Months prior to the feast Varvara prepared adjika. She always kept large quantities on hand for daily use. It is a tasty reddish-colored spread which is slathered on a chunk of homemade bread. As electricity and food processors weren’t available, my dear Granny Varvara had to slice and dice, then grind the three ingredients by hand. The ingredients are tomatoes, huge amounts of garlic, and a lot of horseradish. Varvara used only the root of the horseradish which was readily available as a wild plant. All of the other ingredients grew in abundance in her garden. A recent addition to this mix is ground up bits of sweet red bell pepper. Varvara would salt it to her taste and store the thick juicy sauce in the cellar near the ice. The ice was cut from the nearby pond in the early spring and it was cool enough in that cellar for the ice to last until the following winter. I always thought that my Granny used too much salt in the adjika but then my husband thought that I used too much salt in mine. Adjika is very healthful and so delicious it is almost addicting.
Another favorite that Varvara made four days before the feast and stored in the cold room of the cellar was jellied meat. Varvara had prepared this well-loved specialty with large amounts of both beef and pig leg bones with their attached tendons plus some prime fat-free beef from the rump. This was all tossed into a large pot of boiling water with bay leaves and peppercorns and cooked for six to twelve hours depending on the age and condition of the animal and the volume of meat. Next, she took out the bones, cut the meat into smaller pieces, placed it in the bottom of a beautiful deep platter, added some bouillon from the pot and some chopped garlic and then placed it in a cool spot in the cellar until it turned into a jelly. On the day of the feast this jelly was cut into small pieces and served with some horseradish or mustard. One would take a shot of vodka and a bite of the jellied meat. The flavors complemented each other and the scrumptious meat would keep a light drinker sober. Most vodka drinkers love this dish. So do many non-drinkers.
There are numerous small dishes required at a feast. Every table had to include pickles, sauerkraut, and marinated mushrooms and tomatoes. This was not a problem as Varvara’s cellar contained ample stocks of pickled and marinated food. Some of these products could last up to ten years in their special wooden barrels. Fresh raw eggs were stocked for the feast. Another custom was to just crack open the shell and swallow the egg whole. (Not recommended now, considering salmonella poisoning and bird flu). It was especially good with black bread after a shot of vodka. Some claimed that it was healthy and improved the appetite.
My grandfather Ivan had some duties to perform well ahead of the actual feast. Much of this was trading and bargaining for some geese, a few piglets, and some saltwater fish; and catching a wide variety of local freshwater fish. The village men all had fishing poles. Ivan also had to get beef, pork, and chicken but they weren’t easy to find in the second year of a drought. However, he was an old experienced farmer with many friends and he took care of it. Another task for Ivan was to issue invitations to the welcome-home feast, which mostly consisted of telling friends and neighbors when to come and asking the relatives to come early to help with this and that. He also had to make arrangements to borrow tables, chairs, glasses, dishes, serving platters, and tablecloths.
Early on the morning of the feast, Grandfather Ivan and some friends butchered several sheep and some chickens. After removing the bones and excess fat, they gave the trimmed meat to the womenfolk. The men then set up all the tables outside on the grass under the shade of large birch trees. Typically, the feasting table would be many meters long and organized into a large U shape. The center of the U was considered the dance floor. All the food was placed on these tables with reserve platters available when one went empty. Everyone would sit down at these tables, except children who were fed at a different place.
The combination fireplace/oven in the kitchen in the Sariechev house was large enough to cook most the food. Ivan and Varvara lovingly built it with homemade bricks. A man could (and did) sleep on top of it on cold winter nights. The oven was busy on this particular day and it earned its keep. Some of the neighbors also cooked for this large feast.
Soup with bread was always the most important daily food. However, at a feast it was just another help-yourself dish which was served from a large pot in the center of the table. Varvara gave her youngest daughter Lizza the soup responsibility. It was August in the warmish year of 1947, so the choice of the main soup was easy. Okroshka is a popular cold summer soup derived from kvass which is made from fermented flour. Varvara had ample stock of the cold kvass, so Lizza had to calculate how much chopped cucumber, green onions, dill, leaves of the borage plant, little pieces of meat or fish, and chopped boiled eggs that she needed to add to the kvass. This healthy soup is very filling and it has few calories.
One of its many attractions is the variety of ways to consume it. After the cold okroshka was ready to eat, Lizza had to ensure that everyone had the accompaniments that might be required. Some people like a tablespoon of sour cream mixed into each portion. Some like boiled potatoes that have been skinned and diced added to the soup. Others eat a spoonful of soup, take a bite of bread and then a bite of a hot, boiled potato, claiming that this is the best way to enjoy all the flavors and textures.
Hot soup is a mainstay in the cold winter, and Russia is cold for nine of the twelve months so there is a lot of time to enjoy hot soup. Two of the most popular are borsch with beets, and shchi which is borsch without the beets. There are numerous possible variations by simply adding or subtracting items.
Borsch was one of Lizza’s favorite dishes and she could almost make it blindfolded. On this day of the feast, she prepared both borsch and shchi. However, she did this early and allowed them to cool so that they were sent to the eating tables at ambient temperature. Lizza’s basic borsch recipe was tested by time and by numerous tasters. It was the same recipe Tania and Manya used as they all got it from their mama, Varvara.
Neighbors took the responsibility for preparing the fish, not an easy task as various fish were prepared differently. Ivan had the fish on hand and the neighbors set to work. One household took all the freshwater fish. There were several kinds of local ones available. They all had to be scaled and gutted and the heads, fins, and tails cut off. Then they organized a large flat pan to bread the fish. This involved salting the fish, then rolling it in flour and then rolling it in well-beaten eggs. Then the fish is fried in vegetable oil in a large frying pan. The cooked fish was loaded onto large decorated platters.
The herring went to another household. These fish are caught in salt water and are normally available in various kinds and sizes. Packers ship the herring intact to stores after packing the herring in salt, spices, and a special marinade. Somehow, leaving the guts in the herring prolongs the savory taste of the meat. Once in the home kitchen, the fish are scaled, gutted, skinned, and washed in cold water. The head and tail are typically left on for decoration. A large herring is placed on a special decorative herring plate, cut cross-section into half-inch pieces and decorated with onion rings and greenery. Many of these plates are placed on the large table among the other dishes. No feast at that time was complete without herring. The last two fish were the easy ones and went to another household. The khamsa is a small saltwater fish commonly found in the Black Sea. It is about seven centimeters long (about 2.75 inches) and incredibly tasty. Like herring, it is purchased whole. The women had only to gut it and remove the head. Some people wash it but most say that removes too much flavor. Large plates of this were placed on the table. The guests would eat it raw like sushi and marvel at the delicate flavor.
The last fish was sprats from the Baltic Sea. They are about the same size as the khamsa. Usually sprats are smoked and cooked by peasant women but they are also available in cans, having been smoked and packed in a factory, so this time all the womenfolk had to do was open the tins and load up the platters. Russian sprats are exceptionally tasty and always a big favorite.
With the aid of two vi
llage girls, Varvara had the geese plucked, gutted, and prepared for roasting. One was stuffed with apples, a second goose was stuffed with rice and boiled chopped eggs and spices, and a third received chopped cabbage and spices. More courses for the groaning table. Next were the two small piglets. The men had killed, gutted, and scraped off the hair with boiling water and a knife. The piglets retained their heads, feet, and curly tails. The girls cleaned, stuffed, and then cooked them whole, without carving. A whole apple replaced a piece of wood in their mouth when the cooking was almost complete. The skin was especially good.
The oldest daughter Tania oversaw the cooking of various steaks and chops. Availability depended upon what was slaughtered and how long it had been since the last slaughter. Three days of hanging allows the meat to age and tenderize. However, meat is frequently eaten on the day of slaughter. Most of this meat was cooked in large frying pans. All the meat was cooked well-done. It was very uncommon to serve a rare steak, primarily for health reasons, as meat has bacteria and sometimes parasites.
The middle daughter Manya who lived with her mother and father, Varvara and Ivan, had a lot of responsibility since she was familiar with the oven and storerooms. Her first step was to organize a fine stew. Manya laid a large hunk of beef brisket on the cutting board and sliced it into small cubes. These went into a large pot with chopped potatoes, onions, carrots, some spices, cinnamon, dill, cloves, and bay leaves. Manya knew that two or three hours in the stove would render it thick and tasty. Sometimes this stew was so thick a spoon would stand upright in the bowl.
The next item for Manya was solyanka, chopped chicken meat mixed with chopped cabbage, onions, and carrots. A young neighbor girl helped Manya chop the vegetables. The only remaining task was to add spices and a pinch of oil. This was then placed in a large pot borrowed from a neighbor and placed in the big brick oven. Manya would watch it cook for approximately two hours. The meat is heavenly and was one of Manya’s favorites.
Manya then started on the minced meat potato cake. She set up the hand grinder and busied herself grinding a large pile of beef and pork. She then ground together milk-soaked white bread, whole uncooked potatoes, and fresh onions. This was all placed into a huge bowl and she added salt and pepper, mixed it, and shaped the mixture into a small flat oval shape, and then immediately cooked it in a huge frying pan with pig lard. It can be served with mashed or fried potatoes, rice, spaghetti, macaroni, or even cooked cabbage. Although rice is not a mainstay in Russian cuisine, a large pot of cooked pilaf with chicken is great and Manya quickly organized this with some of the chicken meat from the morning slaughter.
A special beetroot salad was usually included with large meals. An older neighbor woman prepared this using cooked beets, marinated or fresh green peas, pickles, onions, boiled potatoes, and cooked carrots. The ingredients were all finely diced, salted, mixed with some vinegar and oil and then placed in a large bowl. Americans call this a Russian Salad while Russians call it a vinegrett. Father loves that vinegar taste and Mother and I cannot stand it.
All that remained were the vegetables which village girls washed and arranged on platters. These attractive raw vegetables were used as salads and placed on the tables with the other dishes.
Perozhki are a national food in Russia and it is important for each cook to make them correctly—one’s reputation is on the line. They are usually served with a self-composed poem involving the perozhki, as the perozhki and the poem enjoy a yin-yang relationship. Perozhki are eaten as snacks and are not usually served with a meal. These tidbits are eaten still warm from the oven with their dough wrappings baked to a light golden brown. The dough is a smooth, buttery satin kept in a bowl. The cook grabs a small dab, places it on a cooking sheet, and smashes it flat with a strong blow of her fist. It is filled, folded over, and the flaps joined by squeezing them together with one’s fingers. The size ranges from two to about ten mouthfuls per perozhki. Some fillings are mushrooms, fried onions, and diced boiled eggs. Others may be juicy meat and onion with peppers. Another batch could have fried cabbage and onions with diced and boiled eggs, or even sweet cottage cheese or curd, fresh fruit, fruit preserves, or fish. Perozhki were served prior to the welcome-home feast and the cook and poem provider was Varvara herself.
Samovars appeared from several homes and were made ready. The large interior chamber was filled with cold water which would be the source of hot water for the tea. Next, burning homemade charcoal was dropped down the draft chimney and then the draft chimney extension was added on top. The charcoal was allowed to burn until no more smoke was visible, indicating that the water was hot. The chimney extension on top of the samovar was replaced by a small pot full of very strong tea: a tea essence. The samovar kept both this tea essence and the chamber of water quite hot. For a cup of tea, one simply puts a small bit of tea essence into the cup and dilutes it with hot water.
The tables were finally ready and in late afternoon the hungry guests, dressed in their finest, sat down to celebrate Mikhail, Mareika, and Slahva’s long-awaited return to Arscent’evo. It was a merry group with much shouting and laughing.
The environment has a great influence on how one perceives food and how food tastes. This is well understood by Russians who always have family, friends, music, dancing, singing, jokes, and speeches at a feast.
Rural people who grow big and strong are content and live long and healthy lives. They owe much to hard physical work and the wholesome home-grown and unprocessed food that constitutes their diet. There is absolutely no doubt of this.
The Sariechev welcome-home feast continued on and on. Speeches by everyone who wanted to talk and present a toast provided the entertainment. No one was bashful and some of the speeches were very long. Laughter and jokes punctuated the conversation.
Mareika and Slahva had not been in this village since their first visit. Then they were skinny, recovering from sickness, malnutrition, and stress. Now they were the picture of health and Mareika was the beauty that Mikhail first saw in Mongolia. The villagers were astounded at her loveliness and made many jokes about her three-year transformation. As dinner wound down, music and singing broke out, followed by dancing. Waltzes and folk dances were the most popular.
It was a long, highly enjoyable feast and it felt good to be alive! Although most Russians remember 1947 as a famine year, my family has always remembered it as the year of the feast.
35. Mikhail’s New Challenge
The feast did have a bitter side. Mikhail’s parents were sad that their oldest son Vassily was not present. He was the only family member missing, although his wife Yevdokia and 12-year-old son Anatoly had arrived for the feast from their Ryazan home. Mikhail also wanted to see his oldest brother or to hear something about his fate.
The family had not received even one letter from my uncle Vassily since 1941 and it was now 1947. He had been on the western front fighting against the fascists and after his first or second battle no more letters came from Vassily. The family maintained hope that he was alive because no one had reported seeing his dead body.
Vassily’s parents knew there was a possibility that he was in a fascist concentration camp. This was not a pleasant thought because hundreds of thousands of Soviet Red Army troops died miserably as German prisoners-of-war (POWs). Further, Stalin believed that good soldiers would not allow themselves to be captured and so liberated Soviet POWs were scorned and some were even accused of being German spies. These unfortunates were interrogated and almost all of them were then shipped out to the Gulag Archipelago. In addition to this punishment, the families of these men lost their precious food ration cards.
A special document finally arrived from the military after the war stating that Vassily was “missing-in-action.” Almost sixty years later, there still is no further official information available concerning my uncle Vassily Ivanovich Sariechev.
Uncle Vassily and wife Yevdokia, about 1940.
Many years after the feast, Mikhail gained the capability of locating p
eople and he found a few soldiers who remembered his brother. However, only two members of Vassily’s Red Army unit were able to shed light on his disappearance. The first man, wounded in the famous battle at Smolensk, was in a military hospital when he saw Vassily, who was recovering from severe wounds to his chest, stomach, an arm, and a leg. Vassily was a very large handsome man, easy to see and hard to forget.
The second man, also wounded at Smolensk, told of an evacuation across the wide Dnieper River, which was interrupted by a German Luftwaffe dive-bomber attack. He remembered seeing the wounded Vassily on another boat, amid the noisy chaos and numbing fear. The witness’s boat was bombed and sank and, while he was swimming, shock waves from another bomb rendered him unconscious and he awoke later in a Soviet rear-echelon military hospital.
Smolensk qualifies as one of the oldest and most historic cities in Russia, as it dates back to the ninth century. The city, located on both banks of the Dnieper River, is on the direct trade route from the Baltic Sea to the Byzantine Empire, which accounts for its long and prosperous life. Smolensk also lies on the main road between Moscow and Western Europe. It was the object of four centuries of struggle between Lithuania-Poland and Russia. Napoleon burned it during a major engagement in 1812. One of the bitterest battles of World War II occurred in and around Smolensk from July to September 1941. This area was militarily important as it helped prevent the Germans from advancing to Moscow before winter. The battle of Smolensk was where my Uncle Vassily was wounded and it was considered probable that he died in the subsequent river crossing bombardment. However, my family always held on to a hope that somehow Vassily would turn up, safe and sound. This hope was expressed at the family reunion in 1947. It lived within my grandparents and they died with this hope still in their hearts.
My Russian Family Page 25