Tatiana's Table: Tatiana and Alexander's Life of Food and Love

by Paullina Simons

  Tania’s Best Corn Bread

  Moist, sweet, delicious. If you like corn bread, this is hard to beat. You can use all half-and-half instead of mixing with buttermilk, but Tatiana liked the slight acidity provided by the buttermilk. Serve to accompany chili.

  1 cup (150g) all-purpose (plain) flour

  1 cup (150g) corn meal

  ½ cup (100g) sugar

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1 tablespoon baking powder

  1 stick (110g) unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing

  1 egg

  ½ cup (125ml) half-and-half, or equal quantities of cream and milk

  ½ cup (125ml) buttermilk

  Heat oven to 400°F (200°C). Lightly grease a 6-cup muffintin.

  In a medium bowl, combine the flours, sugar, salt and baking powder and mix well. Add butter and mix with a fork or a wooden spoon until mixture is crumbly.

  In another bowl combine half-and-half, buttermilk and egg and whisk until combined. Add to the flour mixture, mix carefully with wooden spoon until just combined. Fill the muffin tins to the top. Bake 22 minutes or so until toothpick comes out clean. Do not overbake. Muffins will not get very brown on top. You can also make the corn bread in a cast-iron pot in the oven, or cast-iron corn bread molds.

  Anthony for a long while ate nothing but corn bread.

  Many evenings they went swimming and to the park, and Alexander every once in a while even chased Tatiana into the water and over the monkey bars.

  After the corn bread when they went to the beach, and Anthony found a little friend to dig sand holes with, Alexander and Tatiana played in the water, she was swimming away, he was catching up with her, just because she had gotten a fair jump and was far ahead. He yelled after her, “Watch out, Tania, because when I capture you tonight, I warn you, I take no prisoners.”

  Promise, Shura? she whispered to herself, slowing down so he could catch her.

  Plantains with Rum

  They took a short walk at night to the park near their houseboat after Anthony fell asleep. They walked side by side. Tatiana noticed that he slowed down so that she could keep up with him. He walked close, and his bare arm bumped against her bare arm. They walked like this in the warm silence, and then Alexander reached down and took hold of Tatiana’s hand. She squeezed back, she held her breath.

  “Tatia …” he whispered.

  “Yes, darling?”

  “Oh, nothing. When we come back, can you make that dessert I like?”

  “You’ll have to be more specific. Bread pudding?”

  “Plantains with rum.”

  “Ah. Of course. Want to go back now? I’ll make it right away.”

  “No, not yet. Let’s just … walk a while. Not too far. The boy will be fine. He never wakes up.” He saw her face. “Never wakes up until we’re right in the middle of something.”

  “Yes. Sleep.”

  “Come on. Just to the water. I’ll have a smoke. Then we’ll go back.”

  They walked in silence the rest of the way to the picnic benches under the palm trees, the Biscayne Bay a dark breath away. He lit a cigarette. She climbed on the table and sat next to him. They faced the water, sat quietly, didn’t speak much.

  “Your hair smells nice,” he said, and, leaning over, lightly pressed his face into it.

  Under the palms they sat, side by side, in the warm night that smelled of the salt ocean. He smoked. She inhaled for the Atlantic, for the Marlboro, for his breath, for his smell. She inhaled for everything. When he finished his cigarette, he glanced over at her. She glanced up at him, swallowed, and then carefully climbed into his lap.

  “Just like before, huh, Tatiasha?” His arms went around her. He closed his eyes.

  “Shh. Nothing is like before.” She pressed his face into her neck, into her silken hair.

  Plantains with Rum:

  2–3 ripe plantains

  3 tablespoons butter

  ¼ cup (50g) light brown sugar

  ¼ cup (60ml) rum

  ½ cup (110ml) heavy cream

  Optional:

  vanilla ice cream, to serve

  Peel the plantains and cut them into ½-in (1cm) slices. Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom saucepan, add the plantains and cook for 5 minutes, turning over once, until both sides are light golden. Add sugar, mix, cook for another 3 minutes or so, until the plantains have absorbed the sugar. Stir in the rum, light a match and ignite. The flame will be quite dramatic, small children will be both mortified and delighted. The husband will be horrified. Before he has time to start yelling and heading for the fire extinguisher, the flambé will be out. Remove from heat, stir in heavy cream, serve immediately, with ice cream if you wish.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Scottsdale in the Desert

  Tatiana and Alexander settled in Arizona like immigrants piling out of their covered wagons. For a long time they lived in the covered wagon, so to speak, cooked on the fire outside and washed in the proverbial river. They lived as if they could not believe their good fortune. And then a remarkable thing happened, and so slowly that it went almost unnoticed by everyone. Tatiana got Le Creuset pots and Global knives. She bought Kitchen-Aid stand mixers and food processors, and Cuisinart baking utensils, cookie sheets and cheesecake forms. She filled her little kitchen with the products of permanence, and it was as if the utensils themselves sprouted into the ground and grew roots. When events conspired to make Alexander want to leave Arizona, Tatiana could not imagine leaving. This was home, for good, for bad, for ever.

  In Arizona her cooking had changed once again. For one, Alexander bought a barbecue grill. Ever the soldier, he still liked cooking over an open flame, but now the open flame had a cast-iron rack and adjustable temperature and a warming tray. So the things that they cooked when they camped in the United States for three years became a fixture of their evenings—hamburgers, hot dogs, steak, chicken, sausage, baked potatoes, corn.

  And Tatiana became friends with Francesca.

  Francesca was a young woman from Mexico who lived down the street. For the first few years of their friendship, Francesca was always pregnant. During this time, Tatiana taught Francesca English and to return the favor, Francesca taught Tatiana how to cook some Mexican dishes. Tatiana never did make her own tortillas, but Alexander fully embraced the marinated steak called fajitas, and the lime chicken and the meatball soup, but none so much as the beergaritas, which he himself made every Saturday night, making every Saturday night a celebration, particularly if Anthony was sleeping over his friend Sergio’s house, and Tatiana and Alexander were alone. Alexander had his own theory about beergaritas that he, for fear of offending Tatiana, did not verbalize unless she had some beergaritas in her, and then he hoped that by morning she wouldn’t remember what he had called them: the reason Francesca kept having all those babies.

  To go with Alexander’s barbecues, Tatiana added more cold salads to their meals, not mayonnaise-based Russian salads, but lettuce and tomato based American salads.

  And Tatiana baked. She baked cookies and corn muffins, banana bread and pies. The interest in baking never waned, because just as Anthony got to be a teenager and started to pretend he wasn’t interested in his mother’s cookies anymore, Tatiana had three more children, one after the other, first the two boys, sixteen months apart, and then a few years later a baby girl. So the sixties were spent waiting for letters from Anthony in Vietnam and baking for the little ones. And when the children grew up and had their own children, she baked for her grandchildren. No one could come to her house without asking if there was something she had made earlier that day. Everyone had their favorites, and Tatiana baked happily for them all, never denying them, for she always remembered the days spent on her hands and knees on the floor, licking the crumbs of the old stale oat flour out of a canvas bag, and wishing not for crumb cake or croissants but for no one in her family to come into the hallway because then she would have to share the scraps.

  Arizona was too hot for soups, fo
r stews, for a broiling kitchen. In the wintertime, Tatiana still made pot roast and curry and shepherd’s pie but “winter” lasted from December to January, and early December still had apricot globemallow blooming on the lawns, and late January often had violet verbena peeking through the sand.

  During their first eight years when Tatiana was working late at the hospital, there was no time to come home at eight and involve herself with an hour’s worth of food prep. She made her food on the weekends and on her days off, so all Alexander had to do was preheat the oven, or put it on low on the stove. On her days off she cooked like a Saturday night short-order cook to make up to Alexander for her late hours at Phoenix Memorial. She thought food would soften him. Sometimes it did. Gradually, nothing would soften him, until life ultimately reached critical mass and exploded. And then rebuilding bombed-out cities took, among other things, Tatiana making three children and Alexander building them a new home. Alexander would come home early from work and grill. She marinated the chicken and the steak for his grilling, she made the baked potatoes and the salads; they sat outside and drank cold liquids, they had steak with salad, and it was still light out, not dark, not cold. Winter seemed to disappear altogether when the new house was built, all white and sunny and spotless. In that house, it was always summer. And in that house, Tatiana made dessert and babies and then dessert with her babies in the white limestone-floor kitchen, while Alexander cooked the steak on the fire outside. “Like a soldier in the woods,” Tatiana said.

  “Just like that,” said Alexander. “Except there was no meat, and we couldn’t start a fire. But I know what you mean. Are you going to make your little rabbit food to go along with my actual food that I’m about to rip off the bone with my teeth?”

  So Tania made her little rabbit food to go with his actual food. She made a salad with fresh mozzarella and bacon pieces. She used iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, sliced carrots, a tomato, crisp crumbled bacon (of course!) and fresh mozzarella, cut into small cubes. If she wanted to be adventurous, instead of mozzarella she used Gorgonzola cheese. “Why Gorgonzola?” asked Alexander. “For a little adventure,” replied Tatiana. And he would stare at her for a second or two before saying, “It’s a fine day indeed when using moldy cheese has become your idea of adventure. Why don’t you really take risks and use two garlic cloves instead of one?”

  For dressing, Tatiana made her own by combining ½ cup of olive oil, ½ cup of balsamic vinegar, two finely chopped garlic cloves, salt and pepper, one teaspoon of freshly squeezed lemon, and shaking very well before pouring.

  Beef Tenderloin

  Alexander called this “the king of meals.” Tatiana cooked it only for guests she was trying to impress. The family loved this cut and had it often, and one afternoon, Harry’s best friend and his parents came over for drinks and salsa, and as they were sitting on the deck, Harry asked, “Mom, what are we having for dinner?” and Tatiana, shrugging, said, “I don’t know. What day is it? Monday? Filet mignon maybe?”

  And the nearby Janie snorted and said, “Oh, no! Not again.”

  3–5lb (1.35–2.25kg) whole and uncut beef tenderloin, trimmed of fat

  Marinade:

  5 tablespoons butter, melted

  2 teaspoons coarse salt

  ½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

  ½ teaspoon cayenne or Cajun seasoning

  2 garlic cloves, grated

  1 tablespoon soy sauce

  1 tablespoon rice vinegar

  1 tablespoon red wine

  1 teaspoon sugar

  Leave tenderloin out at room temperature for 45 minutes.

  Tie it with string from one end to the other, tie it in a spiral as if you were imprisoning it. Preheat oven to 450°F. On the stove top, heat 3 tablespoons peanut oil in a large roaster.

  Prepare your marinade:

  Whisk together the melted butter, salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, red wine, and sugar. Rub the marinade thoroughly over the tenderloin, then place in the preheated roaster on top of the stove and brown on medium-high 2 minutes on each side until nice and brown. Place on a rack inside the pot you just cooked it in, and grill inside the oven for 25 minutes. Take it out, let stand for 20 minutes to compose. It will become very moist and be much easier to slice.

  In the winter, Tatiana served the tenderloin with mashed potatoes.

  In the summer, Alexander grilled potatoes brushed with melted butter and left untouched on a closed medium grill for an hour. And because it was Tatiana’s favorite, he grilled a sweet potato for her, while she melted a little butter with brown sugar and cinnamon to pour over the top.

  Beef Barley Soup

  Alexander’s favorite soup.

  Sirloin steak, onion, bay leaf, a little oregano, frozen mixed veg, water, a beef bouillon cube, barley, cooked for an hour. “It’s almost like a Russian soup, Tatia,” he would say, sitting at her table, and drawing the bowl near.

  “Just the barley, Shura. No stringbeans in Russia, no corn.”

  “Yes, and no frozen veg.”

  “Well, no. And no olive oil. And no meat.”

  “Right. But the barley is Russian. The barley and the bay leaf.”

  “Yes, darling,” said Tatiana. “It’s almost like a Russian soup, then.”

  3 tablespoons olive oil

  1 large onion, very finely chopped

  2 garlic cloves, very finely chopped

  1½lb (700g) sirloin steak, trimmed of fat and cut into 1-in (2.5cm) cubes

  5 cups (1.125 liters) cold water

  1 bay leaf

  2 beef bouillon cubes

  1 cup (175g) frozen mixed vegetables

  ½ cup (100g) pearl barley

  salt and pepper, to taste

  Heat the olive oil in a 4-or 5-quart (3.6-or 4.5-liter) pot, add onion, cook until pale, add garlic, cook 30 seconds, add cubed beef and brown on all sides for 5 minutes. Add water, bay leaf, salt, pepper, bouillon cubes, bring to boil, reduce heat, cover, simmer for 30 minutes. Add vegetables and barley, bring back to boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer 30 more minutes, or until barley is completely cooked.

  Corn on the Cob

  Corn was like plantains. Corn was quintessentially American. It was indigenous to the continent, the world had not heard of it until Christopher Columbus discovered it, it was not widely available elsewhere, and it was nearly completely unavailable in Russia, though they did have a name for it—“KookooROOza”—a made-up name for something they read about, like prairies and lassoes, but had never seen in real life. Tatiana’s feeling for corn was strong. She made corn fritters, which were pancakes with corn, and corn muffins, which were muffins with corn meal, and corn chowder, which was soup with corn. And the children loved cornflakes and popcorn, and sometimes spent whole dinners wondering about the surprise and joy of the first Indian who placed a kernel over heat and kept it there long enough to pop and have a white puff, like cotton, pop out.

  Alexander, amused by Tania’s love for corn, prepared it in the simplest American way: he basted it with butter and placed it on his grill for five minutes, turning it over a few times. A few times, too, he called his grill the “bourzhuika” but this made Tatiana cry so he stopped doing it, but Tatiana said she knew he was thinking it, and cried anyway.

  Tatiana cooked the corn in a little boiling water with the lid closed to let the steam take care of things. She added a teaspoon of sugar, and cooked it for only a few minutes because it was meant to be crunchy and sweet.

  Onions, Onions, Onions

  To everything Tatiana cooked, she added onions. Alexander said it was a Russian thing. “Can’t take the Soviet Union out of the girl,” he said.

  “I don’t know why you’re complaining,” she rejoined, chopping, mincing, slicing, frying. “You love onions. Think of your beef barley soup.”

  “I’m not complaining. I’m just saying.”

  She sliced them thinly and fried them on medium with butter and a little oil, she added salt and a little cayenne pepper when t
hey got golden, and continued to fry until they caramelized. She used them in everything.

  “Everything?” she asked. “Brownies?”

  “Savory, I said.”

  “You didn’t say.”

  At dinnertime, the house was first filled with the smell of bread, then the smell of onions, followed by the smell of chocolate.

  Onions for flavor: stews, soups, sauces, and of course, macaroni and cheese.

  “Of course,” said Alexander. “Macaroni and cheese.”

  Onions sweet and caramelized, in hamburgers, over rice, over chicken, over steak. She just cut them differently. She small-diced them for hamburgers, but over steak or calves liver she sliced them thinly, julienne-style, in long strips.

  For parties Tatiana made onion dip. Even her guacamole was passed up.

  Onion Dip:

  2 large onions, thinly sliced

  2 tablespoons canola oil

  2 tablespoons butter

  ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ½ teaspoon black pepper

  ½ cup (110g) mayonnaise

  ½ cup (110g) sour cream

  ½ cup (110g) cream cheese, at room temperature

  Fry the onions on medium-high in the oil and butter. Reduce heat to medium-low, add cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, continue to cook for 15 more minutes until caramelized. Don’t stir for the first 7 minutes, and only occasionally afterwards. Make sure not to burn the onions, otherwise they lose their sweet taste and caramelized brown hue. Take off heat, cool slightly.

  Meanwhile, mix together mayo, sour cream, and cream cheese, add onions with all the juices, mix well, serve warm. You can omit the cayenne pepper if you don’t like kick in your onion dip. Alexander liked kick.