For some reason, my grandfather looked different. Maybe it only seemed so to my addled brain, but he was stepping more gingerly than I recalled, the television was louder than usual, and he seemed content to sit in front of it even after I’d come. He may have been exaggerating the first; my stricken ears may have been exaggerating the second; but appearances would go last, and I knew he wouldn’t permit himself to reveal greater interest in a Russian game show than in his grandson unless some mental levee had given. Or had he gotten very old at some point? Had Oksana’s pampering made it less visible? Had I not noticed because I now saw him so frequently that the shift was too incremental to grasp?
It was as if my own sunken-eyed grayness, like a perverse borrowing from a magical-realist novel, was suddenly his. I hadn’t thought of it since, but several nights before, I had dreamed of him. He was under a Soviet blanket—the duvet cover opened through a rhombus in the middle, not a slit down a side—and smiling too hard, the gold aflame in his teeth. He was supplicating, not joyful. “Please, no, why, there’s no need,” he kept saying. Begging, in a way I’d never heard him beg. Whom would he permit himself to beg but death?
“What are we making?” Oksana said.
I swiveled around the kitchen, but nothing cohered in my mind.
“Fried pork belly with stuffed dumplings in a mushroom gravy. Fritters with strawberry jam for dessert.” She put her hand on her waist. “How does that sound?”
“Like a heart attack,” I said and smiled one of the smiles I’d practiced.
“Well, it’s not time for salads,” she said, looking me over.
Not trusting myself to remain steady, and remembering that a cook prefers minimal intervention, I hid behind my phone camera. If Oksana would cook and narrate, I would chronicle. She stripped the hide from the pork belly, pressing her fingers into it as she went. “They didn’t burn the hair off this pig,” she said. “They used some kind of chemical. If this was a properly raised pig, this hide would peel off like a sticker.” The phone rang in the living room.
“Arkady, I’m not home!” she yelled out. “I’m not here.”
“Fine, fine,” he said as he shuffled toward the phone.
Now she was pawing the belly—“If this was my pig, raised on milk, believe me, this belly would feel like a cloud. But I’ll have to add a little water to this after I sear it, or it’ll be tough.” I smiled weakly behind the phone. She was “tying up” my ears.
“Oksana!” the shout came from the living room. “It’s for you!”
She and I exchanged the same look, and I laughed an unpracticed laugh. He appeared in the kitchen doorway, the belly entering first. “You two will be ready to hang out a shingle soon,” he said. He pulled a wad of twenties out of a pocket. “First reservation is mine.” He nodded toward his water glass in the living room. “I hope this establishment will pour something stronger.” He had stopped drinking completely because of his prostate.
Just then, the tears I’d held back all morning flailed forward. They were about him, not me, though surely it all got mixed up on the way. To hide them, I put down my phone and clamped my hands around his neck. His body was an old baby’s—the skin of his neck was smooth, and his hair was soft as feathers and boyishly cropped; my parents had just visited, and my father had given him a trim. My grandfather honked shyly, awkwardly—he wasn’t used to this kind of endearment from me. Oksana watched us from the running sink.
The video of that afternoon doesn’t clarify whether the filmmaker’s obtuse questions—
Oksana: And we let the cabbage boil until we know it’s ready.
Filmmaker: And how do we know it’s ready?
Oksana: Well, we try it.
Filmmaker: But how will the jam get inside the fritters?
Oksana: You slice them open with a knife.
—have to do with his culinary callowness or his disability. But the cook he’s filming answers him patiently, even when she can’t answer, which occurs twice. The first time it’s because periodically, the filmmaker tries to focus and ask things like how much flour, exactly, and how much sugar. The cook can’t answer—she can eyeball-pour the right amount of flour, but she can’t give you a number. How much salt? As much as feels right in the small of the palm.
The other difficulty occurs when the filmmaker asks why the recipe is this but not that. Why must the cabbage be boiled before it goes inside the dumplings? The cook stares, dumbfounded. “Are you going to make dumplings with raw potato as well?” she says.
“But the pickled cabbage is perfectly edible even without cooking, isn’t it?” he says.
“I guess,” she concedes. “But it’s too crunchy.” She shrugs again. “This is how my mother did it, and how my grandmother did it. This is how I know.”
Eventually I got rid of the phone. The cabbage was ready by then, so I rolled out the dough Oksana had made, then rolled it back up, chopping the tube into two-inch cylinders that I flattened into vaguely circular receptacles for spoonfuls of cooked cabbage and caramelized onion. Then I tried to pleat them closed. This felt like a cross between rolling a cigarette and trying to make sure nothing would fall out of your taco. It requires a little dexterity in the best of times, and my manual elegance was at a low just then. But for no reason at all, I had a hand for it, and I pleated away like a maestro. Oksana managed to express her approval without those excessive exultations that make you feel like a child.
Cooking is making something where there was nothing. That something happens to keep you alive—you can eat raw cabbage, but not, indeed, raw potato. It is the literal opposite of the emptying out of depression. Only something so elemental could do it—because your emptying is elemental. For a minute, the pain is eclipsed by a vision of a resuscitated existence. During that minute, you rush to offer bargains (because you believe in deities now). Now you will treat unremarkable routine as the greatest of gifts. You will not wait for pain to remember that painlessness is a blessing. But then the good feeling slips away. It really is like an eclipse.
Oksana set the table, but I couldn’t put any of it in my mouth, even though the scent would’ve woken a dead man. I said I’d eaten before coming, but she knew I was lying. I never ate enough before leaving home that I wouldn’t be hungry all over again once I got there. To her, it didn’t count unless you ate it, so she was upset until I told her I’d take some home.
My grandfather and I made something that afternoon, too. We stumbled onto a new way of being together. As always, he wanted me close, but, as always—our conversations about his life long complete—we had little to say to each other. It had never occurred to us that there was another person in the apartment I could come to see. Oksana and I would cook, and he would be in the next room, near but not across from or next to—finally, the right distance.
Cabbage Vareniki (Dumplings) with Wild Mushroom Gravy (v)
Time: 2 hours
Serves: 6
Patsyuk opened his mouth, looked at the vareniki, and opened his mouth wider still. At that moment, a varenik popped out of the bowl, splashed into the sour cream, turned over on the other side, leaped up, and flew straight into his mouth. Patsyuk ate it up and opened his mouth again, and another varenik went through the same performance. The only trouble Patsyuk took was to munch it up and swallow it.
—Gogol, “The Night Before Christmas”
If you want to see Ukrainians in August, head to the countryside—everyone’s picking mushrooms. “Quiet hunting,” they call it. The prize is the humbly named “white mushroom,” but don’t mistake it for the mild, button-like mainstay of American supermarkets. The Ukrainian white mushroom is what the French call cèpes, and the Italians porcini: nutty, creamy grandees whose sight and aroma stir something Proustian in every European. In the States, they’re more commonly available in dried form, which you want anyway, as it’s more pungent than the fresh version.
This vegetarian dish shows up on many Ukrainian tables during Advent (Saint Philip’s Fast in Uk
raine), when meat is proscribed. You won’t miss it after you taste the mushrooms in this gravy.
Note: It’s worth making this dish in alternating steps, as below, since several of the steps require somewhat lengthy cooking times and there might as well be two things going at once.
Filling
11/2 pounds sauerkraut
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus additional if necessary
2 onions, diced
Kosher salt and black pepper, to taste
3 garlic cloves, put through a garlic press
Mushroom gravy
11/2 ounces dried porcini mushrooms (a bit over 1 cup)
1 medium carrot, diced
2 bay leaves
10 whole peppercorns
Kosher salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion, diced
2–3 tablespoons flour
1–2 garlic cloves, put through a garlic press
Dough
31/2 cups flour
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup warm water
To finish
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, put through a garlic press
1 bunch fresh dill, chopped
For the filling:
In a large pot, bring around 6 cups of unsalted water to a boil (sauerkraut is well salted). Add the sauerkraut with its juices. After returning to a boil, cover, lower the heat to medium, and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until soft. Drain. When the sauerkraut is cool enough to handle, squeeze out any remaining water. Transfer to a cutting board and chop finely.
While the sauerkraut is boiling, heat the oil in a large pan. Add the diced onions and sauté until golden brown. Salt to taste. Transfer half of the onions to a bowl and set aside for use later.
Add the chopped sauerkraut to the pan with the remaining onion and season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in the garlic, adding oil if necessary. Sauté over medium-low heat to get rid of remaining moisture, about 15 minutes. Set aside to cool.
For the gravy:
Cover the mushrooms with 2 cups of hot water and let soak for 20 minutes.
Remove the mushrooms from the liquid and rinse under running water to remove any grit. Strain the mushroom liquid through cheesecloth or a couple of paper towels lining a strainer and reserve. Finely chop the mushrooms.
In a medium pot, combine the mushrooms, their strained liquid, the carrot, bay leaves, peppercorns, and 2 cups water and bring to a boil. Season lightly with salt. Turn down to a simmer and cook uncovered for about 40 minutes, or until the mix has just a little liquid left. Season with salt to taste.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a medium pan and sauté the last diced onion over medium-high heat until golden.
Lower the heat to medium, mix in the flour (add a third tablespoon if you want thicker gravy), and continue cooking until the flour has disappeared and the mixture is golden brown again. Add 1/4 cup warm water, little by little, and mix vigorously with a wooden spoon in order to beat out any lumps.
As soon as the mushroom mixture has finished boiling down, stir it into the pan. The result should be semi-liquid—thicker than a soup, thinner than a stew. Stir in the garlic. Cover to keep warm.
For the dough:
While the onion and cabbage are getting to know each other, mix the flour, egg, salt, and water to create a soft dough. There are two ways to carve out the individual dumpling pockets you’ll need. You can use your hands to roll the dough into one very long log, cut it into two-inch chunks, and roll each into a small coaster-size pocket-to-be (about 2 inches in diameter). You can also roll the original mass of dough into a giant pancake and carve pockets by pressing the rim of an upside-down glass into the dough. Bunch the excess dough, roll out, and repeat. Make sure the dough is thin enough to produce about 35 circles, each with a diameter of 2 inches.
To finish:
Drop 1 teaspoon—no more—of the cabbage-and-onion mixture onto each dough circle and flatten with the back of the teaspoon. To close the dumpling: Cradling the dough from below, close the circle in half around the cabbage-and-onion mixture, pinching the now semicircular edge of the dumpling as flat as possible, so that the cabbage-onion mixture is bulged up in the middle. Now fold the edge over itself starting from one end, so that the semicircle ends up looking scalloped. (The dumpling should resemble a crescent moon with scalloped edges.) You may wish to sic the job on smaller people with more nimble fingers, a.k.a. children.
Fill a large pot midway with water and one teaspoon of the oil. Add salt and bring to a boil. When the water is boiling, drop in about half the dumplings. They will rise to the surface in a minute or two, and need 2 or 3 minutes more at the top—a total of 5 or so minutes. Scoop them out with a slotted spoon, getting rid of as much water as possible before dropping them into a shallow bowl. Toss with another teaspoon of the oil to prevent clumping.
Mix the last 2 garlic cloves into the caramelized onion that was set aside. Cover the dumplings with half of this mixture and mix gently. Add dill to taste.
Repeat for the remaining dumplings.
Reheat the gravy on low to medium heat if it needs it. Serve it over the dumplings.
Chapter 14
March 2015
What to cook when Oksana has finally decided to teach you
Almost no ideas occurred to me during this time, which was frightening, because new ideas sometimes felt like the true currency in which I was paid for the work I had chosen. The barrenness felt so complete, I took it to mean that this was the way things would be now. All the American optimism I’d been working to cultivate within myself dissipated like so much illusion—I had been the platitude peddler, I my own gullible audience—and I reverted to the view, so familiar from my family life, that only a fool looked out onto desolation and thought, Things will get better. If you’d told me that the next day would bring a strange discoloration of the skin, or difficulty pronouncing words, I would have believed you. Even writing, which had saved me every other time, wouldn’t come. I imagined myself accelerating toward blankness; sometimes I couldn’t remember what I’d said a moment before.
But I had an idea on the subway home from my grandfather’s. I nearly burst into tears in gratitude for it. It came to me while I was rewatching, on the subway, the video of Oksana talking about how she would have handled the pig that became the pork belly in her hands. When I got back to my friend’s place, I brought up a list of farms around the city that accepted volunteers and, even though it was getting into evening, started calling.
On farms near New York, it’s harder to give away labor than one might assume, even in the dead of winter: too many fried corporate people on apprenticeships for a new life; semi-fried corporate people on sabbaticals; and yet-to-be-fried corporate people delivering on their company’s fervid commitment to social responsibility. (Of course, there are a couple of people apprenticing to become farmers, too.) I called five or six farms before I heard back. The place boarded horses, ran a small dairy herd, and grew vegetables over four acres. Louise (not her name), the farm manager, who was as welcoming as the other farmers were not, asked if I wanted to come up that weekend and have a look for myself. That weekend? Suddenly it was all very real, the road there nearly three times as long as the trip to my grandfather’s. Yes, I said quickly, so it was out before I could change my mind.
“What do you think?” Louise said after we’d finished walking around. The sky was dove gray, small pleats of clouds that looked like they were trying to decide whether to unpleat and let go. She wore jean overalls and a plaid parka. “You want to do a little work? See what it’s like?”
I had worn nice clothes—corduroys, my good leather boots—partly to make a good impression and partly to remind myself that I owned something other than soft old jeans. I hadn’t cooked my own meals in a month. Had not managed a brisker pace than a walk. Mostly out of gratitude for her time, I said yes. If you said yes, things happened, though all of y
ou wanted nothing to happen. Louise brought out a jiggly, pliable rake, like the one I’d used to scour the leaves off Signora Limona’s yard all those years ago. She pointed me to an enclosed paddock.
“All the horse poop from last fall that got frozen over is thawing,” she said. “We’d want it anyway, but this stuff has been sitting under snow collecting nutrients all winter long. It’s super-manure now. We didn’t have time to get it in the fall before the ground froze over, but messing up has its benefits.” She extended the rake. “See you later.”
I must have looked a little horselike myself in that paddock, bucking at the frozen ground with my rake, great clouds of steam storming out of my mouth, time an abstraction. (The sky leaden, it was impossible to say how much had passed.) For once, I was covered with sweat from exertion rather than an impression of fever. In the end, an hour was all I could manage. I had done a fairly pathetic job, scraping together only several buckets’ worth of manure. But my boots were covered with horseshit, as were my corduroys to the knee. It was scrapingly windy, my hands raw and chapped, and tears had been falling out of my face—from the cold, I was fairly sure—but now real tears came. I began wiping at my face with my shit-flecked sleeve, hoping that, just as no one had appeared in the previous hour—I could have been alone on that three hundred acres, alone on the whole good earth—no one would now.
Louise and I agreed I’d come for the weekend. I’d sleep in one of the stalls in the old stallion barn. When my grandfather heard that I was going to spend my weekends gathering shit and planting acres of seeds with my back bent like a peasant, some of the old energy reappeared in his voice. “Why would you do that?” he shouted into the phone, with a mix of shame, horror, and rage. His grandson had been taken in. Someone with more guile had preyed on an innocent boy. “We’re worse than others?” he shouted. “Your labor’s not worth anything? I paid people to get your mother out of that shit!” The extra effort took its toll, and he lapsed into a crestfallen silence. After all this time, like an insurgency biding its time, my father’s way was winning, and after my father himself had so earnestly tried to suppress it. But my grandfather’s animation was also that of a seer proved true. He had lived for so long imagining the collapse of what he’d managed to build that he began to want confirmation of that more than proof that he was worried for nothing. Here I was, handing it to him. Thanks to me, he was quaking with the perverse, erotic thrill of having one’s fears confirmed.
Savage Feast Page 27