this … Look! Zyuganov!” The brick-faced current Communist Party leader was up on the makeshift podium. “Queridos compañeros,” someone began shouting in accented Spanish. “Welcoming comrades from shithole Havana,” grimaced the guard. “And for this freak show, they close Red Square!”
We filed by the Kremlin Wall burial tombs where rest the noble remains of Brezhnev, Gagarin, the American John Reed, and, yes, Himagain.
“Us! Walking this holy ground!” Rahmat apostrophized behind Barry and me. “This holy ground at the very center of our socialist Rodina!”
Such was his childish awe, I didn’t have the heart to remind him that the “proud four letters: CCCP” had been busted up twenty years ago, that in no way was Moscow his rodina.
“Scared?” I whispered to him as we descended into the mystery of mysteries of my childhood—the mausoleum burial chamber.
“Of what? Lenin isn’t scary,” Rahmat assured me serenely. “He is svetly (luminous) and krasivy (beautiful) and zhivoy (alive).”
Our face time with Vladimir Ilyich was barely two minutes, maybe less. Stony-featured sentries every ten feet in the darkness goaded us on a tight circuit around the glassed-in sarcophagus, where Object No. 1 lay, glowing, on heavy red velvet. I noted his/its polka-dot tie. And the extreme luminosity achieved by cunningly spotlighting his/its shining baldness.
“Why is one fist clenched?” Barry whispered.
“No talking!” a sentry barked from the shadows. “Keep moving toward the exit!”
And then it was over.
I emerged into the Moscow Sunday confused and untransfigured. All these years … for what? Suddenly it felt deeply, existentially trivial. Had I really expected to howl with laughter at the ritual kitsch? Or experience anything other than the faintly comical anticlimactic creepiness I was feeling right now?
Barry on the other hand seemed shaken. “That was,” he blurted, “the most fascist thing I’ve ever experienced in my life!”
Red Square had reopened by now, and freshly minted Young Pioneers streamed past us. With profound disappointment I realized that the girls’ big white Soviet bows were not the proper white nylon ribbon extravaganzas of my young days but small beribboned barrettes—fakes manufactured most likely in Turkey or China.
“I remember my pride at becoming a Young Pioneer,” Rahmat beamingly told a blonde squirrel-faced girl. She sized up his gold teeth and his third world pointy-toed shoes, then my flip-flops, and shouted, “Get lost!”
We milled around with Rahmat for a while. He’d arrived in the capital just the day before and clearly hadn’t yet learned the “Moscow—mean city” mantra. He intended to look for construction work but, knowing not a soul, had come straight to the mausoleum to see Lenin’s “kind, dearly familiar face.” We smiled and nodded some more, with the vigorous politesse of two strangers about to part after a fleeting bond on a bus tour.
Two aliens, I reflected, a migrant worker and an émigré from her past, wandering Red Square beneath the gaudy marzipan swirls of St. Basil’s Cathedral.
Finally Rahmat went trudging off to pay his respects to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I felt a deep pang of sadness as I watched his slumped, lonely figure recede. My cell phone rang. It was Mom, calling at jet-lagged dawn from New York.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Just walked out of the mausoleum,” I said.
For a while there was silence.
“Idiotka,” Mom finally snorted, then made a kiss-kiss sound and went back to bed.
1910s
KULEBIAKA
Fish, Rice, and Mushrooms in Pastry
Our decadent, farewell-to-the-czars fish kulebiaka layered with blinchiki (crepes) was probably the most spectacular thing Mom and I have ever made in our lives. And so time-consuming that I can’t really recommend you try it at home. Instead, I offer here a far less laborious version—minus the complicated layers and blinchiki—that will still leave your guests gasping with awe. The sour cream in the yeast dough (Mom’s special touch) adds a lovely tang to the buttery casing. Inside, the flavors of wild mushrooms, dill, and two types of fish all mingle seductively. Serve the kulebiaka for special occasions with a green salad and lemon-flavored vodka. Lots of it.
KULEBIAKA
Serves 6 to 8
¼ cup warm milk
1 package active dry yeast
(2¼ teaspoons)
2 teaspoons sugar
1 large raw egg; plus 2 hard-cooked eggs, finely chopped
¾ cup sour cream
½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces; plus 4 tablespoons for the filling
2¼ cups flour, plus more as needed
3 tablespoons canola or peanut oil
8 ounces boneless, skinless salmon fillet, cut into 1-inch pieces
8 ounces boneless, skinless cod fillet, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 medium onions, finely chopped
10 ounces wild or cremini mushrooms, wiped clean and finely chopped
1 cup cooked white rice
3 tablespoons finely chopped dill
3 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons vermouth or dry sherry
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons chicken stock
1 pinch freshly grated nutmeg Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 to 3 tablespoons dried bread crumbs
Glaze: 1 egg yolk whisked with 2 teaspoons milk
1. MAKE THE PASTRY: In a medium bowl stir together the milk, yeast, and sugar and let stand until foamy. Whisk in the raw egg, ½ cup sour cream, and the salt. In a large bowl, combine the 8 tablespoons of cut-up butter with the flour. Using your fingers, work the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs. Add the yeast mixture and stir well with your hands to make a soft dough. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
2. Bring the dough to room temperature, about 1 hour. Grease a mixing bowl with a little butter or oil. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead, adding more flour as needed, until smooth and no longer sticky, about 5 minutes. Transfer the dough to the greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and leave in a warm place until doubled in size, about 2 hours.
3. MAKE THE FILLING: In a large skillet heat the oil and 2 tablespoons butter over medium-high heat. Add the salmon and cod and cook, turning once, until fish just begins to flake, about 7 minutes. Transfer the fish to a large bowl. Return the skillet to medium-high heat and add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Add the onions and cook until light golden. Add the mushrooms and cook until they are golden and the liquid they throw off has evaporated, about 7 minutes, adding more oil if the skillet looks dry. Transfer the mushrooms and onions to the bowl with the fish. Add the remaining ¼ cup sour cream, the hard-cooked eggs, rice, dill, parsley, vermouth, lemon juice, stock, and nutmeg. Mix everything well with two forks, stirring gently to break up the fish. Season with salt and pepper. Let the filling cool to room temperature.
4. Preheat the oven to 400°F. with the rack set in the center. Halve the dough and form two logs. On two lightly floured sheets of wax paper, roll each dough log into a 10 by 16-inch rectangle. Transfer one dough sheet to
a large foil-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle with bread crumbs, leaving a 1-inch border. Spread the filling over the bread crumbs in a neat compact layer. Drape the remaining dough over the filling and pinch the edges to seal. Trim excess dough from the edges, and reserve scraps. Fold up the edges of dough and crimp decoratively. Let the kulebiaka rise for 15 minutes. Brush the top of the pastry with egg glaze. Roll out the dough scraps, cut into decorative shapes, and press on top of the dough. Brush again with the egg glaze. Poke small holes through the top of dough for steam to escape. Bake until golden and beautiful, about 35 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes, cut into slices, and serve.
1920s
GEFILTE FISH
Stuffed Whole Fish, Odessa-Style
Mom and I had our first-ever seder upon immigrating to Philadelphia in 1974. There we were, at the posh suburban home of our kind Jewish sponsors, being paraded around as “heroic refugees” in our shabby Salvation Army clothes. Everyone stared and sang “Let My People Go,” while Mom and I wept, from emotion mixed with embarrassment. To make matters worse, stammering out passages from the Haggadah in my still-broken English, I kept saying “ten pleasures” instead of “ten plagues.” Then came the gefilte fish. Flashing back to the red-haired sisters of my Odessa summer, I tucked into the neat American fish ball with great curiosity … and could barely swallow! The taste was so shockingly sweet, Mom and I later concluded that the hostess must have accidentally added sugar instead of salt. At our second seder the following night, the fish balls were even sweeter. Noticing our bewilderment, the host explained that his people come from Southern Poland, where Jews liked their gefilte fish sweet. “You Russians, don’t you make your fish peppery?” he inquired. Mom blushed. She’d never once made gefilte fish.
Now, many seders later, she and I know that Russian and Ukrainian Jewish babushkas usually cut the fish into thick steaks, remove the meat to grind with onions and carrots, then pack this stuffing (unsweetened) into the skin around the bones. The fish simmers forever with vegetables until the bones all but dissolve—delicious, though not very pretty. Perfectionists go a step further. Like those Odessa sisters, they stuff a whole fish. If you can find a submissive fishmonger willing to remove the skin in one piece—like a stocking, with the tail still attached—this is by far the most festive and dramatic gefilte fish presentation. The head is packed with some of the filling and poached alongside. At serving time, you reassemble the beast and get ready for compliments. If you don’t have a whole skin, just make a loaf and lay a long strip of skin on top as a decoration. And of course, you can always prepare delicious fish balls from this mixture, in which case you’ll need about 3 quarts of stock.
Back in 1920s Odessa my great-grandmother Maria prepared her gefilte fish with pike from the Privoz market. In America many émigré matrons use carp. My personal favorite is a combo of delicate whitefish with the darker, oilier carp. And while this recipe does contain a large pinch of sugar, it’s the masses of slowly cooked onions that deliver the sweetness. With plenty of horseradish at table, please.
GEFILTE FISH
Serves 10 to 12 as a first course
4 to 5 tablespoons peanut oil or pareve margarine, plus more as needed
2 large onions, finely chopped; plus 1 small onion, coarsely chopped
2 sheets matzo, broken into pieces
3 medium carrots, peeled; 1 carrot coarsely chopped, the other 2 left whole
1 whole whitefish, pike, or another firm fish, about 4 pounds, skinned (see headnote) and filleted (you should have about 1½ pounds fillets), head reserved; fillet cut into small pieces
1½ pounds carp fillets, cut into small pieces
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon ice-cold water
1 teaspoon sugar, or more to taste
2 teaspoons kosher salt and freshly ground white or black pepper to taste
4 cups fish stock (store-bought is fine) or chicken stock
Fresh watercress for decoration, if desired
Fresh or bottled horseradish, for serving
1. In a large skillet heat the oil over medium-low heat. Add the 2 finely chopped onions and cook, stirring often, until softened, about 12 minutes. Let the onions cool for 15 minutes. While the onions are cooling, soak the matzos in cold water to cover for 10 minutes. Drain thoroughly, squeeze out the liquid, and crumble the matzo into a paste with your hands.
2. In a food processor, pulse the coarsely chopped raw onion and the chopped carrot until finely minced, and transfer to a large mixing bowl. Working in 4 batches, pulse the whitefish and carp fillets, the sautéed onions, and the matzo until finely ground but not pureed, transferring the finished batches to the bowl with the onion and carrots. Stir in the eggs, water, sugar, 2 teaspoons of salt, and pepper to taste. Blend until the mixture is homogenous and a little sticky. To taste for seasoning, poach or sauté a small fish ball. If the mixture looks too loose to shape, refrigerate it for about an hour, covered with plastic.
3. Preheat the oven to 425°F. with the rack set in the center. Line an 18 by 12-inch metal or foil roasting pan with a piece of foil. If using a whole fish skin with tail attached, lay it out on the foil and stuff with the fish mixture so it resembles a whole fish. With wet hands, shape any leftover mixture into oblong balls. If using a fish head, stuff it with some of the fish mixture, and add to the pan along with the fish balls. If making a loaf with a strip of skin as a decoration (see headnote), shape the fish mixture into a loaf approximately 16 by 6 inches on the foil and lay the skin along the top. Brush the top of the stuffed fish or loaf with a little oil. Bake until the top just begins to color, about 20 minutes.
4. While the fish bakes, bring the fish stock to a simmer. Add enough hot stock to the pan with the fish to come two thirds of the way up the side of the fish. If there is not enough, add a little water. Add the whole carrots to the pan. Reduce the oven temperature to 325°F., cover the top of the pan loosely with foil, and continue braising the fish until set and cooked through, about 45 minutes. Baste it with the poaching liquid once or twice, and turn the fish balls, if using.
5. Allow the fish to cool completely in the liquid, about 3 hours, cover with plastic, and refrigerate overnight. To serve, using two large spatulas, carefully transfer it to a long serving platter, lined with watercress, if desired. Attach the head, if using, to the fish. Cut the carrots into slices, and use to decorate the top of the fish. Serve with horseradish.
1930s
KOTLETI
Mom’s Russian “Hamburgers”
Kotleti for lunch, kotleti for dinner, kotleti of beef, of pork, of fish, of chicken—even kotleti of minced carrots or beets. The entire USSR pretty much lived on these cheap, delicious fried patties, and when comrades didn’t make them from scratch, they bought them at stores. Back in Moscow, Mom and I harbored a secret passion for the proletarian, six-kopek variety produced by the meat-processing plant named after Stalin’s food supply commissar, Anastas Mikoyan. Inspired by his 1936 trip to America, Mikoyan wanted to copy Yankee burgers in Russia, but somehow the bun got lost in the shuffle and the country got hooked on mass-produced kotleti instead. Deliciously greasy, petite, and with a heavy industrial breading that fried up to a wicked crunch, Mikoyan factory patties could be scarfed down by the dozen. Wild with nostalgia, Mom and I tried a million times to recreate them at home, but no luck: some manufactured treats just can’t be duplicated. So we always reverted back to Mom’s (far more noble) homemade version.
Every ex-Soviet cook has a special trick for making juicy, savory patties. Some add crushed ice, others tuck in pats of butter or mix in a whipped egg white. My mother likes her kotleti Odessa-style (garlicky!), and adds mayo as binding instead of the usual egg, with delightful results. The same formula works with ground turkey or chicken or fish. Buckwheat kasha makes a nostalgic Russian accompaniment. Ditto thin potato batons slowly pan-fried with onions in lots of butter or oil. I love cold kotleti for lunch the next day, with some dense dark bread, hot mustard, and a good crunchy dil
l pickle.
KOTLETI
Serves 4
1½ pounds freshly ground beef chuck (or a mixture of beef and pork)
2 slices stale white bread, crusts removed, soaked for 5 minutes in water and squeezed
1 small onion, grated
2 medium garlic cloves, crushed in a press
2 tablespoons finely chopped dill or parsley
2½ tablespoons full-fat mayonnaise
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or more to taste
2 to 3 cups fine dried bread crumbs for coating
Canola oil and unsalted butter, for frying
1. In a mixing bowl, combine the first eight ingredients and blend well into a homogenous mixture. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
2. With wet hands, shape the mixture into oval patties approximately 3½ inches long. Spread bread crumbs on a large plate or a sheet of wax paper. Coat patties in crumbs, flattening them out slightly and pressing down for the crumbs to adhere.
3. In a large skillet heat 2 tablespoons of the oil with a pat of butter until sizzling. Working in batches, fry the kotleti over medium-high heat until golden-brown, about 4 minutes per side. Cover the pan, reduce the heat to low, and fry for another 2 to 3 minutes to cook through. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels. Repeat with the rest of the patties. Serve at once.
1940s
KARTOCHKI
Ration Cards
As we started work on the 1940s chapter, Mother and I batted around various menu ideas for the decade. Maybe we’d bake millet, like my grandmother Liza did at the evacuation warehouse in Lenin’s birth town of Ulyanovsk. Or we could improvise wartime “pastries”—a slice of black bread with a barely there dusting of sugar. We even entertained recreating a banquet from the February 1945 Yalta Conference where the “Big Three” and their entourage feasted on quail pilaf and fish in champagne sauce, while the battered country half starved.
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking Page 32