Around the world in 80 markets, and more

Moving on..

2010-11-14T17:23:00.004Z

Dear readers,

I have long realised that my blog has moved on from being mainly about farmers markets and that visually the site needs a bit of an uplift. Hence I am very pleased to announce that my new blog is now up and running:

The Gastronomical Me at www.gastronomicalme.com

This means that 'Around the world in 80 markets' is now closed for business, and I hope to see all of you again at the new address.

Katrina

Grand things are coming...

2010-10-30T19:14:00.002+01:00

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

I am very much around and writing judiciously - albeit in my head mainly. The reason - my new website - bigger, better, sexier, more beautiful - is coming. You will like it, I promise.

What do you think the site will be called?;)

Idleness spread on a perfect peanutbutter sandwich

2010-10-11T18:41:00.007+01:00

How do you feel about Sunday nights?

They come in different hues, from candy-floss melancholy to damn sticky depression. Oh, you can enjoy them, but only in as much as you are prepared to transgress the sado-masochistic boundary and give in to the fun of endless numbing telly watching, always horizontal, always you'll start afresh, you'll be focused, disciplined and live your life to the full. But for now...for now, you have the full right to be lazy, to be a sloth, to experience that sense of ennui..

The ultimate symbol of laziness - Oblomov: then and now by Boris Kulikov.

Russians have perfected this state of idleness to such an extent that there is even a well-worn term to describe the condition - oblomovshina. Oblomov was a character of the 19th century novel by Ivan Goncharev, whose symbol of the superfluous man staying in bed, unable to make decisions, has become mythical, quoted and used to explain the wrongness of everything from the Russian October revolution to Russians' weakness for vodka. As Lenin famously said:

Russia has made three revolutions, and still the Oblomovs have remained... and he must be washed, cleaned, pulled about, and flogged for a long time before any kind of sense will emerge.

( I particularly like the reference to flogging by the way)

Food of course is an exception (provided you have a devoted serf or two, or a local take-away). If I remember correctly Oblomov spent his days languorously moving from breakfast to brunch to dinner, then tea and supper.

For a lazy man,” Goncharov explains, “recumbence” is a “pleasure..

Peanut butter by onearth.org

Peanut butter, I propose, is the solidified epitome of this state of mindless non-doing. It is smooth, even the crunchy version lets you slip each nut without resistance. It is so intensely savoury and sweet at the same time that all foods go well with it, letting you forget the good and bad: bread, with honey, pieces of fruit, yoghurt, other nuts, biscuits, bananas, salami, gherkins, with bacon or just its fat as I found the night before...a jar can be consumed slowly and exuberantly with just a spoon: so little effort, so much calorie. A perfect Oblomov meal.

How do you like your peanut butter?

Cold war and school dinners

2010-09-29T20:18:00.014+01:00

It's not all sex, drugs and roll'n'roll with me and food, you know. Whereas the food I often crave is high octave stuff - not in terms of it complexity (Michelin star plates leave me cold somewhat), but its impact (fat, offal, cream); today I've had the most warm and cuddly lunch possible:

...a school dinner par excellence - the Roast dinner with (many) trimmings.

The bestest school dinner: Roast chicken with stuffing, roast potatoes, steamed broccoli and carrots, with gravy

Not just any old school dinner, a very special dinner of Norfolk free-range chicken with local veg and a beautiful oaty apple crumble with grapes grown in the school's own garden (the M & S ad voice seems somehow inappropriate here due to its overt sexuality, but you get the picture).

You see, I happen to work for a project that aims to 'transform' the food culture of this country. Yes, as grand as this. You probably remember Jamie's attempts a few years back to get kids eating 'proper' food, instead of the infamous turkey twizzlers (although I'm quite intrigued by the latter, actually makes me thing of the 19th century fad to make 'things', fabulous, magical things out of foods)? Well, Food for Life (the name of this grandeurs endeavour) started there with Jamie and school dinners. Then the grand dame of the British food world - the Soil Association - took over, got some funding, and made the whole thing bigger and better.

The most important people in the school: the dinner ladies.

Today over 5000 schools across England ate their Roast Dinner simultaneously, in an attempt to break the Guinness record for the most number of schools serving the same dinner at the same time'! These schools were also making a point, a stand if you like, to 'save the school dinner' in view of all the mortifying budget cuts so thoughtfully put upon us. Go dinners, go!

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to be a little helper for a morning, and boy did the smells and sounds of that bustling school kitchen bring a tear to my sceptical eye. Inevitably, I remembered the days full of buckwheat smells and the looks of the wobbly semolina porridge...

Soviet dinners, sans beer for the little ones.

In those far-away Soviet days of communist cheer and seemingly unspoilt ration feeder I would very often take my obed (a more substantial version of the Western lunch if you may) in the kindengarden where my mum worked as a teacher. In those days Soviet kids used to study in shifts in schools, ie either study from early in the morning and be done by early afternoon, or start at about 1pm and finish at 6. So I would come to visit my mum and be fed after my daily Lenin's 'study, study, study'.

Oh, the sweet memories of those wholesome meals...

I remember getting down to a bowl of watery but brilliantly red and delicious borsh, following it up with a plate of mash potatoes and kotlety (often translated as burgers into English, but really, how can you compare those little dense flat patties of course pork mince and chunks of onion to a mere burger?!) and finish it off perhaps with a bowl of zapekanka with kisel' (a warm baked cheesecake with raisins, served floating in a fruity, thick drink)...

The most quintessential English pud - apple crumble with custard.

I'm not going to go all nostalgic on you and say that the food in all schools and kindergardens were this good, but the food I remember was ordinary and boring, 'real' as we love to call such food these days, made without any pre-packaged sauces (they were none to choose from), totally from scratch on that day. There were no choices ('Vegetarianism does not exist in the USSR'), no allergies (you go a bit red, so what, a normal child reaction), no care for the provenance of your meat (you probably didn't want to know).

...'We have made extraordinary into ordinary' said the head at the school about their school dinners. Sounds damn pompous, but makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I ate diligently my full plate of the Traditional Roast dinner, finishing it off with some crumble and custard - not far at all from my beloved kotlety and zapekanka, are they, really?

What is your favourite memory of the school dinner?

Yet another autumn, yet another breakfast

2010-09-18T14:25:00.009+01:00

Early autumn in the Alexandra Palace park.

I love autumn. In all its disguises: the hellishly changing weather, the wind, the soft sun, the unexpectedly piercing light, the colours, that suit me so much better than the unapologetic brightness of summer, they also seem milder to the world around.

Where summer is brash, adventurous, in your face, like a young girl that just wants to have fun, sleep around, not think, only act. Autumn is melancholic (that most promising of all moods when a sad smile comes together with a thoughtful eye), understated, sensual, akin to a woman who reflects on her pleasures and only allows those who appreciate and take time to come closer...

Ally Pally, once early Saturday morning.

Autumn also means, of course, the gathering of fruits, harvesting - when all the cliche statements about seasonality and the glut keep flooding in. But this is also the time to collect thoughts, to gather up, a kind of slow breathing out before a jump. The fog and dump air, the early nights allow one to wonder around almost unnoticed, to watch people and rain. To put a hood on or snuggle in underneath a big black umbrella - and think...

Perhaps it is a school girl in me that still thinks that a year starts on 1 September (and in Russia it is always this precise date and never a more practical 4 or 5), with hordes of excited kids wearing long, white socks, and a tomato-red pioneer tie, carrying awkwardly the only imaginable flowers - Gladioli - huge, strangely erotic, grown-up. This is when you notice that tick!, the clock changing, you changing - you are deliriously excited and shit scared about the year ahead.

Gladioli by Van Gogh.

...I took the pictures above just this morning, whilst jogging up to Ally Pally. I was rushing, I was on the way to do business, serious, practical stuff, but I had to stop and drink, chew the view. I feel almost embarrassed about being so affected by a few leaves and clouds, but it must be something with that almost physical sense of being part of the cycle - it makes me feel the change, believe that something marvelously exciting is around the corner. I become a little girl, with big wide eyed, holding a strong, warm hand, not yet comprehending but liking it even more for that.

Autumnal (ish) breakfast.

I came back home and marked the arrival of yet another autumn with the tastiest breakfasts I have had in a long time.

Slowly crisped up bacon Salad of lettuce, ripen tomatoes, spring onions, baked beetroot Marinated Polish cucumbers Pain complet (French wholemeal bread) that I let to soak up all the bacony juices A cup of strong, milky coffee

A very simple, nothing to report breakfast. It was tasty above all. It made me believe that there would be many, many more breakfasts like this - and that's what matters.

The Taste Awards - Kafka would have had a feast...

2010-09-06T22:42:00.016+01:00

Hell with it. I'm going to let go, gorge, indulge myself, over-do it, envelop inside and out with this voluptuous feeling of a total surrender to food. I am going to enjoy every molecule of it, slowly and quickly at the same time, anticipating the guilt to come and saying hell with it.

It's a rainy Monday evening, and even the tube is on strike. I am invited to the finals of the Taste Awards in Fortnum's - that pompous dinosaurs of a store that manages to be both eccentricly archaic and tenderly up to date. I have been a judge before, but on this occasion I am wearing high purple heals and gipsy dangling earrings.

Fortnum and Mason's window displays.

Every time I come to the Awards I promise to myself to network, to 'do rounds', to do deals with useless and useful men. But this time I'm saying fuck with it. This is supposed to be THE emporium of food and I am going to do what the Romans did - eat, lick, goggle, swallow until your eyes feel with a delirium of over-satiation.

This is a psychological vomitorium, with me imagining starving African children on the background. Heck with it. My feelings of nutritious happiness will purvey the world and make everything all right.

Fortnum's know how to do high class and kitsch.

Surrounded by the impossible dream of a fat store, full up to its bream with exquisitely branded goodies and exotic packages, all lying, standing, kneeling, all around you, all having their price tags carefully tucked in. They tempt you to forget that not all of them here is for you delectation. Not them. There is so much that you can put your lips around.

...I start with a pig, of course. A big and curvaceous leg of a pig lounging sensually on a crisp white linen. A man with a thin and sharp knife and knowledgeable hands (this skill requires years of practice and a certificate to proof) smiles innocently and offers a sliver to try.

Iberico ham (an unknown to me painter).
My taster thanks to www.iberflavours.com

I take the warm piece of Iberico ham, burgundy and almond colour, roll it and put my tongue over it. Oh hell. If there is a re-incarnation, I know I want to be an Iberico pig, leaving on acres and acres of free land, feeding myself silly on acorns and occasional grass and roots. So Russian of me really. They say these pigs endure extreme temperatures and survive any weather.

Oh, and the fat.

The woman selling the ham started briskly telling me how this fat is actually good, I glanced back and she stops. I do not need to be told that. This fat is so fucking good. I want to put a thin stack of these warm, grainy, fat slices in my bag - for all its £12 per 100gr price tag - and fish out one by one three times a day, to remind myself of the woodlands, smell of mushrooms and wet soil. And this ludicrous over-indulgence.

...After stall after stall of - the best but expected - cheeses I spot a modest little plate full of warm fishcakes (thanks to Moxon's fishmongers). The fat of the Iberico ham is brush and lush, these cakes of cod, lug (?) and wild garlic, are like old-fashioned, flower-patterned pottery laid out on a sunny day.

The man explains that the lug (apparently a forgotten, back of the ear, part of the fish) gives the cakes a more grainy, salt-cod like texture and flavour. Perhaps. I just think they are good and clever - in that they are the only ones on display tonight that are warm and home-made-like. I keep nagging the man about the unsustainability of the cod (he says that the stocks around the UK have actually 'replenished remarkably' - hmm, who knows), whilst putting a blob after blob in my month. I feel cheery.

Then there are rows and lines and stacks of bacon (maple syrup layered), mini baps with sausage (Northumberland, pure pork), ice-creams and sorbets (Bloody Mary and Bloody oranges), more wine, more looking for more, avoiding the glances of lust around - they are for another sausage, no doubt, not for me.

Oaty Vanilla Crunch Creams www.cobbs.inf0

...My heart rate palpitates, I go up a floor, where sweets are laid out. Brownies always do good at such Awards - chocolate, butter, sugar, the no loose Big 3 - triple chocolate, gluten-free with cranberries, macademia nuts.

Eventually I get to a quiet plate of pale biscuits sandwiching cream. I like these. They are the essence of Englishness (perhaps the way the way tourists see it). 'Honest' all-butter biscuits, holding a naughty centre.

I imagine this is something I could make - or rather put together - at home. Proper, expensive oatcakes, say spread with a mixture of high-volume cream cheese mixed in with icing sugar, or caramel, or dark honey. These on display are not like this at all, but I like the feeling of connection to the guy-producer (I seem to think it's a man) who is at the same biscuit wavelength as me.

...I need to go. Words and gazes slur. People's voices are slightly hysterical (or is it my ears?) and so are they months. They keep chewing, munching, slurping. The displays are cleared but they continue moving their lips and teeth as if in a trance. I feel myself saying a whisper of a goodbye to someone, whilst patting my warm, expanded belly, but maybe I am not saying a thing, maybe I am like them, just keep moving, digesting, consuming.

On breaking fast and melancholy

2010-08-26T08:41:00.008+01:00

I have been feeling rather melancholicly recently. May be because I have just come back from sparkly Morocco into the winds and rains of London; or the realisation that the summer, with all its promise of excitement and adventure, is almost over, never quite delivering; or some quasi-existential, not-quite-middle-life crises feelings all rolled into one. Getting out of bed and putting feet onto cold floor is a chore...

Breakfast is the only thing that has been rescuing me. The second thought after 'oh, God, it's morning again' is that of food. No matter how sad I feel, my appetite never leaves me. The enjoyment comes not just from the physical pleasure of tasting and waking up to flavours, but also from the process of thinking up your morning meal. The mental voyage through your fridge, slowly assessing what your tongue and belly feels like, what would comfort you most, adds just a touch of zing to your day. I love breakfasts and don't need to be told that it is healthy to eat them or that one shouldn't rush them. I wouldn't dare.

So here are a few examples of my morning little feasts. Some happened months ago and I have never quite found a reason to write about them. My humble, mostly solitary (J loves his oats with milk and ooof to work) morning meals are my favourite past time, so in the future I will be posting more, perhaps a collage of breakfasts, changing from season to season, mood to mood...But for now:

Soft-boiled egg, Lithuanian rye bread, chopped tomatoes and cucumbers.

This is quite recent, on another melancholic day, crouching on the decking of my garden.

Organic herby sausage, mushrooms fried with garlic and onion, lettuce leaves, with organic tomato ketchup.

Sometime in the spring: I had bought that bottle of ponsy organic ketchup and so made a fry-up to go with it.

Turkish coffee

Some of you, my dear readers, will remember my 'Hot, dark, tempting' post about the making of proper Turkish coffee, in a dzezva. This photo is some 6 months old, but this coffee is a frequent occurrence on my breakfast table (often in this charming butterfly cup).

Smoked mackerel, black bread, cherry tomatoes and salted Polish cucumbers.

Possible one of my most favourite meals any time of the day. You are probably wondering by now about the prevalence of protein and salt in my breakfasts, and lack of dairy and sugar. Yes, my Russo-Ukrainian genes (or habits really) talk here. A bowl of cornflakes (or even good musli) just never has the same soothing or exhilarating effect.

And lastly, but so not listly:

Moroccan breakfast: Ksra (flat bread), beghrir (pancakes), apricot and strawberry jam, watermelon.

From our recent trip to Fez, whilst staying in a beautiful riad, where we were having our breakfast in a courtyard with blue blue skies above us and a melancholy of fading mosaics around us..

Iftar - the breaking of the Fast

2010-08-22T22:13:00.010+01:00

During my recent short trip to Morocco I remember bitterly regretting not having organised a meal in an 'ordinary' family home (not that it's an easy task, but the world of couchsurfing stretching far). We were travelling during Ramadan; when the gruelling test of no eating or drinking (or sex..) is rewarded by the mini-feast of Iftat in the evening. Iftar happens just after the sunset, surrounded by your family, very much akin to our Christmas, and lasts good couple of hours. This is unless you are a single man and then you go to a nearby cafe. I was yearning to experience Iftour in a 'proper' home setting.

Harrira, dates and preserved lemons - a traditional Iftar.
Photo thanks to http://imazighennarif.blogspot.com

It was not until the very last evening, in the small mountain town of Azrou, that I realised that to experience Iftar we did not have to search for an idealic family environment. Finding a simple caf, packed with local Moroccans who for various reasons did not have home to go to, was a great way to see the ritual - and participate in it.

The preparation for the evening meal starts at about 3-4 o'clock in the afternoon when (mainly) women go out shopping for food at numerous markets. Single men go out to buy some ready-made provisions for their solitary evening meals at the market stalls. You can almost touch the anticipation in the air, it increases and speeds up as time approaches the long-awaited break-fast. The atmosphere thickens with people's hunger and smells of cooking.

Counting minutes before Iftour, the meal breaking the fast.

At around 6pm the air turns still, as if in anticipation for a storm. People's bloods starts to run slower, hearts slow down, everyone's eyes are on their watch. The prayer normally takes place about an hour or so before the Iftar, and so you see men leaving the mosques with solemn eyes, perhaps contemplating their spirituality, perhaps their rumbling stomachs. Those dining outside their homes - young unmarried men, businessmen in-between cities, some widowed women - find a place to eat long before the fast is broken. Putting together your meal in such public surroundings is as much of a ritual as making a 3 course meal at home, even if it only means shelling your egg, sprinkling cumin on it, or stirring hot harissa into your soup. You can almost count seconds by the flow of blood pressure running through your ears...

And then it happens, a loud whisper floats through and above the punters in the cafe - you can eat.

The humble Iftar offering: a boiled egg, dates and Chbakiyya.

The traditional Iftar meal almost always consists of Harirra, a thick soup of chickpeas, tomatoes, sometimes lamb and vermicelli. Guidebooks all claim that accompanying the soup with dates is authentic, perhaps, but I have not seen anyone eating their soup with dates. A splash of green olive oil, a chunk of flat bread is all the bowl of very hot soup needs.

Most people actually start off by a drink - a yoghurt drink sold in recycled plastic bottles by women from villages. Or just a can of coke. Then goes a hard-boiled egg, seasoned with cumin. Then the soup. The meal is finished by a glass of very sweet mint tea (which is made with black or green tea leaves by the way, not just hot water and herb) and Chbakiyya, a 'tressed' pastry - a coil of flaky pastry soaked in sugar syrup.

Finishing off the feast: mint tea and Chbakiyya.

..We started our break-fast together with the others in the cafe, but finished it later than others, enjoying the rare sense of feeling part of the proceedings, this quiet, almost sneaky sharing of the tradition that we would not normally be privy. Infiltration of a different kind.

The labyrynth of smells - fruit and veg market, Fez, Morocco

2010-08-21T11:36:00.026+01:00

‘The smells’ – the unforgettable combination of cinnamon, rose water, cumin, dust and dung – disturbing and enticing at the same time.

‘The smells’ is what I tell people when asked why I fell in love with Morocco. If you are looking for dust-free streets and hassle-spared promenades, then Morocco may not be for you. But if you are turned on by the idea of snatching the last glimpses of the Middle Ages, go now and you’ll be forever haunted by the aroma of the leathery broad beans stewed with cumin and sold in shadowy corners; by the smell of old waters collected in the cobbled, no-wider-than-a-donkey’s-arse, streets; by just boiled potato sandwiches sold by a local gang of boys; by dusty but mind-blowingly delicate carpets; by the odour of freshly made leather goods, combined with intensely sugary mint tea poured from dizzy heights…

The streets of old Medina (Fez)

...We came back to Morocco almost five years after out initial olfactory affair with the place, choosing Fez, this ancient city with over 9000 streets hidden in its Medina, for a fleeting breather from London staleness.

The labyrinth of streets and smells

August is a low season in Morocco because of the unbearable heat (40C is normal). This year in addition it is the month of Ramadan, with its soul-testing fasting demands, making travelling a particular challenge. We decided to go on a whim, wanting to experience Morocco in its most uncomfortable.

But once landed, we were taken back by the smell of soil freshly impregnated with rain - the land felt fresh, enlivened. It was pleasant - too pleasant for those looking for the exotic 'otherness'. It was not until we reached the eerily empty walls of Medina (8pm is when everyone rests at home, having broken their fast, before 'hitting the town') that the memories - the smells - started to creep back in. No traveller can escape Fez Medina without getting lost. I wonder whether local inhabitants find their way by nose, as each corner, crook and cranny has its own smell, an olfactory labyrinth of a kind...

Souqs of Fez (and J with a yellow umbrella)

Fez Medina is broken down into sections, souqs, markets, each specialising in a particular trade, each with its unique combination of smells. Thus there is a spice souq, henna souq (now more famous for its pottery), tanneries with their revolting stench of leather treated with dung and chemical dies, the meat market with a whiff of coagulated blood and fresh innards…

Chicken on sale. Tesco 'fresh' carries a different meaning here

The fruit and veg market in the Western part of Medina is unsurprisingly most aromatic and fresh. Mid August is the time of figs - heavy, lilac ones and less sweet, lemony ones. All quite small compared to the perfect giants sold in London. Bursting with flavour quite literally, so ripen that they get slightly sticky on the outside. We couldn't hold ourselves and greedily bought a couple of kilos of each kind from a women who had just come down from a village in mountains.

Figs.

Some believe the ultimate Eden fruit was this aromatic, suggestive-looking fruit, rather than a cool and firm apple

Yellow melons are on the other hand a lot bigger - and needless to say so much more perfumed - than those sold in Green Lanes. We had the pale-green flesh cut up and served with warm bread for breakfast each morning.

Fruit and veg market in Fez

I have read odes to prickly pears which carry a semi-iconic status on Greek islands, but I had myself been disappointed in the past with their undistinguishable flavour. In Fez these hedgehogs of fruits are sold in big wooden carts, with the seller swiftly and miraculously transforming each fruit into a round pink softness, refreshing to no end and only a few un-prickly seeds to deal with. I can't say the prickly thing is my favourite fruit, but I see what those hot-blooded Greeks might like about them.

Prickly pears sold across Medina to clench thirst

Then there were huge pink onions everywhere, almost translucent in colour, sweeter than the standard white variety. We bought just one and brought it all the way to London, where I've been slicing it carefully and enjoying bit by bit with a tomato salad.

Pink onions and very red tomatoes

And of course - tomatoes. Real stuff, with a smell and colour, fully ripen. Most on sale in Fez were not of a particularly fancy variety, but the patience of a farmer who left the fruit on its vine for long enough makes the whole difference. Those who know me know that tomato is what I live for in culinary terms. I hunt them down and buy in bags every time I'm in a county with a suitable climate.

...We came back tired to our hotel, smiling silly, happily, minutes before another thunderstorm poured down, shutting down most aromas of the city, quietening the sounds....We sneaked in our bags of fruit and bread - eating or drinking is not allowed until darkness, remember - and had our mini feast. In bed. Divine. Blasphemous. All the better for it.

Lunch in riad: tomatoes, figs, bread

Napoleon cake - the most Russian French cake

2010-08-15T09:30:00.012+01:00

If you have ever been invited to a celebration party in (or around) Russia, you would have most probably tasted the omnipresent Napoleon cake. Essentially a French Mille-Feuille - a 'thousand layer' cake, often known as a Custard slice elsewhere, it has been adapted, adopted and fully nationalised by Russians, as THE Russian cake.

Napoleon - THE Russian cake

Most Russians will reassure you that the name has a direct link to a certain French Emperor, and was invented in his honour (perhaps in line with another Russian treasure with a French name - salad Olivier). I admit, I have not done a lot of research into the origin of the name (perhaps a topic for my future Phd in Anthropology), but the wise Wikipedia suggests that the recipe is of 'ancient origin' (read, no one really knows) and the name comes from napolitain, ie in French, originated in Naples. the word later got miraculously changed to Napoleon, perhaps by a simple linguist association.

In Russia the most iconic version - or the most Soviet, depending on how you look at it - is made with condensed milk cream, that cloyingly sweet and terrifyingly addictive substance. Unlike the 'proper' French Mill-feuille, where the top is often covered by patterned icing, the Russian version is topped with crumbled pastry. The budget version if you like, which I in fact prefer to the teeth-gnawing icing.

Condensed milk, favourite sweet treat of Soviet children, and the ingredient in Napoleon cake.

I have numerous memories of my mother making Napoleons for me, often in preparation for various school events, such as the ceremony of becoming a Pioneer, or my birthday when it was expected that you'd bring a cake to your school. The memory of the smell - warm, soft butter and baked pastry - aways made me weep the other night, remembering my childhood, my mother's hands, frosted with snow windows in our little wooden house...*clearing away melodramatic tears*.

I have made the Napoleon last night for our big house warming party, challenged to it by Amy, whose 'Soviet Kitchen' I have recently reviewed. The process was surprisingly straight-forward, the result head-spinningly good. I was proud - and stuffed - to my eye balls.

My Napoleon cake

Amy's given a recipe to follow, which I'm relaying here with comments and alternations:

"Наполеон" cake (adopted from Zhenya's recipe)

For the pastry:
1 egg
250g soft butter (but not so much so that it disintegrates, perhaps an hour's out of fridge)
540g flour
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 teaspoon salt
125 ml water (cold)

For the cream:
300g of soft butter
405g tin condensed milk

1. Mix flour and butter with fingertips, till they form breadcrumbs.

2. Mix the water, egg, lemon juice and salt.

3. Pour into the breadcrumbs and mix again. The result will be quite hard to kneed, because of all the butter, so just try to put everything in one neat piece, as much as possible.

4. Divide the mixture into 7 balls and leave in the fridge for an hour (or longer).

Pastry balls before going into fridge for chilling

5. Turn on your oven to 220C (or 200C if fan-assisted).

6. Prepare clean, open kitchen surface. Have a little bit of flour to dust the surface and the pastry whilst working on it. Take out one ball at a time (the colder the pasty, the easier it is to work with), flatten it first with your hands, then roll it out carefully with a rolling pin to shape a thin (about 3 mms) circle, square or a rectangle (depending on what shape you want your finished cake to be). The shapes are going to be all over the place, so you can try to use a plate to cut out your circle, or trim the rough edges later. Don't panic.

7. Using your rolling pin, lift each circle and carefully place onto a baking sheet (no need to smear with butter, as there's so much of it in the dough already). Something I didn't do - prick each circle with a fork in several places, to stop bubbles forming whilst baking; or place another baking sheet on top for the first few minutes of baking it to flatten it.

Making Napoleon's layers

8. Bake 2-3 layers at a time in your oven for about 15 minutes - until they are lightly browned.

9. While they are cooking, mix the butter and condensed milk together, beat to form a cream.

10. Once the circles are cooked, allow to cool. At this stage you can carefully cut out the imperfections with a sharp knife (but be prepared that bigger pieces of pastry may fall off as it is so crumbly - don't worry, it will all be yummy). Take the least perfect circle, crumble it and set aside (you'll need the crumbs to sprinkle on top of the cake for decoration).

11. Start layering your Napoleon: one circle, spread some cream generously (I'd say good 4 tbs), put another circle and so on, finishing with cream. Smear more cream onto the sides - tricky, but persevere.

12. Sprinkle the top and sides of the cake with the crumbs you set aside, and leave to stand in room temperature for 2-3 hours, then transfer into a fridge overnight or even whole day. Napoleon is best on day 2-3, as all the layers will 'soak up' the cream.

Napoleon - the imperfect, yet deliriously delicious result

13. Serve with hot black tea or Turkish coffee.

...My guests ravenously ate the whole cake in some 20 minutes, greedily licking up crumbs and drops of cream. I had to restraint some of them..Nostalgia combined with sugar and fat - the most powerful mix in the world.

'Moon' - Estonian food with a (hi)story

2010-08-13T12:33:00.001+01:00

What is the typical Estonian cuisine? I often get asked upon accidentally dropping my place of origin, a tiny country an hour's ferry drive from Helsinki, with history and pride that stretch its petite body. Most Europeans these days have the vague notion that Estonia is an Eastern-European county, and so associations with dumplings (true), borsch (true) and lots of vodka (sort of true) follow. Ask a Russian, and he'll probably say it is mulgikapsad, an Estonia version of Polish bigos, a stew of sauerkraut and meat (sort of true) and a curious combination of herring and cottage cheese (I am yet to sample).

'The essence of Estonian cuisine is in its numerous, small islands, which, because of their remoteness have been less affected by centuries of occupation: sturdy vegetables, plentiful fish, forest goods:

Roman Zaštšerinski explains to me, an award-winning chef who has recently opened his own restaurant 'Moon' (pronounced as mo-hon, meaning a poppy in Estonian) in a humble but hip area of Kalamaja, right next to Tallinn harbour. This 'family' kohvik (a cafe that serves food, not just snacks), follows the mantra so often overused in the UK - fresh, local, seasonal - but that seems so refreshingly novel in Tallinn, especially when combined with Roman's restraint creativity.

Recently opened Moon restaurant:
(from left to right) Igor Andrejev (chef), Roman (chef and owner) and Jana Zaštšerinski (owner and sommelier)

Roman and I, together with his wife, Jana Zaštšerinski, the co-owner and the laid-back sommelier, are sitting in one of Moon's rooms, a few minutes before it opens for a busy lunch service. It is hot and blindly sunny outside, and the airy room full of light wood feels even lighter; in fact, the place feels like a good gastro-pub, with its sturdy furniture and un-fussy cutlery. Both owners are impossibly young, already with an impressive track record (Roman's been named the best Chef by Gastronomy Society of Estonia, and is a chef-de-cuisine of one of the top Tallinn restaurants Ö). They are relaxed, confident with firm hand-shakes. Roman smiles sincerely and asks straight away to address them informally with 'ty' (an informal version of 'you'). Even if only for 10 minutes, their attention was undividedly mine.

I am curious what they think about the 'real' Estonian food - is it disappearing with Estonian burgeoning encounter with the EU and people's slow but steady financial independence?

Jana animatedly reassures me that on the contrary, a lot of young people are increasingly interested in grow-your-own, dachas, shopping at farmers' markets. In fact, she half-smiles, it is more her mother's generation that scorned the markets - those caught in between the Soviet collectivism and modern-day yearning to return to 'one's roots'. Jana dreamily tells me how she remembers having to collect podorozniki (weed with lots of healing properties, growing in abundance by the side of roads) as part of her summer school tasks. She is planning to get Moon's staff to do similar things whilst the restaurant is closed in July...

Estonian forests - full of edible goodies, used in Moon's kitchen

What did they want to achieve with opening their own place, I wonder, after all it is so much simpler than Roman's previous haute-couture ventures.

'It's all about the ingredients and simplicity':

Roman explains. Moon uses a heck of a lot of semi-obscure Estonian berries (such as chokeberry, lingonberry) and they work with several local producers on sourcing produce. Fish comes from the fish market literally down the road. To a foodie Brit this sounds so familiar, but at the same time my heart was melting under Estonian's curiously hot sun - re-connecting people with food that has history does a better job than any commission on ethnic diversity...

Inside of Moon

Who comes here? Roman explains that at the very beginning it was mainly Estonians who were frequenting Moon, but these days it is both Russians and Estonians, as well a few wondering Finns and Swedes.

As the restaurant started to fill in for lunch, I saw quite a few robust young men, on their own or accompanied by pretty but professional looking young women.

Men who earn enough to afford a nice lunch out, but not too much to have to bear a suit and a tie.

The class is a better unifier in modern

Estonia

it seems, which is soothing to my battered Russian heart; and at Moon it is the young, professional, well-educated.

To me Roman and Jana are the symbols of this who-gives- the fuck- about-your-'nationality' attitude: Roman being a Rus, Jana being Estonian, speaking effortlessly both languages (and English of course), transcending any seeming language and nationality barriers blindly - in a good way. The banter in the restaurant amongst the owners, their funky young stuff and the punters is an intermingle of languages. Estonia is finally embracing rather than stuffing its cosmopolitanism. I left hopeful – and very full.

So what about the food?

It is wholesome, inventive, young-spirited. It's good.

Home-made bread at Moon

Roman with his worldy experience, manages to combine European influences with Estonian eccentricities, resulting in such dishes such as Orsotto (risotto made out of barley, grown widely in Estonia) with roasted beetroot and goat cheese. Hating barley from my Soviet kindergarden days, the grain has been resurrected with the addition of earthy vegetables, spicy olive oil and a fun addition of garlic breadcrumbs on top. Clever and delicious.

Orsotto with roasted beetroot and goat cheese

There are a few squarely Russian dishes on the menu, with meaningful tweaks; such as these pickled (salted marinade, with just a bit of sugar) cucumbers, served with sourcream and honey. A revelation.

Pickled cucumbers with honey and sour cream

More classic offerings are the Siberian pelmeni, dumplings served in wild mushroom bouillon - delicate (a young pigglet?) pork flavour with intense aroma of mushrooms, and Borsch made with beef stock - that NamiNami specifically recommended to me. I would have loved to try Boeuf a la tartar with spicy Adzika (hot Georgian paste).

Desserts also borrow from native lands, with such creations as Napoleon (classic Soviet mille-feuille cake) with lingonberry's jam. I went for an alcoholic closing - home-made liqueur from black chokeberry (Aronia). Dark, strong, yet refreshing.

Go.

Moon Kohvik. address Võrgu 3, Tallinn 10415. Tel: + 372 6 314 575.

A 3-course dinner for two, including drinks and service is around EEK600-700, or £35.

'My Soviet Kitchen'

2010-08-11T08:11:00.013+01:00

I banged the jar of salted cucumbers sideways on the table covered with patterned kleyonka - the lid easily came off. He cut off three thick slices of servelat, dense with fat and a memory of pig, and placed them sparingly onto oblongs of black bread. Vodka glasses were ready, all warm, bitter and heaven-promising. We threw back our heads - not too far, mind you, the space didn't allow - and gulped in one go...

'Soviet kitchen', photo by Andriy Bychay

Good old, old days, eh? Done by millions of (ex) Soviet people, in tiny spaces of their kitchens, shared by neighbours, friends, families, passer-bys..

Never, however, shared with crowds of gallery visitors, whilst sitting on a taburetka, on and as a display, in an alcove of the church crypt!

This is exactly what happened to me the other day at the launch of Amy Spurling's book 'My Soviet Kitchen. Ivy's guide to life in the ex-USSR' published by Roastbooks.

Amy's newly-published book

Described by some as a 'neo chick lit with a darker side, a vodka twist, recipe’s galore and a generous slice of post-Soviet living', the book (and its companion guide as a free bonus) is, from what I can make, a fictionalised story of the author's journey as a Phd student in Russia (as well as Georgia, Estonia, Uzbekistan) in the years soon after the collapse of the USSR.

Having only read a few pages so far, I can say that Amy's writing style is snappy, light, and witty, with the most dead pan English understatement you can imagine. This combined with Russian over-flowing love for drama and exaggeration, makes for a rather entertaining read (note, am practising English understatement). Some compared the book to Bridget Jones's dairy - Soviet style - and I can imagine why (especially with Amy's weakness for omitting pronouns at the beginning of sentences - am liking the style;)).

'The book cover', photo by Andriy Bychay

Amorous adventures, cultural clashes, awkward encounters with foreigners - the book you can easily swallow up in a few hours whilst lying on a beach (or in bed, whilst nursing vodka-induced hang-over). However, 'My soviet Kitchen' is so well-researched and full of such precise - and hilarious - description of all the kitsch Soviet detail, such as the composition of komunalkas (communal flats, housing several families, and one kitchen) and how to shop in a ex-USSR supermarket (queue 1 to choose, queue 2 to pay, queue 3 to pick up), that it will be fun to read for the most macho of us.

I would give out copies of the accompanying little book 'The guide to life, post-soviet style' to any non-Soviet person who is either:

a) married to a Rus
b) interested in being married to a Rus
c) or ever finds oneself in a company of Russians.

The guide has recipes (such as Estonian Kama drink or Georgian feast), Mayakovsky's Lilya Brik muse and their menage a trois, Properties of Soviet Snow (slyakot, parosha, purga, etcetc), and even the band DDT and Viktor Tsoi!

...Back to the launch.

As in Amy's book, we were taken on the journey through the Estonian banya, sauna, complete with Estonian beers and beech venik:

'Estonian sauna', photo by Andriy Bychay

A proper Georgian feast (thanks to Iberia, a Georgian restaurant in North London and the Georgian wine society), which later served as a real-life snack table, all eaten to the bone:

'Georgian feast' , photo by Andriy Bychay

A Soviet train, with real train-y chukh-chuch sounds (i-pod, behind the red curtain) and vodka:

'Soviet train' , photo by Andriy Bychay

...3 hours later, we were dancing to DDT jauntily, doing khorovods (holding hands in circles) and were very, very drunk.

From Amy's 'companion guide to life':

'Soviet-man stages of drunkenness:

Man disappears to the toilet and comes back with wet hair. At attempt to revive himself and regain lost ground.

Man slumped against the wall.

Man slumped against the front door when you open it.'

Oxford Food Symposium, or how to find similar-bellied friends whilst tasting rotten herring

2010-08-03T22:06:00.021+01:00

'How do you feed hundred people with one goat? You can't. You need to ferment the meat of one goat to feed the crowd' a Sudanese saying quoted by Harrold McGee.

Still life with ham, lemon, a roll, a glass of wine, and others on a table by Pieter Claesz

When faced with an enormity of task to relay to you, my dear reader, the proceedings and happenings of the Oxford Food Symposium I have recently attended, my mind (or belly that is) goes into a gentle stupor. Where does one start?

And so I won't bother, I'll just tempt you with a few delectable tit-bits that will hopefully interest you to read on - and, indeed, join me and another 200 knighted foodies at the next year's Symposium.

'Never heard of it! Oxford what??'

This glorious 2 day event is essentially a series of high-brow (and less so) academic lectures, combined with a number of extraordinary feasts - all taking place in Oxford, at St Catherine's college.

St Catz, Oxford - the location of the symposium. The canteen

The symposium has been going for some 30 years, every year focusing on a particular theme. This year being - hence the afore-mention quote - 'Cured, fermented and smoked'.

The event has changed its shape quite dramatically from its modest beginnings when a few well chosen (including such legends as Claudia Roden, whose illumenous presence was still there this year) got together to discuss the higher meanings of food. Now it is a more sizeable gathering of over 200 democratically paid attendees.

In short, it's for those of use who ascribe to - I like to eat,' therefore I think.

'Okeeeey, but what kind of lectures? give us some flavour!'

The day kicked off by formidable Sidney Mintz - an Anthropologist most famous for his 'Sweetness and power, the place of sugar in modern history', but is akin a semi-god for most impressionable young anthropologists. I had a pleasure of discussing the role of sauerkraut in Jewish Eastern European history with him very briefly.

Sidney Mintz was one of the speakers at the Symposium

Some topics covered were the history of Sustromming - a heavily fermented herring from the north of Sweden; fermentation from a microbe's point of view and the role of corned beef in shaping the Irish identity. Pure, unfermented bliss.

'Cut to the chase. What was the food like?'

Sadly, I missed the opening dinner on Friday night - a Feast of Cockaigne cooked by Jeremy Lee of Blueprint Café, but I cought up effortlessley the following 2 days:

Saturday lunch
An 'authentic' (their quotes, I do not dare to doubt) Sichuan Province feast conceived by Fuchsia Dunlop and prepared by London's Barshu Restaurant

Bang Bang Chicken
Sweet-and-sour Spare Ribs
Spicy Cucumber Salad
Refreshing Green Soybeans
Gong Bao Chicken with Peanuts (the dish is named after a Qing Dynasty governor-general of Sichuan)
Bear's Paw Beancurd Choy Sam with Fragrant Oil Steamed Rice

Shichuan feast by Fuchsia Dunlop

I am not a fan of Chinese cuisine - from whichever part of the great country it comes from - but what Fuchsia and Barshu do is to me at a different level.

Saturday night Irish banquette
(enjoy the Daily Spud's view on it)
prepared by Páidric Óg Gallagher of Gallagher's Boxty House in Dublin

Wrights of Howth Organic Smoked Salmon with Connemara Peated Single Malt Whiskey Sally Barnes' Smoked Mackarel Ummara Smoked Silver Eel (caught in Brussels, for research purposes believe it or not)
Fingal Ferguson's Venison Salami and Irish Chorizo
McCarthy's of Kanturk Guiness and Cider Spiced Beef McCeough's Air-dried Lamb

Served with treacle and soda bread, horseradish cream and ballymaloe relish

Wrights of Howth Organic Smoked Salmon with Connemara Peated Single Malt Whiskey

Gallaghers Boxty House Boxty Potato Dumplings in a Crozier Blue Cheese Cream Sauce Roasted Loin of Fermanagh Bacon
boiled topside Corned Beef from Kettyle Irish Foods

Served with Kishes of new potatoes from the gardens of Lissadell House, Cuinneog Irish Butter, sauteed York Cabbage, champ potato

Selection of Irish cheeses with Ditty's Home Bakery Traditional Oatcake Biscuits and Foods of Athenry Porter Cake

and wine, and more bread, and more cheese, and Irish coffee made to order and..

Sunday lunch - a Norvegian feast

prepared for us with the help of Pål Drønen and Margareth Tislevoll

This, to my taste, was the most interesting and inspiring of all meals, for the variety of the smoked and cured meats and fish and cleverness of the various curd cheese offerings (good old tvorog to a Russian soul..).

However, it was also at that stage that I started to feel slightly fermented myself, inside and out, from the copiousness of the food consumed, and therefore can only provide a few visuals of the dinner.

Norvegian delicacies: eel, fermented cheese, salmon..

'You've had good food and listened to some 'inspiring' talks, what now?'

It is also a rather wonderful, khmkhm, opportunity to network - brrr, a horrid word - to meet and make acquiescences with similar-minded, sorry, similar-bellied, people.

Some of the more memorable chats ranged from the role of food in sustaining Communism (or not), to how to make the best vodka cocktail (with pickled juices), and create theatre performances around food.

Next year's theme is 'Celebrations'...

Sweetbreads

2010-07-31T21:12:00.010+01:00

I have recently established quite a neat relationship with one wonderful little organic farm down in Hampshire. Rother Valley and I have developed a mutually beneficial friendship, where I try to, let's say, assist with potential business, and they, in turn, supply me - for a fee of course - with a glory of organic meat. The farm specialises in pure Aberdeen Angus beef - soulful, compact cows with melancholic eyes - but they also link up with farms around, that provide other meats - chicken, pork, lamb - as well as game.

An Aberdeen Angus

I use them, however - and I mean use - to source those weird and wonderful things, that most of their clients don't want, but for which I have space in my heart and belly - offal, really fatty or chewy parts. So far I have had pig trotters, pork belly, ox tongue; have also tried to buy brains and cows feet but with less luck. Sam, who runs the show at Rother Valley, has once wondered if I 'was making a Frankenstein'..

Last week it was the turn of sweetbreads. What a bizarre name for an equally bizarre part of a body. The thyroid and the thymus of a young sheep or a calf that has apparently acquired its name because of its mild, sweet flavour (the bread is an old English word for flesh). I find there is almost something sexy about the name, an image of a young wholesome wench in Swiss Alpes with jugs of creamy milk springs into mind..

I have wanted to try cooking sweetbreads for some time now, and then Rother Valley agreed to deliver a handful of these little breads to me for free, I had to act quickly - they really do taste better as fresh as a daisy (that Swiss maid obviously still lingers in my mind).

How to prepare sweetbreads:

1. put them into a bowl of cold water and leave to soak for good 2-3 hours.

Sweetbreads a la naturel, just before soaking

2. Bring a saucepan of water to boil, put your sweetbreads into it, turn down to simmer and poach for 3-5 minutes.

Sweetbreads cooked, shrivelled

3. Prepare a bowl of iced water and plunge the cooked breads into it for a couple of minutes. Take them out and take off the outer layer, which is like a thin see-through leather. Dispose that and any grisly or fatty bits.

4. Dust the breads in a little of seasoned flour and fry them quickly (2-3 minutes each side) in a pan with plenty of butter. They should be crispy on the outside and delicate and fluffy on the inside. they go beautifully with more robust flavours, such as bacon.

Fried sweetbreads with bacon

The picture above is rather pathetic, I know, but the result was quite moorish (although to my taste the sweetbreads came out a bit too mealy - overcooked I think).

This is how sweetbreads are supposed to look.

Sweetbreads with pea puree and bacon (photo thanks to blog.timesunion.com)

I would suggest wrapping smaller pieces of sweetbreads in bacon, perhaps with some buttered sage and serving them fried, with a little toast, as zakuski, with shots of chilled, but not frozen vodka.

On breaking fast and making roots

2010-07-25T21:13:00.008+01:00

I have always admired nomads. Those wondrous soles, with no ties or attachments, who glide through the world with a quiet excitement in their eye and melancholy in their heart. But I am not one of them. I am one of us, one of you. Gliding feels like falling down most of the time to me, despite of its dream-like appeal. I have lately started to lay down roots, making out my own territory.

My parents had travelled thousands of miles from warm and boisterous Ukraine to cool and composed Estonia, on a whim, because they were painfully drawn to the 'otherness' of Tallinn - its cobbled streets, understated beauty of its architecture and unparalleled in communism cafe culture. I did the same, all those years ago, on a really cold November day, I packed up and went - spontaneity doesn't really describe what happened - only to find myself a dozen years later, here, perching on a little pretty patio; savouring the delights from lands far away, as if an observer, watching my roots slowly hushing down..

My little Eden (to be)

We have bought a place - an adorable and slightly wanky flat with a shy little garden that has its own mini Cyprus tree (perhaps I subconsciously got drawn to this place because of all the years I spent in Crimea adoring these giant pointy trees). I have never had a garden before and so got terribly paranoid about the loudly speaking neighbours next door, booming music coming from another house, crows doing their crowing business too noisily too early in the morning. A princess sleeping on a little pea, what can I say...

Breakfast of local goodies

But it did get better the morning that I opened my garden doors, quite early in the morning - everyone around us still seemed asleep - brought a big mug of milky coffee with me and sat down on the steps, just as I was, wearing an oversized man's shirt and clutching my Guardian (which has became 'mine' over the years of living with J...funny how those delicate paws of roots get working...).

The area where we live is full of Greek, Turkish and Eastern-European shops (and they will certainly be a theme of many more of my future posts), and so my brunch that morning was an homage, a toast, to all those people who, just like me, packed up their bags and moved.

Grilled halloumi cheese
Toasted French sourdough bread
Chickpeas with parsley, lemon and Cyprus olive oil
Mixed salad of overgrown tomatoes, cucumbers, dill and parlsey
A few lovingly hot peppers Aci Biber

Pirita market - sweet thorns

2010-07-22T14:49:00.009+01:00

Don’t I like contradictions…for those who’ve read my latest melancholic musings about the disappearance of the farmers’ markets in Estonia, here is a cheery note – the market ‘scene’ in Tallinn is far from dying.

Those little cutsey creatures (for I often think of these local bazaars, full of characters and beautifully obscure products, as living beings, say playful cats that both comfort you with their foodie murrrs and make you work by demanding time and effort) pop up here and there like early autumn mushrooms, quite spontaneously, randomly organised, but all the more charming for their teasing behaviour. I encountered one such market - a small cluster of wooden stalls that I had not come across before - in the seaside area of Tallinn, Pirita.

Convent of St Birgitta, Tallinn. photo thanks to Dennis@stromness

Pirita is a solemn stretch of sand, colour of melted ice-cream, framed by pine trees and prickly undergrowth (not many things I miss in my self-imposed migration, but these foresty beaches with cool waters, so shallow and calm that they look like antic mirrors). I paint a serene picture, but Pirita is also an intensely popular area of the capital for youngests to ‘hand out’, for families to bring their off-spring, for tourists to wonder off (Pirita was the place where the Olympic games of the 1980s took place, the water game part, so it is still full of yachts, sport 'complexes' and tanned young men running fast).

Estonian forrests by the sea

The tiny market was right by the side of the road, backed up by the imposing ruins of the medieval Birgitta monastery on one side, stylish houses on another, and a forest on the third.

I saw a little stall selling tiny local strawberries in self-made paper baskets, good bread, seasonal veg – not all from nearby talus, smallholdings, but perfection is boring. My heart jumped when I saw a whole stall dedicated to sea buckthorn - a little orange berry, that used to be prevalent throughout Northern Europe, but is now in real short supply in the UK, although still in abundance in Estonia.

All things sea buckthorny at a local market

A young man was selling jams, juices, nectars, what looked like pollen for sprinkling on cereal and lots of other creations – all made from this curiously sweet and tart berry, the flavour reminiscent of an apricot, but somehow…muddier, the texture more sticky. The flavour that makes you work, a reference to Marmite is difficult to avoid (those who watched the latest serious of the Great British Menu will recall the look of disgust on the judges faces, including – impossible, I know – Matthew Fort’s. The chef who dared to used it for his dessert was Nathan Outlaw in his sea buckthorn curd meringue).

I have tried sea buckthorn jam with cold cuts of pork, or on a toasted slice of rye bread with my morning brew, mixed with cottage cheese and almonds. With venison it would be delectable.

I am yet to try the juice though. I have a bottle of this clone-ish orange nectar in my cupboard, ready for the next party. I’m planning to mix it with something sparkling and lots of crushed ice, mint should go well.

Have any ideas for my sea buckthorn juice? Let me know, and I’ll report once tried.

Russian trains and Russian tongues

2010-07-08T16:56:00.007+01:00

Foreigners in Russia almost always note one peculiarity about Russians’ travelling habits – Russkis take food, home-made food, pretty much wherever they go.

Inside a Russian train (a more luxury version). Photo thanks to Tatters:) at farm3.static.flickr

Trains in particular are a sight of numerous feasts. Soviet trains are of course like nothing else in the world – almost double the width of their European compatriots, snail-speed slow but wonderfully public (which may or may not be to your liking - ‘platzkart’ being the most common type of a carriage – no doors, just 6 bunks of beds in each row and a little table in between. I remember long strands of white sheets hanging off the top beds as if to make a little self-made alcove, to allow women to change clothes. It all seemed so much fun then…not because of changing women of course...although this might have been fun now..hmm, sorry, back to trains).

Food in Russian trains. Photo thanks to streats.files.wordpress

A common scene encountered on those long, clickety train journeys would be families, babushkas, young ladies – all taking out their carefully wrapped goody bags, laying them out on tables in between the rows of bunk beds, sharing these ‘products’ with their fellow compartment comrades. These offerings, which could include anything from stacks of buterbrody (open sandwiches) to home-pickled gherkins and full blown hot meals, always had to have some hard-boiled eggs. I still remember their very characteristic smell whifting through the carriages, the sound of spoons clattering in tall glasses with dark tea, quiet cluckering of women over their offspring…

Recently I have re-created – ish – these childhood memories on my way from London to Tallinn, Estonia – the motherland, as I sometimes refer to it. This was the kind of upgraded version of the old Russian train-food experience:

Location – Stansted airport, waiting lounge

People – common human crowd all around, a good – Russian – friend next shoulder

Food – Chilled ox tongue (home-made), gherkins, rye bread (Waitrosely good), forgettebly named Russian chocolate

Drink – ex-yoghurt 100ml* plastic bottles filled with red wine and half and half wine and vodka

Feasting at Stansted airport, London a la russe

We had a blast. Gorging on all this beautiful – rather odorous – food right in the middle of, basically, a massive shopping meal, brightly lit as a hospital, it was especially enjoyable because of all the misunderstanding looks grazing, oops, glancing at us. The smell of garlic, which the tongue was packed with, and alcohol, followed by the sounds of cucumbers plopping in our mouths and us talking increasingly loudly, made – I’m sure – for an amusing and rather annoying sight.

Bring on the socialist order (a Conservative-Communist coalition anyone?)! These people have not tried the real publico-social method of travelling – or eating.

….

If you would like to simulate (it can be just that of course – the real thing is at least 3 hours flight away, and some 20 years ago perhaps), then here’s the recipe for the Ox Tongue that we have so successfully consumed amongst the capitalist consumerism of the London airport:

Cooked Ox Tongue

Cooked ox tongue, post ice-water treatment

1 ox tongue (they usually weight about 700-1000 gramms)

garlic liberally

bayleaves + peppercorns

1. They look huge, scary and unpleasant - hold the disbelief. Put in a large saucepan, cover with cold water. Once start boiling, take off the scum (but don't bother too much), then add a couple of bay leaves and 5-10 peppercorns.

2. Simmer for 1.5-2 hours

3. Prepare a large bowl full of ice and cold water. Plunge the cooked tongue into water and keep it there for a couple of minutes.

4. Take out and peel off the outer skin. You'll see, it comes off like a banana skin. The tongue will instantly look that much more appealing.

5. Cool a bit more if necessary, so that you can handle it with hands. In the meantime, slice thinly 2-3 gloves of garlic.

6. Make short, shallow cuts randomly across the tongue, so that you can insert slivers of garlic into these holes. Don't matter, how and when, just pack'em up!

7. Place the tongue onto a flat-ish plate, find something heavy to press it with. I normally put another plate on top, to cover the tongue, and then a saucepan full of water - some careful balancing is required.

8. Chill in a fridge over night.

9. When taken out, the tongue will be flat and ready to be gorged on. Slice it thinly, add horseradish, pickled, bread, and vodka, of course, and you are ready to go.

Train or no train.

* for those far from London - bigger containers are not allowed to bring into British airports for ‘security reasons’.

A Tallinn market and its local fruits

2010-06-26T11:49:00.014+01:00

Meet Alexander, a former 'designer-modelier', a navy officer and presently an artisan of all things pickled. Alexander is clearly a dandy with a keen eye for style - just look at his cap and artfully laid table of home-grown herbs and 'conservanty'. When asked to pose for a photo, he comfortably fell into a coquette-ish pose with a fleeting 'oh, I've been photographed sooo many times over the years!' . However, he quickly became all business when asked which adjika (hot Georgian paste) he would recommend (best is made with lots of corriander, 30 krones) or how to use large, green leaves laying in a sack (to pickle those little prickly cucumbers, 10 krones).

Alexander is a seller at Jaamaturg (a Train station market), one of Tallinn's final outposts of home-grown produce and, increasingly so, of far-flung cheap clothes and manufactured tomatoes. He is one of the few retirees selling goodies from their dachas to supplmenet their scarse pensions. Amongst the majority of stalls stuffed with goods bought in chilled warehouse, there are still a few old babushkas offering small, neat bundles of dill and plastic cups of wild strawberries. But Alexander sticks out for being a rare man with a display and attitude that brings a rare smile amongst the understandably defeated looks of women. Once these babushkas are gone, one fears there will be no more produce from allotments or the charm and knowledge that only seems to come to markets where people who grow or make stuff come to sell.

This is an irony that when in Britain farmers' markets are on the rise, with flocks of middle classes rushing to stock up on 'organic' goodies with 'provenance', paying over the odds for the privilage, here it is the underprivilaged - the retired, the unemployed - who still come to such markets (there are no more than a handful of them left in the whole of Tallinn). This is not to say that in Estonia there is no interest in grow your own or food with a story - just look at the heavily stacked shelves of bookstores, full of Estonian Jamies and Hughes* - but perhaps the speed with which these markets are dying out is greater than the birth rate of the 'real food' enthusiasts.

Jaamaturg is a particularly colourful market, as it is snugly sandwiched between the old Soviet train station - still very much in operation, but with only a few lines running East - and Kalamaja, a district of Tallinn full of wooden houses built in the 1930s, sleepy parks and drunks. Kalamaja literally means a house of fish, a place where freshly caught fish is processed, as in the past, and to some extent still now, fishing is a big industry in Estonia. Although these days the melancholic and beautiful but polluted Baltic sea can only provide with plentiful Baltic herring - a smaller variety of the Atlantic type. Most fish on sale in Jaamaturg comes frozen from Norway. One honourable exception perhaps is caviar made out of pressed seaweed: refreshingly tasty, pretty-looking and cheap, as well as an allowed substitute for a vegan. The one on the picture was produced in Russia, however several brands are made locally.

Kalamaja houses several docks and the main Tallinn harbour. As everywhere in the world the area around the train station is not for midnight walks, but as everywhere else, what starts off as an area of low rents and high criminal activity, ends up as a hippy land, adored by artists and those aspiring to be. Kalamaja in Tallinn is what Hoxton in London used to be some 10-20 years ago.

One hopes Jaamaturg will survive not despite but because of its quirky old-fashioness and low prices. The market seems such a fitting spectacle for Kalamaja: not a pretty, messy place where one can buy anything from old Soviet memorabilia, to that made-in-China Dior bag and Estonian perfumed strawberries. It is nevertheless chilled and well-ordered with characters, such as Alexander, abound. They call it a soul I believe.

p.s. well, hello again my dear readers. I am back, although not sure if anyone else is still around. a big warm hug to you anyway, even if you have no company..

A breather

2010-04-25T22:44:00.004+01:00

My patient reader. please don't despair. the blog is on a sabbatical. blame anthropology. anthropology of food to be exact. the route that I have been foolish - and brave enough - to embark on is taking every moment of my spare, and not that spare time.

Some of the things to come: Florentine markets, Offaly offal affairs, Stories of Londonners, Anthropology of Food...

Mercato Centrale, Fiorenze

Guess what this is?

Little sweet nothings

2010-03-06T14:21:00.011Z

I have arrived. The glamour, fame and glory of being a humble blogger widens your waist, eats up your time, but also occasionally offers a freebie.

I have been invited to a 'VIP cooking party' with a charming Italian chef Francesco Mazzei, of acclaimed restaurant L’Anima: to learn the authentic dough spinning, to glug free prosecco and‏ make your own pizza creations. The event was organised as a promotion of six new pizza recipes that a certain long-standing pizza chain had just introduced...the Pizza Express.

We are being shown how to flip your pizza dough (love the weird picture!)

Nothing's wrong with Pizza Express, you understand. And even though my standards - for pizzas, men and otherwise - have somewhat moved on from when I used to frequent this establishment some 10 years ago, I have some warm memories of this place. Monday Jazz evenings, in Watford were when me and my then-boyfriend used to go out for a bit of 'class'... I remember genuinely enjoying the polished fake-marble tables, posh salad Nicoise and a gentle and undefined ramble of Jazz.

My pizza: mushrooms, truffles and peppers

So, what was my first blagger-blogger event was like? It was actually a lot more lively and tasty that I had anticipated in my up-my-nose mood. Free Prosecco flew flawlessly, organisation was seamless (they had even thought of pre-preparing pizza bases for us to rescue our botched attempts in pizza-base making) and pizzas were good (mine having lots of mushrooms and some truffle paste, which - surprise and horror - was the first time that I tried. I get it now).

Ms Marmite of the famed underground restaurant and her lovely daughter

But the best bit for me came surprisingly at the very in the shape of little dolcetti - 'small but perfectly formed desserts' that accompanied coffees. Such treats as a mini lemon tart with meringue or a scoop of coffee gelato are officially on Pizza Express's menu for £3.50.

Why was I so pleasantly shocked? Not because of the taste - which was ok - but because finally, after my years of moaning that restaurants are only able to offer the unsubtle choice of either a big pud or unsatisfying coffee at the end of a meal, it is Pizza Express out of all places that recognised my need to have something sweet but little after my dinner, to make me feel both indulged and virtuous.

Thank you, good old Pizza Express, the nights of jazz, posh nosh and little sweet nothings are maybe not over after all.

Meze - to be eaten with or without underwear

2010-02-27T18:43:00.012Z

Ever heard of a 'panty-dropping' cake? 'come-hither' milkshare? or a 'backhandspring' sandwich (oh, thank you, my dear Gastroanthropoligist)?

'The Backhandspring sandwich' by Gastroanthropologist

These are just some dishes that have been given special names for their state 'inducing' properties: conditions of a great variety, all having something rather physical and sexual about them nevertheless.

The tiresome doctrine of food being an entry into a man's soul is given an uplift here and taken beyond the rather sexist notion of a sweet, little (and cunning) woman attempting to win a heart of a serious, strong (and aloof) man. It's about a gesture of will, a hint, an exercise of both love and power.

As you can imagine, I have my own version, or versions of foods that leave no choice... The chocolate and chestnut brownies would certainly be just that, ranging from 'cuddle me all over' to 'take me all the way'... But there are foods in my repertoire (oh, believe me, not often that I get a chance to say this about myself!) that are about, shall we say, sensual sharing; foods that have to be eaten in coupledom, leisurely reclining on a sofa; lights dimmed to the point when you have to rely on the senses of your hands more than sensibilities of your eyes.

'Assortment, sensual' by me

'Assortment, sensual' - I call this dish in an austere Soviet fashion, just to highlight its very capitalist lusciousness. I gather the word 'assortment' has not been used in Britain to indicate a selection of meats, cheeses and other tit bids, for some time now; which for me is even more of a reason to bring the word back now, in the age of austerity and deep longing for all things retro.

And so this is what my assortment had on this occasion:

Manchego cheese (La Mancha, Spain)
Free-range ham, cut thickly (British, of course)
Hummus of chickpeas and borlotti beans, home-made
Carrot salad, sliced thinly, with French dressing
Watercress
Caperberries (Spanish, of course)
Soughdour bread, a chunk

Gorged with a helping of Bordeaux, whatever year

Manchego cheese - names are important for a well put-together 'assortment'

The dish (or rather a plate) is best consumed on a dull weekday, when both parties are tired, slightly bored and in a mood that is neither inspired or inspiring. Eaten slowly (plenty of time, after all you have no strength to do much else that evening), whilst chatting about matters essentially unimportant, the plate will gradually start restoring your frightened, tired spirits and the evening will lead to one thing or another...

p.s. What is your 'named' dish? Let's have a little collection of these: from naive little pick-me-up nibbles to full-blown marry-me-now suppers!

Illegal eating

2010-02-07T14:52:00.020Z

Boiled babies and dog bodies are not often on one's dinner menu on a fine Saturday night. However, this is precisely what I had last night - and enjoyed (almost!) every bit of it. Although it was no ordinary day and no ordinary place...

Ms Marmite Lover underground restaurant - tonight's menu

Underground what?

The dinner took place in one of the increasingly numerous underground restaurants in London, in this instance it was an impressively spacious and vintage-clad house of Ms Marmite Lover (further simply as Ms ML) of the same-named blog.

Underground restaurants, or supper clubs, or guerilla eating - essentially dinner parties staged in houses of strangers for which you pay an agreed fee - are no longer the obscure and below the earth establishments as they once were. I have been told that some of the original ones, a restaurante de puertas cerradas - restaurants behind locked doors - appeared in and around Cuba, but these days these, essentially illegal, eateries are the rage throughout the States and the British isles, attracting the trendy and arty , and those inspiring to be so.

Everyone from food bloggers to Guardian and Time Out have written about the trend, and so last night I had to admit to this 'okkkey, I do need to do one of these' type of affairs. The decision was inspired by the the theme of the menu: navy, ships biscuits, Napoleon, and sailors - don't ask! But my dear J seemed somewhat of an admirer (although he didn't actually end up coming out with me due to a very un-sailor like cold).

On how to choose the better of two...weevils.

Ms ML put together a fabulously bizarre and appropriately stodgy meal based on the books of Patrick O'Brian- famed by Russell Crowe and his 'Master and Commander'. This is how Ms ML qualifies the theme of the dinner:

[The books were about] Captain Jack Aubrey and his ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin. O'Brian spent the last 50 years of his life in the South of France. Now you might think stories about seafaring during the time of Bonaparte would be dry, boy's own type tales but not at all! The relationship between Aubrey and Maturin is touching, the humour bawdy, the technical details of the sails and workings of tall ships fascinating and the ship's routine, along with the intensely male hierarchy on board, gripping....

Running through these novels are descriptions of food, meals and banquets...The naval diet consisted of rum rations, salt beef, portable soup and hard tack. At the start of each voyage, the purser would gather the victuals for the journey. Hard tack or ship's biscuit would be baked four times to render it as hard as possible; as it ages, it softens. It was supposed to last for five years. You'd have to tap it for weevils before eating. This was an era before tinned goods...'

As you can imagine, I was intensely looking forward to the experience - in that kind of perverse way!

The actual recipes of the dinner were taken from a wonderfully conforming and hilarious 'Lobscourse and Spotted Dog', a book of recipes inspired by O'Brian's writting edited by Grossman and Thomas. 'A triumph of culinary anthropology' as Washington Post put it. Need I say more! The book is a fascinating collection of the old English (and otherwise) dishes, stories, histories and all in-between.

The menu

Rum grog

A portable soup (an early form of stock cube): Blind Scouse

Ships biscuit

Stargazy pie with herrings
Pease pudding

Boiled Baby

Stargazy pie with pease pudding and mushroom ketchup

I'll start by saying the food was good, but varied. When I say good I mean it matched the expectations (or even exceeded them in case of the pie) and generally left a warm and wobbly feeling in our bellies.

Now the details:

The dinner didn't start well. The transport didn't work properly on the way to the secret location, we were miserably cold and it took us ages to get through the doors due to our difficulty with pronouncing the password (it's an underground restaurant, init). When we were handed in warm (but lady-like size) cups of pink rum grog, we quickly and obligingly gulped.

I say - 'shampoo?'. My companion said - 'don't care, I'm cold'. So we squinted but finished the pink liquid.

Rum Grog

Having settled down at a lovely table of 10, lovingly covered with a vintage table cloth and expensively heavy cutlery, Blind Scouse arrived.

Served cleverly in wide and shallow enamel bowls, Scourse turned out to be a truly home-made soup of barley, potatoes, carrots and other similarly mundane vegetables. The important addition was that of Ships biscuits (for the teeth-crashing description see above) that were to be soaked in Scouse's stock. It tasted well-intentional and well-turned out. I even forgot my childhood misgivings for grey barley.

Table is set - Ms ML knows her vintage plate from her flea market napkin

(at this point a notch or two of a belt came off). The Pie has arrived.

The star of the dinner (note, what we actually had looked even better)

Stargazy pie with herrings.

I had heard of the dish through my (shame, shame on me) earlier addiction to the Great British Menu, where Mark Hix (whose squidgy, cluby 'Hix' in Soho I had been frequented recently and will probably review soon) won the day with his version of this funny old dish. This was the first time I tried the dish.

The pie is essentially a mix of potatoes, carrots, probably leeks, cream, tarragon and herring, covered by the crispiness of quite sweet pastry with herring heads exuberantly sticking out from underneath the pie top - staring at stars of course. We loved the wholesome, creamy pie, with just the right percentage of salt, pepper and tarragon, all despite of the annoying little bones, intermediately interfering with the experience.

The best of stodge worlds

The dreamy herrings were accompanied by a pease pudding (or dog's body if I remember correctly), 'English version of dahl', as Ms ML put it herself. A very moorish accompaniment of peas cooked into mash with lots of butter. This is what the good old English cooking is all about - stodge, lovely, tasty stodge (at that point I remember exchanging remarks with a table colleague about the essential similarity of all northern European cooking - Russians and English are united forever by the love for stodge).

Boiled Baby - the best titled-pudding ever?

After the cheese course, which I'm sure was lovely but I couldn't fit into myself anymore, we had the Baby, yes, the whole Boiled Baby - a simple steamed pudding of flour, raisins, nutmeg and not much else. We all agreed that:

1. the dish was absolutely spot on and 'authentic' as this is exactly how Captain Audrey would have liked it

2. by serving the Baby with the voluptuous, silky rose-water custard, Ms ML did wonders by making us eating even half of it.

Even my Russian stodge-accustomed body could not handle any more.

Posh nosh vs humble pie?

The setting was gorgeous, atmosphere was fun, food was decent. I would happily admit that I'd do it again.

I can see how those who run such establishments find the lure of media hype too attractive to resist, which easily leads to turning up of many noses. As with those Michelin-starred, the booking queues become overwhelmingly long and the stardom of the owners overshadow the quality of the food.

But whilst these place are still home kitchens with all their imperfections, mistakes and mostly sincere (if occasionally tetchy) personal interaction, I'm choosing Ms Marmite Lover's little hide-away any day of the week.

Well, until I succumb to the glory of Texture - on which, hopefully, next week.

You ain't gonna get a toilet like this at Gordon Ramsey's

Mexican street markets - Guest post 1

2010-01-24T12:24:00.007Z

Following the brilliant (if not entirely original) idea of a fellow pig trotter lover and blogger Ryan at Nose to Tail Eating at Home, I'm opening up my blog to guests. Have you been to a lovely little market? Have a story to tell about some curious food stuff? Would like to share your Madeleine memory? Or have a thing about all things Russians? Get in touch and I'd love to share your story with the rest of the world.

The first post comes from the wonderful fellow anthropologist-to-be Sofia Larrinua-Craxton and her website about 'all things food'. Sofia is Mexican - evidently - and teaches Mexican cuisine at Books for cooks in London, so she knows her chilli and her tortilla...

Mexian street markets...

Or 'el tianguis' as it is commonly known is the Nahuatl word for the various colourful markets which populate the streets of Mexico, here you can find all the things you need, thought you needed and things you would not even imagined existed but are sold, from wedding dresses to plants and baskets, these markets sell all kinds of stuff and it is lovely to see people buying all kinds of things.

A particularly nice thing to do is to buy fresh fruits and vegetables; courgette flowers, tomatillos, cactus leaves, ripe guavas, mamey fruit and avocados, sweet mangoes and juicy pineapples, all sit happily waiting to be tested, tasted and bought. For those who fancy a snack, just stop at any of the many street stalls, where you can taste a hand made quesadilla with fresh hot salsa or a 'tlacoyo' which is a tortilla filled with beans, usually made with blue corn and topped with a delicious salad of cactus leaves, tomatoes, coriander and crumbled cheese.

If in Mexico look for the classic green or pink canopies characteristic of these markets and delight in watching people offering their wares, haggling and buying. Try the various exotic fruits and vegetables and stop for some food. Don't forget to take a hand made bag or basket or better still buy it there. If you like Mexican cooking implements look for them at the stalls, you can get tortilla presses, lime squeezers and gorgeous enamel pots and pans at very good prices. Of course if you feel eccentric, you can always bargain for some silver jewellery, a banana plant, fake designer shoes or even a wedding dress, the choice is yours. Whatever your taste choices a 'tianguis' is really fun!

This is how to win his heart - and the world's bellies

2010-01-17T14:02:00.006Z

He said I was a goddess.

I perform all the tricks that domestic goddesses are supposed to be able to do: move well, raise one eyebrow suggestively and engage in pseudo-intellectual conversations. But, as we all know, to really touch the heart of a man - of either divine and earthly nature, you have to appeal to his belly. The seemingly unexpected and effortless appearance of these gooey, sticky, the colour of mud things had swayed the celestial balance.

Chocolate brownies.

These are days, and particularly nights, of depressing, matter-of-factely mid-winter, when despite all the calls to austerity, one yearns for something ridiculously rich, extravagant, and in big quantities. What the goddess does is she smiles gently, strokes a feverish forehead and lightly strikes her magic wand...

It is surprising to realise that the Brownie, so un-Russian in its origin, so both exotic, because of all the chocolate and dark sugars, and teen-American, because of its current association, has in fact become the most treasured dessert in this household. Come to think of it, perhaps it is precisely because of the Brownie's Americanist, straight-forward appeal, its capitalist ability to adapt to all tastes and cultures and its strumpet skill to appeal to both most basic and most sublime, that it has earned its place. A kind of Cold War victory on the ground, in the sexy James Bond and Natasha with a choker on her throat type of way.

Chocolate and chestnut brownies:

100g butter
200g dark chocolate
150g cooked chestnuts, chopped
200g sugar, a mixture of caster and dark brown
100g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
3-4 large eggs, lightly whisked

1. preheat the over to 180C and line a baking tray, about 20-30 cm

2. melt chocolate with butter over a pan of simmering water; let it cool down for a couple of minutes

3. transfer the chocolate/butter mixture into a bigger bowl if necessary, add chestnuts, sugar, sifted flour, powder and eggs

4. enjoy the unhurried mixing of the heavy load

5. pour into the baking tray, make sure the surface is roughly even and bake for about 20 minutes

6. the Brownie mixture should be taken out of the oven when still looks a bit uncooked, it will give it that gooey centre

7. let the mixture cool a bit, cut into squares and enjoy the almost delirious combination of bitter chocolate, earthy chestnuts and American superpower:) . Great with unsweetened Turkish coffee, black Russian tea or, indeed, a strawberry milkshake.

What is the name of me, my sweet mirror?

2010-01-06T22:08:00.004Z

My dear, faithful readers,

It has finally come to me needing - asking, begging - your help, your ideas, your brains.

I-need-your-help with choosing a name for my blog.

you all know I've been writing the blog for awhile, and it's gone into different direction from what I originally thought it would be, however there are certain themes...

so I would LOVE if YOU came back to me with your vote number one.

from the list below that me and J has brainstormed, which one you think reflects the best my blog, my character, or just attracts you the most?

Bazaar and Vodka
Bolshy Bazaar
Russian Glutton
Comrade Foodie
Belly Revolution
She swallows
That Madeleine moment
Around the world in 80 markets?

Any crazy, obsecure, silly ideas are welcome here - no censoring, honest;)

Thank you, Spasiba, Merci

Russo-Ireland - unitied by a humble spud

2010-01-04T20:31:00.004Z

Remember my royal potato salad Olivier making its appearance just before the New Year's eve? Well, I got potato inspired and suggested to the lovely Daily Spud - a fellow blogger who shares my passion for a good old potato - to do a joint spud post.

Voila! She didn't just spread the word, but made her own, a wondrous version of Olivier - with haddock and pickled cucumbers. Read on...

Potato salad with haddock (image by the Daily Spud)

I really like this unusual version of the good old Olivier - a hint of Irish blood perhaps?

Hot, dark, tempting

2010-01-03T11:22:00.022Z

The realisation that the hedonistic winter celebrations of gluttony and cheap champagne is over feels bleak and calls for strong measures. Coffee. Black, scorchingly hot and giddily strong, Turkish Coffee, with its swooning body and enveloping aroma, can pull you out of the most wondrous melancholy. What differentiates it from its European cousin, Espresso, is the long, measured process of making it. To achieve a sufficiently languid result one ought to rely on a tremble of one's hand and a sharpness of one's eye, more than on a beautifully gleaming machinery. Cezve (pronounced [jezva], a Turkish coffee pot, is the key to the creation that is syropy, full-bodied, electrifying.

'Cezve'-Turkish coffee pot

Cezve is a curved, high-necked pot, normally no taller than the size of your palm; it is often made out of copper. They call it a briki in many English-speaking countries, but the original word for cezve comes from Arabic, meaning coal - presumably from the method of making coffee on burning coal. An only slightly modified word dzezva is known to most Russians too, as making coffee on a stove using this pot was fairly common - at least for the bohemian Soviet hippies (there were a number of those behind the Iron Curtain), as my parents were.

Breakfast of naked coffee and cigarettes

For years my mother's morning ritual was to have nothing else but a cup of very strong Turkish coffee - with a sugar lump, but no milk - and a cigarette, or two. My Madeleine memory is perhaps this curious combination of warm dark roasted coffee and a slightly tart, but strangely comforting smell of burning tobacco. Of course mother would always try to shoo me away from the kitchen with its translucent clouds of cigarette smoke, but it often didn't work, and so I would stay, perching on a stool, always hungry in the morning, waiting for breakfast, which would inevitably for a Russ include buterbrody - open sandwiches - with ham, cheese and whatnot - and, from a fairly early age, also be a cup of coffee, perhaps a little lighter than mother's and always with a thick layer of cream. I still remember the chocolate-cake like appearance of my coffee top, a toffee coloured mixture of coffee grains (grains would always settle down after a moment) mixed in with warm, fatty milk. These days Russians and Ukrainians call any basic recipe of coffee topped with boiling water in a cup Turkish coffee, but this uncooked method is an unsatisfying and grainy drink. Cezve is what makes all the difference...

Turkish coffee in Turkey

Many years after my childhood coffee-tobacco memories, I learnt how to make Turkish coffee proper whilst travelling through central and south-eastern Turkey. During my journey, which coincided with Bayram - the end of Ramadan - I was fortunate enough to spend three days with a Turkish family, in a prosperous and modern (and hence rarely visited by Westerns) city of Kaiseri. We visited many houses, kissed many cheeks, ate a lot of honey-dripping baklava with endless cups of tea - and coffee, of course.

Celebration of the end of Ramadan with sweets and tea

The mother of Adnan, our host, beckoned me to a small but spotlessly clean kitchen, to show me the process of making kahva, Turkish coffee, and here I am sharing with you the recipe learnt there, in the city floating between Asia and Europe, a lullaby of modern and the old...

Master and its servants: cezve and the ingredients

Turkish coffee

You will need:
1 tbsp very finely grounded coffee (I find the zingy Columbian Grupo Asociativo Quebradon from Monmouth a fitting match here)
1 tsp soft brown sugar
a small cup of water (mineral is best)
1 cezve

Pour cold water into your pot, add coffee and sugar and stir gently. The liquid will feel heavy, like a lava.

Put on a stove, on a lowest heat possible and wait...

After some 5 to 15 minutes, depending on the caress of the heat, the volcano will very slowly start building up, the foam shaping up, moving up, speeding up. Do not move away at this stage - you'll be transfixed by the champagne of caramel-coloured bubbles expanding, desperate to burst.

At the point when the vessel cannot longer contain the liquid, take it off the heat, pour the foam - and only the form, which is about 1/3 of the whole content - into a cup, and put the cezva back on the stove.

Let the coffee have another go, going all the way to the bream of the pot......when almost over the edge, take it off and pour the remainder into the cup, patiently waiting.

Drink slowly but edgily, there and then.

A puff of blue smoke will make the taste all the more intense... or, for those less sinfully inclined, a bite of honey-drenched baklava.

Remember, Turks predict future by what's left behind. Once the coffee grains are poured out of a cup, let the thin layer of mud dry up a bit - what does my say?..

'As the hedgehog and a bear cub met New Year' eve'

2009-12-31T11:35:00.003Z

And a little gift from me - an old Russian cartoon on a 'proper' way to meet a new year! Shockingly unusual for me, it's not related to food, however note the yumis on the tables - no getting away from it all!

(No subtitles, but the language of cute little bears, Christmas trees and friendship is universal!)

S nastupayushim!

More parsnip New Year treats

2009-12-30T20:35:00.006Z

Amongst all the post-Christmas wilderness (partying, snowing and otherwise), here's a little bit of curiosity to amuse you.

My cockle-warming Parsnip and Parmezan soup has been a hit with a number of friends, and so whilst looking for another parsnip inspiring idea, I came across Elizabeth David's collection of Christmas recipes. One of them particularly caught my eye...

Pastenak and cress soupOr parsnip and cress soup - pastenak, according to David, is the medieval English word for parsnip , a corruption of the Latin word pastinaca. Now, the association I mentioned in my earlier soup post between the Russian word for parsnip - pasternak - and the famous Nobel-prize winner (yes, yes, Dr Zivago) doesn't seem all that laughable!

Did I completely confuse you? What I'm trying to say very pre New Year's Eve inarticulately, is that I just loved the feeling of discovering this little, unimportant linguistic link, which kind of felt fitting. In Italian the word is pastinache, in French panais - what is parsnip in your language??:):)

Back to the soup though...

To make the pastenak and cress soup you follow the same recipe as for my parsnip and parmezan soup, but omit the cheese and add a couple of handfuls of cress at the end, which makes the dish a whole lotta lighter and fresher. To me, this is a spring recipe really, so here's something that will work very nicely as your New Year's even starter - very a la Russe;)

Egg mayonnaise with parsnip cream
(taken from E. David's 'Christmas' edited by Jill Norman)

500 g parsnips, peeled or well scrubbed
3-4 tbsp of home-made mayonnaise (it needs to be rather acidic, so don't be shrewd with your lemon)
4-6 hard-boiled, organic, eggs
parsley

1. Chop parsnips into big chunks, bring to boil, simmer until cooked (some 20 mins), then puree and season with salt and plenty of pepper
2. Stir in your mayo, spread on a fanciful dish (I'd say a Soviet kitsch of a crystal dish in shape of a egg or a fish will work well here)
3. Cup eggs in half and arrange on top of the parsnip puree
4. Scatter shopped parsley

Nemirov honey coloured pepper vodka will work wonders here - match by taste, match by colour!

Thank you all my dear readers for a wonderfully food-laden year!

The King of all salads - the majestic Olivier

2009-12-23T19:27:00.009Z

Whilst the whole of the Great British Island is coming to a hault under an inch of snow, the ingenious population is resorting to warming stews and increasingly intoxicating pints. Russians - local and otherwise - drink vodka (clichés are so necessary and so sexy) and eat fat-laden cubes of potatoes, meat and veg.

The Olivier salad - the glorious and (in?) famous Russian potato salad, created by a French chef in the tsarist Russia, and then eaten en messe by the 1/6 of the planet for the next century, is now consumed throughout the world, in different shapes and versions. When the winter comes with its culmination at the New Year's eve, Russians of all shapes and sizes think 'potato', 'mayonnaise', 'cubes' and start chopping. Here's the story of the little, but not that humble, Potato salad.

The significance of chopping at New Year's Eve

Chopping is precisely what I got to doing with my Russian champs the other night. No matter how many years we have spent away from the Mother Russia, end of December will always mean one thing and one thing only - New Year's Eve and Olivier. NYE in Russia is a curious combination of Western Christmas family traditions (kids and old are all there) and the debauchery of NYE partying proper (drink, drink, drink). Why this day, and night, got alleviated to such a level is easy to explain - the big USSR did not want to celebrate Christmas (25 Dec or 6 Jan as per Russian Orthodox calender) for the obvious, atheist reasons, but people still had that ingrained, pagan need to mark the winter solstice, fight off the dark ghosts of winter and hope for the future. Now Russia is free to celebrate whatever it likes, but 31 December is still the biggest and the most awaited day of the year. Olivier and its potatoes are the heroes of the night.

Why potato? Why salad?

Well, the significance of tightly chopped vegetables for the Russian physic would certainly be an interesting one to explore for my next Phd in psychiatry:), but for now let's just say the good old Peter the Great did well back in 17the century by bringing the scraggy tuber to Russia from his explorations in the Netherlands (being clean-shaven and eating potatoes became somewhat the thing a la mode). Now Russia is the biggest producer of potatoes in the world (after China, surprise?) and each Ruski is consuming nearly 150 kg of potatoes a year (are you dividing the figure by 52?!).

And let's not forget that some of the best vodka is made out of potatoes.

The link to the Dutch is not accidental - Van Gogh, with his ears still intact, drew this scaringly beautifully and ugly painting called 'The Potato Eaters'.

Incredible to think that just a century after Peter's travels, potato had already become the vegetable associated with the most trivial, dumb and belly-filling. I love the way their faces look like the bulbous potatoes themselves, hands are knobbly, rough; they are the off-spring of the tuber, all looking the same, no gender, spark or wit. Potato was not the piece de resistance of the most forward any longer...

What about the Salad??

About the same time when Van Gogh was vaxing less than lyrically about the potato, a French chef called Lucien Olivier (a seriously flirtatious type, according to some) was re-inventing it in The Hermitage, one of Moscow's most celebrated restaurants. The original salad was rather different from the contemporary version and included amongst other ingredients hazel-grouse, veal tongue, caviar, capers and mayonnaise Provençal - a heady sauce of yolks and olive oil that the young Lucien had brought from his home-land.The legend has it that one of his understudies had stolen the recipe for the sauce and started making a version of the salad in another Moscow restaurant, naming the concossion 'Stolichnyj salad', or The Capital Salad' (the name still widely found in all sorts of Russian eateries). Over time, the salad had gone through the inevitable bourgeoisition(such a word?) process and is now using either chicken or ham or even frankfurter type sausage, tinned peas, boiled carrot and eggs, mayo out of the tub and, of course, boiled potatoes. Here's my version - a slightly trendified Olivier one might say:)

Olivier Salad

Remember - you can put anything into this salad, in whatever quantities, as long as you have:

1. potatoes, some kind of meat and mayonnaise
2. potatoes should be about twice the weight of the rest of the ingredients

You'll need:

1 small chicken (organic is preferable of course, but free-range is a must) plus a quartered onion, a halfed carrot, a couple of bay leaves and a few peppercorns
4 v. large potatoes
2 medium carrots
2 eggs
a handful of peas, frozen
2 tbsp capers
1 tart apple
salted cucumbers (marinated will do too, but too sweet for my liking; go for the Israeli type - if concious permits - the ones on sale in Sainsburys have the right salty tang). NB: keep the brine.
1 onion

about 350ml of mayonnaise - home-made is less 'authentic', but makes a lot of difference. you'll need:

2 (organic..) yolks
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 Dijon mustard
1 tbp white wine vinegar or lemon juice
225 ml vegetable oil

I use Darina Allen's recipe for making my mayo.

You will need to start making the salad at least on the eve of your feast.

1. Put your chicken whole into a big saucepan, cover with cold water, add your stock veg, bring to the boil, and then simmer until fully cooked, for at least an hour. do not dare to throw out your stock - use it to make beautiful borsch.

2. Put washed but unpeeled potatoes into a saucepan and boil until fully cooked. Some 10 mins before they are cooked (when the knife is getting through the flesh with some difficulty still) add the carrots to boil.

3. Whilst potatoes are preparing themselves, boil your eggs until fully cooked, but not blue, 7-8 mins. Briefly cook your peas.

4. Leave everything to cool completely, perhaps until the following morning.

5. Peel the veg above, as well as your onion and an apple. Shred your chicken of the bones, discarding skin (although I eat it with crystals of salt).

6. Get chopping. I like it small, really small - the size of my small fingernail - but others prefer it big and chunky. Everything goes into one big bowl. Mix gently and season lightly.

7. Make your mayonnaise or just unscrew your jar. and now is the most important thing - start adding half of your mayonnaise and then a few spoons at a time and taste, taste and taste. Add more mayonnaise, more cucumbers, capers, onions - whatever you think is missing. Olivier is like a good Asian dish, it has layers of flavours: tart, pickled, salty, sweet, all married by the powerful mayonnaise. Who said Russian food was boring and one-dimensional?

8. Remember you left behind some brine from your cucumbers? add a bit to your mix, perhaps 2-3 tbp. it adds that je ne c'est quoa.

9. Sprinkle with dill if desired and eat in big gulps with chunks of good and sweet Russian rye bread.

Na zdorovye and s novym godom!

p.s. a short of lip-numbingly cold vodka - potato or otherwise - is very satisfying with Olivier.

A mediaval chelly

2009-12-10T19:38:00.008Z

Do you know what these brown creatures are?

These are medlars - plum-size, apple-like fruits that originated in Asia (and possibly South-Eastern Europe) that used to be very common on the tables of English royalty in the medieval times, but have almost disappeared since then and are virtually unknown to the great British public. Well, I was exquisitely pleased to discover these rare fruits at the Stoke Newington market last Saturday - I happened to know of the mysterious medlar from my visit to the National Collection of apples, pears and...medlars a few weeks back. I bought some, I cooked some and here I'm passing on the wisdom:)

The lovely lady selling medlars at the market grow lots of little known apples in her farm in Essex. She also makes cute bottles of jams and preserves and, occasionally, some medlar cheese (essentially, a paste, akin to Spanish Membrillo), but that day she didn't have any for sale, so I bought a bag of medlars with an intention to try and make some myself.

Medlars need to be bletted - that is, to be half-rotten, or soften by frost and/or long-ish rest - before cooking. I bought them already in that lovely, gooey state and proceeded to making a dish that is something in between a jelly and cheese:

Medlar jesse or chelly (do pass on the new word!):

You will only need caster sugar, lemon juice and some spicing in addition to your medlars.

How to:

Put medlars, as they are, no need to peel or clean, in a saucepan; cover with an inch of water or so; bring to the boil and simmer until they become soft and almost fall apart (some 10 minutes or so). You may need to add a bit more water if it evaporates too quickly.

Plonk this medlar porridge into a sieve (or ideally a jelly bag, which I don't have) and let the liquid to come out, by pressing gently on the cooked medlars. You will end up with dark-brown silky puree.

Weight the puree, and measure the same amount of water. Put both into a saucepan with a pitch of allsprice, cinnamon, clove - really, whatever spices you like (I'm thinking adding some liqueur or brandy might be nice, like Estonian Vana Tallinn...) and sugar (about 1/4 of sugar to the original weight of your medlars) and a couple of table spoons of lemon juice.

Simmer until set (about 5-10 minutes, but you may want to try the official method of checking whether your jelly is set by putting a little of it onto a chilled plate, let it rest for a minute and then move up the mixture with a spoon along the place surface - if it wrinkles, it's set - but to be honest, I didn't really bother).

Pour the mixture into a jar or a nice bowl and let it cool. The result smells like Christmas itself, and the combination of the tart and sweet flavours, and the grainy and honey-like texture is quite special.

The chelly can be sliced into thin wedges and eaten beautifully with some tart cheese and sourdough bread, or - like here - with spelt biscuits.

p.s. and for my Russian-speaking audience, medlar is mushmula germanskaya, apparently. anyone has ever heard of it back in the USSR??

Shrooms number 2 - Stoke Newington organic farmers market

2009-12-06T21:50:00.015Z

Over the next week or so I'll be writing about the hero of the North London markets - Stoke Newington's farmers' market run by the remarkable community project 'Growing communities' . This is the only fully organic market in the country, which takes place every Sunday on the territory of William Patten school, on Stoke Newington Church street. Whether you 'believe' in organics on not, the fact that the organisers have managed to set up such a successful market whilst keeping to their rather strict requirements is something to take your hat off to. However, more on that later, and for now let's start our little tour with...Mushrooms.

Yes, after my first glorious attempt at shroom picking a few weeks back, I was ecstatic to encounter some of the same creatures at the market this Saturday.

The stall's name - 'Gourmet mushrooms' - doesn't really describe this modest little stall and its bear-like owner with a Tolstoy-esque beard and thick wintery coat. Let's just say I felt at home, back in my childhood, a fairytale feeling of being a little girl in a big, but wise and kind forest of birches, deep blankets of snow and perhaps even a hut on chicken feet not far away (oh, the surrealism of Russian fairytales)...

Doesn't matter that my own urban childhood was only partly like this, I happily got chatted to the fungi-king. the stall has a selection of cultivated (oyster, champignon) mushrooms and some wild varieties - a tiny bag of which set me back £2.50, but I felt the price was fair, I had a bag of magic forestness with me, the last breath of autumn before the winter closes in...

And this is my little treasure collection (from the left): wood ears (they do look exactly like little leathery pig ears! soak them for some 5 minutes before slicing finely for frying), deceivers - brittle and delicate and deceptively delicious, and blewits - apparently they are in a particular abundance 'once the leaves fall down'...

Voila! he result - a super quick and easy lunch - Wild mushrooms with sage and sourcream.

How to prepare:

- wipe your mushroom clean gently
- half if necessary (I like mine chunky)
- slice an onion and a bit of garlic
- fry the lot quickly in a bit of olive oil and butter
- add a few sage leaves and couple of table spoons of sourcream and perhaps some mustard
- toast a slice of sourdough and devour with a salad leave or two

Tip: melt some 'stinky' cheese on top of your sandwich. Arrigoni's Taleggio is sensational with wild mushrooms!

On warming those cockles

2009-12-04T22:03:00.006Z

What a girl is to do when it is cold and wintery outside, when Christmas fever hasn't quite caught on yet and when her other, all important other half is away...

a soul-warming soup of course.

JC has left for the whole of December (a lucky thing will travel around Singapore and Thailand, but at least we will benefit from some lovely reportage from some bustling Asian food markets). And so I got to cooking - what else; a sweet and toothsome Parsnip and Parmezan soup.

You'll need:

a couple of large parsnips*
olive oil
Parmezan, grated
about 1.5 litres of stock, vegetable or chicken
Dukka (Middle-Eastern earthy spice of stone-ground wheat, sesame and other spice, can be bought from Arabica Food and Spice)

to garnish: parsley, good chunks of white bread and crispy bacon

roast the parsnip in a hot oven for about 30 minutes, sprinkle with Parmezan, and roast for another 5 minutes

transfer the vegetables into a saucepan, cover with hot stock, add a little salt and simmer for about 20-30 minutes

liquidise, sprinkle with dukka, parsley and bacon and serve in warmed bowls with cockle-warming chunks of bread.

I squeezed my eyes and imagined my dear JC in warm and humid urban forests of
Singapore - I hope the thought will warm his cockles too.

* did you know that a parsnip in Russian is pasternak, yes, that very author who gave us the drama of Dr Zivago? what an image I know:)

Kohlrabi

2009-11-23T20:17:00.005Z

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall refers to it as a 'vegetable sputnik', the Oxford companion to food calls it 'a bizarre form of a common cabbage' , I thought it looked like a head of an alien, with various antennas coming out of its head. Had it not been for the fact that I had accidentally tasted these translucent, pale-green slices before actually realising what it was, I probably would never have acquired enough curiosity to try it in my local 'Turkit'. But I’m glad I did!

Kohlrabi's name (Kol'rabi in Russian) comes from Kohl - cabbage in German, and Rabi - Turnip in Swiss German I think, and this is exactly what this vegetable is. It has the texture of a large-ish radish and a taste of a mild cabbage, or, as some say, a broccoli stem, although I find the latter description rather repellent. This sturdy and hardy brassica grows easily in both scarf-requiring temperatures of England, and hot and humid weathers of India (kohlrabi, or Monj, is apparently particularly popular there).

As i said, I had encountered the vegetable by chance, whilst sampling a Cypriot fair in the local community cafe in Green Lanes – after some five hours of mezes, invigorating mix of sirtaki, 80's faves and our own Russian folk singing, and a plate of cool, delicately-tasting, melon-looking slices, went down a treat as a palate-cleanser. The chef didn't know the name of this strangely refreshing vegetable in English, but we quickly gathered it was related to a turnip. It was the following day that i spotted this spherical creature in a box in my local.

What do you do with Kohlrabi?

Well, loads - it is so easy to peel and slice and it has such a delicate and non-obtrusive flavour, that you could put it in pretty much anything that required some crunch, body or lightness of taste. Kohlrabi can be eaten both row (a vitamin-packed salad, grated with carrots and apple) and cooked (with lots of butter and pepper), sliced, cubed, gratin-ed and boiled. But this is what I made with it:

Fennel and kohlrabi salad

1 fennel, with tips if available
1 kohlrabi

dressing:

3tbsp good peppery olive oil
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp capers, chopped
salt
pepper cracked

you will also need some ice for this

Slice both vegetables as thinly as you can. Put ice in a bowl, cover with cold water and immerse the vegetables in this icy water for 15-30 minutes - this will make them very crunchy. In the meantime, mix all the dressing ingredients, including chopped fennel leaves.

Get rid of the water and mix the sliced vegetable with the dressing thoroughly. I find it's better to then leave the salad for 10 mins or so, to let the flavours infuse. Oh, anchovies and cornishons will like this aneesed-y combo too.

I served the salad with some hot cauliflower curry with brown rice, but it will go wonderfully with some baked fish drenched in lemon and more fennel leaves or steamed chicken with fluffy mashed potatoes. I also quite like this posh way of using up the humble cabbagy-turnip - Kohlrabi carpaccio as in this summer's Hugh recipe.

I'm also thinking the slices of Kohlrabi, chilled and crunchy could be an inspiring addition (pardon my modesty) to a Cucumber cocktail to start off the Roman over-indulgence of this year’s Christmas dinner:

Christmas Kohlrabi cocktail (modified from YumSugar)

6 limes, rinsed
1 cup packed mint leaves, no stems, plus 6 sprigs for garnish
about 2-3 peeled kohlrabi
120 gr sugar
450 gr vodka or gin

Sparkling wine

Measures are approximate, so why not have a trial session first?

Thinly slice 3 limes and place in a pitcher. Juice the rest and add juice to pitcher. Add mint leaves. Slice the kohlrabi (but ratain a few slices for garnish) and add, then add sugar. Muddle ingredients. Add vodka or gin. Place in refrigerator to steep 30 minutes or longer.
Garnish.
Fill cocktail shaker with ice and top with mixture. Shake and strain into a martini glass. Top with a splash of sparkling wine, garnish each glass with a cucumber round, and serve.

Go on, have another mince pie.

Shrooms

2009-11-10T21:50:00.009Z

Mushroom picking in a popular past time in many parts of the world (just think Italy with its astronomically priced truffles or the Japanese with their sleek oyster mushrooms), but I feel in Russia 'going for mushrooms' is elevated to a different level. Shroom picking is a mysterious, fairy-tale-like endeavour that is closely linked to the folk traditions of Russia's country-side and the power of its beech and pine woods. Mushroom collection is to this day an encompassing activity that gets excited all ages and classes; a sight of cars pulled up by roads bordering thick forests and of big and serious men carrying heavy baskets full of glorious fungi are far from being trendy in the Russ land (and probably quite the opposite for the urbanised new Russians).

In Britain mushroom picking is gaining the momentum, in tandem with the general foodie movement. More and more of the trendy and middle-class yearn to re-connect with the nature and start baking bread, grow their own veg - and go mushroom picking. Mr J and I finally succumbed to the lure of the shroom last Saturday - after years of me melancholicly reminiscing of my childhood 'po-griby' memories and wet and mossy Estonian forests, we got out the basket that we had optimistically bought in Suzdal, near Moscow, one fine summer morning a few years back....but we needed a guide.

Andy with his years of mushrooming experience and a fun 'Fungi to be with' website was to be the one. He met us and 20 or 30 other shroom-hopefuls in the car park in Hampstead on a sparklingly beautiful November morning. The mixture of us was young (ish), cosmopolitan (ish with me the Russian and a Spanish couple showing our eagerness by bringing big woven baskets) and surprisingly short on kiddies. Andy is clearly bonkers about mushrooms and has spent years learning the tantalising Latin names of various toadstools - how about Laccaria amethystea, or a 'common' Amethyst Deceiver or Coprinus comatos for a wonderfully smelling Shaggy Ink Cup?

Apparently there are some 4000-5000 types of mushrooms in the UK and, according to Andy, about 20 of them are popular edible species and about the same are seriously poisonous; many more are in the in-between state of being tasteless and/or mildly diarrhea inducing. The best way to start learning about species is to memorize 2-3 types that are highly distinctive - I hurriedly jotted down 'red tinted gills - bad', but really rules are impossible since for every 'good' white gill there is a 'bad white gill and, anyway, for an untrained eye so many mushrooms look so similar!

Ceps are the best known and highly prized (a 'white' or belyj grip in Russian) - sturdy and off-white pretty fungi who like beeches and sandy soils; they are not too rare but my childhood memories are full of what felt like unrealistic dreams of finding a big Cep, which in fact matched the moods of the English woods...The Funnel Cap (Andy is showing on the left) is more common - they remind me Russian lisichki, or foxies, although bigger and floppier.

The search started very slowly, with most of us not spotting anything at all, but with time (we spent about three hours in the park darting around) we started seeing shapes and colours all of the place, dragging the toads out, showing them to Andy who, 2 out of 3, would thoughtfully say a convoluted Latin name and eventually a dismissive 'no good'...

The deeper we went into bushes and trees, the more things we started to see...it felt like a Treasure Hunt! First you are in a complete unknown, but as your eye and head get accustomed to the patterns of the surroundings you begin spotting more and more...the more inaccessible, thorny and wet the place is, the more likely we were to uncover shrooms. Fungi obviously like co-habiting with trees - it's a cosy cross-system whereby one helps the other - but you are more likely to spot a little glossy cap a few meters away from a tree - tree's roots can be as long as its height, and since mushrooms are often living off these roots you need to look further afield. And a stick does help.

At the end we managed to gather a good half a basket: a few Wood blewits - gorgeous lilac-y and floppy, a handful of the Deceivers - cute little orange round caps and lots and lots of Buttercaps - unattractive spindly things, the lenght of your palm, with shiny dark brown tops. Oh, the red one above is a lucky find of one of our shroom-comrades - Fly Agaric, in Russian matchingly called Mukhomor, the one that exhausts or starves flies. You get a fantastic image of this half plant, half animal creature seducing flies to approach and stay...

I have intense memories of coming back home with my parents after a day's of mushroom gathering, sitting next to a fireplace, laying the found treasures carefully on a newspaper, sorting them, carefully cleaning them..I remember some mushroom always the types that had to be de-skinned before being fried with lots of onions and sourcream - does
anyone Russian know or remember why these mushroom had to be cleaned?

Mr J and I followed the same cosy tradition - with an addition of a newly purchased mushroom cleaner. An adorable and extremely useful gadget that sweeps dirt off mushrooms (washing them in water is a big no, since they'll become all soggy and waterlogged). From the handful of what was left I cooked up an autumnal treat of shrooms stewed briefly in a little garlic, butter and cream, piled up on clouds of creamy mustardy mash - a truly warm-your-cockles feast.

Quince

2009-10-25T22:19:00.009Z

Quince (aiva in Russian) is a visual hybrid between an apple and a pear; it has a tough pale-yellow skin and an astringent or tart flavour. Following my promise earlier in the blog, this month's pick up from 'Turkit' - my neighbourhood Turkish grocery shop - is this curious little fruit, that is as widely eaten in Turkey (see my travels in Turkish Cappadocia last year, where quince trees are in abundance in the wild, surprisingly similar in taste and look to the cultivated variety sold in shops here), as is in Southern America (made into dulce de membrillo, a paste-like substance often eaten with bread and cheese) and Britain - where it's most commonly cooked into the quince jelly.

I have had the pleasure of encountering this heavy, scented fruit, still on its tree, at Brogdale, the Natural Fruit Collection in Favesham, Kent - one of the largest collection of temperate fruits in-the-world (!). The visit was the first 'field trip' as part of my course in the Anthropology of Food at the University of London - twenty of us travelling to this 'garden of England' (as Kent is often referred to), on a rainy and muggy day, with our little writing pads and big cameras. We wanted to know everything there is to know about The Apple and its siblings - from its origin to its environmental and political story, but the main activity of the day was of course the tasting (in fact, so much and for so many hours, that I was dreaming of apples, pears and quinces later on at night!).

There are over 3000 types of fruit there - just apples come to 2200, but plums, nuts, gooseberries are also in their hundreds. One of the main activities of Brogdale is to collect and conserve the varieties (although the history is tangled and the current situation where the land is privately owned and a number of businesses, rather unrelated to the orchards, are let out on the farm, is rather confusing, making the future of the place quite uncertain...).

Many of the types here are indigenous to the British Isles (such as the omnipresent in supermarkets Cox Orange Pippin and the most popular dessert apple - Russet), but there are many that grow predominately in warmer climates (such as the 'Asian'- very sweet and Russet-looking small apple often grown in Japan, and Decio - an old variety, originated from Italy, pale and delicate, it needs lots of sunshine to be a real contender).

I particularly liked the look of Jonathan:) - apparently, one of the most successful varieties grown in the States. I'm afraid to me this Jonathan tasted a bit too bland and uninspiring - why couldn't they give this name to a big and bouncy, full of flavour and complexity apple I ask!

And the best discovery was a pear from Ukraine - a large and bulbous fruit with intensely lime-y smell and very crisp but juicy flavour. The tree itself is the biggest, the widest, in the collection. Some interesting images pop into mind of broad and steady Ukrainian lads...:)

Despite the fact that the collection is not organic and so the trees are routinely sprayed with chemicals (the fact of which the lovely guide Joan had calmly and openly disclosed - the way that merited a discussion, but not an argument, a rare quality really), I, all of us really, couldn't stop admiring the sheer diversity of the humble apple (and quince, and plum) tree, feeling like small children in a sweet shop, overwhelmed by the choice of colours, shapes, smells and alluring names.

By back to the quince - the tour had started in fact with this tall and leafy tree. The fruit is so under-appreciated in this country apparently that the tree stands outside the main orchard, completely unguarded, all laden with fragrant fruits and looking melancholic under British drizzle. The guide had said firmly that quinces are not be eaten row and that it needs to be shaped into jellies and pastes. I had to disagree! The quinces I had been buying in my 'Turkit' (really not that dissimilar from the ones on display in Kent) were beautiful sliced thinly, to expose the velvety texture of the fruit, the pleasure intensified by the enormity of the quince - one could slowly devour the fruit, a few slivers at a time, several days in a row (as long as one doesn't mind the discolouration caused by air).

I also have a memory of putting dark and syrapy quince jam (pieces of quince almost translucent from the long cooking) onto a warm toast - in Crimea, southern Ukraine, the jam made by my grandmother in chunky three-litre pots. The Crimean climate must be perfect for this hardy fruit - freezing cold in winter and hot and sunny in summer - but strangely I do not recall seeing quinces or its jam since those early days.

I have also stewed sliced quince briefly at home, in a bit of butter, with lots of cinnamon, to be eaten with cold vanilla ice-cream, or - to make use of all the different varieties of apples I picked up walking through Brogdale (above) and to make the tummy of the Englishman warm and happy - cook the chopped quince with sugar and a bit of water to layer the Crumble, the ultimate autumnal pudding...

How do you eat your quince?

The 'Turkit' and its Prickley pears

2009-10-10T13:43:00.008+01:00

Something to look forward to, oh my faithful reader. Over the coming months I will be picking a fruit or a vegetable, earlier unknown or undiscovered to me, from my local Turkish/Greek green grocer in Turnpike Lane, North London; bring it home, dissect it, look at it, cook it, probably eat it, and then, hopefully, describe it to you. I am preparing for lots of delights, surprises and god-knows-what-that-is's. I will need your help, your expertise and, on occasion, your sympathy.

The shop in question is a lively, loud, cramped and hectic shop 3 minutes walk from our house. The shop is essentially a green grocer, a glorious collection of fruit and veg, cheeses, cans of the pickled and marinated, breads, olives and spices. Being primarily a source of Mediterranean goodies, it has always been clever in stocking up on produce that would attract other local communities, namely Bangladeshi, Indian and even Polish - hence to me it is a prime example of ingenious business know-how, fuelled by migrant wit and local necessity. There are many other shops on the street that sell similar produce, but this one is the biggest, the noisiest, and, on the surface of it, the most successful.

The shop is owned by a Turkish family, which means you learn people's faces quite quickly here (even if the urban realities prevent you from stopping to say a proper hello to the shop keepers and exchange more than the required politenesses - all excuses of course) and know what service to expect, or not, from a particular member. All are involved - cousins, parents, grandparents and aunties are here at one time or another; and so you see teenage children starting out in the shop to bulk up their pocket money, then young women getting married, raising their children whilst doing short hours behind the till, men of the family doing their manly things of carrying boxes and playing in security guards, and sometimes you spot a photograph on a wall, with a black ribbon across it, a granddad in black-and-white, who has spent most of his life surrounded by this bounty and you saw laying out bunches of mint in neat rows just the other day*..

We call the shop 'Turkit'. Our domestic legend has it that the original name of the shop - Turkish International - slowly metamorphosed into turk. international, then turk. in, and the turkit. In spite of living in the proximity to the shop for five years, I am still to try most of the produce on sale there: amongst the usual boxes of figs, cabbages, parsley, massive sacks of basmati rice, and oblongs of freshly baked Turkish bread, there are curious packs of huge, round, glossy leaves; tiny, mouse-like green vegetables, massive, earth-coloured, potato-looking things, dark rounds strongly smelling of limes - to name just a few. So I have made a decision to pick a fruit or a vegetable, completely randomly, and make something out of it or with it, approximately once a month or so.

And so my fruit of September is a Prickly pear - a cute and gorgeously pale yellow/green/pink fruit, that is only in season a few weeks a year (at least when transported to England). The skin looks soft and subtle and so the subsequent hours spent trying to get rid of numerous splinters in my fingers - all tiny, thin needles that come out of the pear's skin, very similar to a cactus - came as an annoying surprise.

The Prickly pear is a very popular fruit in Greece around this time of the year, and is one of the main nostalgia items for the large population surrounding Green Lanes, and specifically Turkit (so somewhat akin to Russians with our prickly gherkins, see my post on that here).

The similarity with your ordinary pear is only its shape, the flesh inside is a beautiful rose-pink, fleshy and refreshing looking. But biting into the creature was a bit disappointing - lots of soft seeds inside, and the flesh more watery than juicy, the taste, I thought, would suit better to squeezing it into a cold drink, rather than eating it in slices or with a spoon, like I did.

Have you eaten a Prickly pear before? I'm confident that the original Greek fruit found on the sunny islands is a more promising item!

*Obviously, the shop is not as idealic as I describe it, and is a dusty, bitterly cold in winter and stuffy in summer place of work for generations of this family. But you do see people moving on and up from there: it seems to provide a solid basis for some of the 'original' family members and, by being financially successful, an opportunity to study and progress for others, to move beyond the shelf-stocking, weighting and bagging.

Bio marche, Boulevard des Batignolles, Paris

2009-09-29T20:52:00.010+01:00

Oh, Paris, Paris - who could have thought that after all the blogging and eating only now that I have visited what many would have said had to be the first - a Parisian market.

Me and my significant other did last weekend what we rarely choose to do (at least not in public or whilst admitting to ourselves) - have a fly-away sugary romantic weekend in Paris. The meal we chose to celebrate the event was not at a classy, white table-linen and candlelight restaurant, but a bustling organic market in the centre of the city. Not that unpredictable really.

God, when I'm at a market like this I want to pack up my bags and come and live in France - colours, sounds, variety! This bio marche is solely organic - that in itself is a miracle by British standards (there is only one fully organic farmers' market in London as far as I know, in Stoke Newington), but it's the sheer volume and diversity of produce on offer that makes this market so remarkably different from its London counterparts (even the biggest and most successful ones, such as the Borough market, 'suffer' in my view from over-indulging in selling 'fine' foods and take-away snacks - all very respectable and of the highest quality admittedly, but not so fruitful - excuse the pun - for weekly shopping).

Boulevard de Batignolles is a wide and spacious road leading up to Montmartre (the view of Sacre Coeur makes the area particularly romantic). The market is stretched for about 200 meters on an island in the middle of the street, not far from metro Villiers. You hear the soothing sounds of frenchified live jazz playing long before you hit the smells, bicycles and berets of the market. There you have at least six large fruit and veg stalls (enormous, overflowing tables laden with all sorts of vegetable, all in season, all from the vicinity), a handful of meat sellers (not the usual neatly packed lonely boxes for two for a rare Saturday breakfast, but torses of everything from veiny pigens to gorged ducks and big happy chickens) and numerous producers of bread (of course), jams and saussison. And, apart from a little man making galettes in a corner (hearty, wholesome rounds of buckwheat flour, carrots, and an egg), very few stalls selling food already prepared. No, this place is all about touching, squeezing, putting your nose into things affair - take with you and spend long leasury afternoon cooking...

I know I'm totally over-romanticising the French eating habits, but no matter how much you know the reasons for such differences between the 'market' culture in the neighbouring countries*, it never ceases to amaze.

I am going to follow a cliche path of thought tonight - apologies to my readers, accustomed to a more high brow (or simply 'purple' as the significant other calls it) prose, and so the picture above represents snugly the Frenchies' attitude to food. The wholesome seller of plump birds has just cut off the black and blue head of the chicken and giggley gave it to a daughter of a customer. Just imagine this scenario in the UK... can you?? I just loved the expression on the girl's face - there is a bit of squeamishness there, but she is hugely amused and curious about the creature. Difficult not to make a sweeping, country-wide generalisations based on this sole observation - if we all knew from early days what food actually looked like and that it is not just amorphous blobs of pink in plastic, we would perhaps pose for a moment when buying that 2 for £2 chickens or wafer thin sheets of ham reconstituted from the parts of an animal that are not actually meat.

I don't mean to sound righteous - apologies - back to the beautiful market.

Peruvian cucumbers, grown locally - prickly, soft to a touch, creatures that apparently have a texture of an ordinary cucumber and are brilliant as crudite, especially in summer because of their fresh lime-y taste. Unfortunately, I didn't get to try the little monster, so let me know if you have?

We have finished the tour of the market with a proper feast: whole half of a roasted chicken - slightly charred, smoky, nothing but just meat, not even salt, two bulbs of tomatoes, all sugar and juice, and a baguette. Vive la France (les marches, bien sure)!

* post-war rationing and strongly industrialised agriculture in Britain is said to be, at least, party responsible for the difference in the food cultures of the two countries, and the UK's subsequent lack of vibrant farmers' markets. Psychologically and socially French place an enormous role on food, so we are told - terroir is everything. I suppose it is, again at least partly, a self-perpetuating prophecy: when for the last two centuries the French and the rest of the (Western) world have been saying how sophisticated and complex the French cuisine is, it is literally impossible not to grow up internalising this view and be proud of what it represents. I am tempted to compare the French mild fixation on food to the Russian patriotism when it comes to their 'otechestvo' or home land. Occasionally such feelings result in snobbism, social problems and a vicious sense of pride, but it also creates a very strong national identity that protects its bearers from the hash foreigner or a shallow 'rostbif':)

When the summer speaks

2009-09-21T20:55:00.008+01:00

My mother used to call the weather like today 'whispering' - it is not just its warmth and sun, the atmosphere is almost like a light blanket enveloping you, making you feel wonderfully cosy and relaxed. They call it here an Indian summer - in Russia they say babye leto, a woman's summer, or, to be precise, a summer of a woman who's glancing goodbye to her youth but is still in her prime, still wishing, but maybe not willing...

The days like that make you comfortable, at the same time as gently forcing you to reflect - not in that wintery way, when you are happy to tuck yourself in under a fluffy duvet and melancholicly watch the rain go by - no, the sun and stillness of the late summer days put you in the right mood to look forward to whatever the leaves, the trees and the wind have under the sleeve just behind the corner...To remember this sparkling day, to have something to savour over the long winter nights, here are a couple of pictures...

A classic tri-colour salad

Not often that I make a conscious effort to buy specific products for a specific recipe - in advance, with a pen and paper in hand - especially when the recipe is beyond the simplicity itself. But a few days ago, on another disappearing summer day I really felt like making the best tri-colour I could ever have! The obvious choice (or maybe not so obvious!) was the Borough market and its main veg patch in the centre: I went for three bulbous almost-orange beef tomatoes, a couple of cute bright yellow ones and a little tigery-green one. The Parma Ham Company provided the snow ball of the naturally sweet buffalo mozzarella. I added my own, window-still-grown basil and dill (a slightly Russianised tri-colour) and voila! Sun, cheese and tomato - a modest celebration of the summer at its pick!

Breakfast in bed

And this is a lovely way to greet the Fall - in bed, lounging on a fluffy blanket with a mug of hot coffee and a thick layer of milk.

I was ravenous that Saturday and considerably hang-over. The hunger won over the laziness and I got up to slice my own soughdough, chop the salty, wrinkly gherkins, take out the peppery smoked mackerel and then came the piece de la risestance - a pouched egg (incredible what a bit of boiling water and a dash of vinegar can do to a humble egg). The mood had become all yellow - the sun on sheets, the yolk gashing over bread, the laughter - all warm and carefree - as if there is no winter to come: just us, beautiful light and... the Guardian!

Noordermarkt, Amsterdam, or a hymn to herring

2009-09-19T20:47:00.014+01:00

For most people living in Britain today who are even vaguely interested in food and how it comes to being, tomatoes from Holland stand as an epitome of all that is wrong with today's intensive agriculture - tasteless and unripen 'vegetable-things', grown fast and too clever into a uniformity of perfectly-made 'products'. And this is not just an overgeneralising misconception - a weighty percentage of fruit and veg sold in the UK is in fact imported from Holland, from the fields of glasshouses and factories. My usual anticipation of wonderful new markets and fresh produce was therefore slightly blemished in anticipation of my recent trip to Amsterdam.

Ironic really, considering that the 'Low Countries' (the lands roughly comprising the present-day Holland and parts of the surrounding countries, so called because of their complete, pancake-like flatness, lying below the sea-level) pretty much caused the agricultural revolution in England in the 17-18 centuries! Holland and Flanders were eating well in the 17th centuries, thanks to their naval prowess - and as a consequence the wealth of spices, exotic fruits and everything that could be appropriated from the far-away 'primitive' lands; and engineering intelligence, allowing them not only to build big and lasting ships (in the meantime 'inventing' sauerkraut with its ample C-vitamin content that would allow sailors to be in the sea, scurvy-free, for more than 4 weeks), but also drain half of their country, leaving behind rich and fertile soil. The Dutch - Protestant and prosecuted - immigrated en-masse to the friendly England, taking their brains and hands with them. They brought along with them the new ways of cultivating land (planting clover and humble turnip on an empty land in rotation), all sorts of new vegetables (such as a 'normal' orange carrot, virtually unknown to the English before) and, of course, flowers. Holland still grows and buys more flowers, it seems, than the whole of Europe bunched up together. It makes sense (commercially at least), what else would you grow on the land so hill-free and so human-populated - tulips, veg and cows seem a good answer (the legend has it that the hormones that used to be added to milk are responsible for the improbable height of the Dutch - I'd rather think it's the liberal thinking or the pot, allowing for the democratic mix of genes).

The flowers are indeed a craze, even at numerous 'ethnic' markets spreading out across Amsterdam. Tulips and the well-familiar boxes of factory-produced tomatoes and pointless iceberg lettuces. One such market is on Mauritskade street, near the big and empty Oosterpark and by the curiously located Tropenmuseum that is dedicated to Holland's colonial successes. A fascinating, never-ending stretch of stalls: Moroccan-Turkish-Indonesian snacks mixed in with all for a euro offers and tables filled by freshly-arrived immigrants filling up with breakfasts after night shits. It felt quite familiar - young dark-skinned mothers exchanging phazes in Dutch with stall-holders with the same ease it happens in London in English; imported packages of food with signs from all over the worlds and a myriad of made-in-China's. But the market somehow also felt more 'real', more needed, perhaps because the surrounding area is mainly populated by immigrants, unlike in London where every district is broken down and interpopulated, allowing poverty to co-exist with relative wealth.

But then, of course, there's another side to Amsterdam and, just like in London, the desire for 'local, seasonal, organic' is making its strong mark. Some half an hour walk north, near trendy, Notting Hill like Joordan, there's a Noordermarkt. According to a guidebook, the market is 'unbeatable for second-hand clothes and accesorices'. That was all there, but more importantly, the whole area is taken by by an enormous organic farmers' market every Saturday. It is insanely popular by all sorts of crowds, partly perhaps because Amsterdam doesn't seem to have many other (if any) farmers' markets, partly because the mix of antics, second-hand finds, artistic finds and stall of local artisans and farmers creates an irresistible atmosphere of carnival and joyful matter-of-factness. The word 'bio', or organic, to me seemed quite a stretch applied to this place, since only about a portion of stalls were selling organic (or at least identifyable certified organic), however, the combination of bric-a-brac, quality hand-made titbits (I had to be dragged from an adorable scarf made out of a sleeve from a man's jacket) and small-scale producers were justifying the hype.

Then there was food: huge fluffy wild mushrooms, the yellow insanity of bulbous Dutch cheeses, Dutch pigs happily hanging on crooks and kranies. I particularly liked the flat tubes of dough made out of spelt flour, filled with dried strands of seawood - felt like eating up an essence of Holland! An earthy, down to earth layer of pastry filled with a salty, mineral-rich core - what if not a metaphor for the sturdy nation beating the force of sea!

My main reason to come to the market was to try what I miss so much from my blondy days in Estonian pastures and what the Dutch seem to be happily swallowing up any time of the day - herring. Actually, it is better described as herring sachimi, because the fish is not cooked or, in most cases, even marinated. It is simply spankingly fresh, briefly salted and served with bread, chopped onions and sliced pickled cucumbers. The taste of this oily, fatty, meaty fish can only be described as delectable. But then there's the texture - slivering flesh, round and tender, just sliding down your throat. Heaven. Especially when eaten cross-legged, on a pavement, by a canal, helped by a glass of fridge-cold sparkling wine, whilst eyeing up the passing-by boats and cyclists. A pity really that Brits have chosen to import the stale sameness of peppers and cucumbers, rather than the the fleshy beauty of a plump herring. The fish is plentiful, healthy, delicious and cheap - perhaps, we need another wave of the crafty Dutch to show us the way!

Russians in statistics and gherkins

2009-09-02T22:10:00.012+01:00

Ever wondered what lurks behind the ubiquitous banner of 'Eastern-European products' above some Cyrillic looking but mainly Asian shops around the capital? My findings in pictures:

Russians are as famous for drinking vodka three times a day, as for walking bears as pets and eating pickles as staple food. But as opposed to Indian cucumber pickles, which are normally made out of long and smooth varieties sliced into slick rounds, Russians would not dare to use anything but the little, prickly type - as above. Acclimatisation of Russians in the UK is particularly troublesome therefore, as one would not find this type anywhere in Britain. Hence my heart lipped the other day when I came across a modest box of wrinkled gherkins, in a gleaming beauty of all-import Eastern-European shop called 'Smak' in the otherwise Ottoman vicinity of Green Lanes.

'Corned bird - Eastern variety'
Corned meats were particularly popular with the Soviet folk, not only as a useful staple taken to camps (pioneer type, not the concentration, although the latter most probably too), but often stirred into noddles to make vermishelli po-flotski, noodles a la navy (presumably because the dish was easily assembled on ships and boats across the USSR). The dish is a Soviet equivalent to the Shepperd's Pie, and as such much loved by kids everywhere in the 1/6th of the universe.
Clearly the 'bird' variety is a more exquisite offer, more appropriate for the Russian emigree.

'Sunflower seeds - selected'
Called 'Amusement' - one almost wonders if the healthy snack is used to sell other, less virtuous, and slightly less legal seeds. A London equivalent to an Amsterdam coffee shop!

'Male jam'
No jocking, this is an exact translation. If you think this is some kind of alternative medicine to treat 'male problems', you are understandably, but seriously mistaken. This is a Russian alternative to a 'Gentleman's Relish', essentially a tomato marinate or a sauce aimed specifically at men. I have not tasted this delicacy, but assume it has some chilly, less sugar and is quite chunky - this is what a real man is like of course.

The trail of memory: stewed plums

2009-08-09T19:04:00.004+01:00

The end of summer is often the time when, in a desperate attempt to capture the fleeting sun, one spends even longer outdoors, breathing in the increasingly fresh air of still green leaves and fruit in prime. Bottling the essence of the escaping warmth and approaching days of trumpeting water on a roof is a process of prolonging the pleasure of the summer season. It is also about building of future memories, moments of looking back and enjoying the nostalgia. Be it oversized strawberries, tiger bodies of enormous courgettes or your own memory of the days that will never come again - August is the time of melancholy; that mellow and slow feeling of time trickling away, and you being on the verge of both laughter and tear. The making of the future memories therefore becomes remembrance of the things repast…

Most of my summers when I was little were spent in Crimea, in the South of Ukraine, on the Black sea, in Feodosiya, the town popular with hippies and Soviet burokrachiki. My grandfather Dmitry Vladimirovich, having retired from the tiresome role of a KGB major, had built a wooden house there; and my brightly ginger grandmother Polina had grown a beautiful and wild garden around the house, full of overgrown flowers, peach and cherry trees, chickens and lots of spindly spiders hanging between trees and forgotten corners. There was a little wooden hut amongst the trees, stuffy with lots of dump and communist magazines, poetry volumes and ship-building manuals (my dad was a ship engineer). There were a couple of springy single beds there and a drawer which always held a bottle of portwein or a ‘good Georgian cognac’ – my father liked a tumble or two (or three) in the evening, before going off to see his friends - captains of small tourist boats; to me commanders of huge ships.

My grandfather had long been gone by the time I remember my dad taking me to Feodosiya for my 3-month summer holidays, although my grandma Polina – a stern women with lots of energy – was still around, looking after the house, making me scared with her steely manner, but also making lots of wonderful jams in her little, cool kitchen. She would lay out mountains of fruits on a table outside her house and use huge, enamel basins (normally used for washing up) and a small stove to preserve the summer: the wonderful fruity mess would slowly change its colour from dark red, to bubble-gum pink to pale innocent pink. The intoxicating aroma of sugar and fruit is still imprinted in my mind (and my belly). To this day I think she must have been quite a lonely woman, with a quietly tragic life of a wife of a KGB employee, a man who held tough principles on child-rearing and liked younger women. I would like to think that Polina’s jam making was a way to show love and care to the world, to preserve the heavy and impossibly beautiful fruits of her labour in the garden, and to give her a moment of eye-squeezing happiness in the middle of very severe Crimean winters: I can imagine her sitting a table, covered with a bright plastic cover, the room only lit by a small table lamp, slurping dark, hot tea with little spoonfuls of summer-laden sweet fruits preserved in their youth and virginity. Dad and I would often carry the heavy jars of crimson and yellow all the way back to cool and flat Estonia, store them in our little kladovka, next to my mum’s creations, to be open and enjoyed for ‘special occasions’ (the first one almost always being my birthday just a couple of months later) and cold, white nights, when only sweet and canned would do.

I remembered my grandma Polina’s jam-making sessions today, when impromptu I decided to stew a few forgotten plums in the fridge. They were tiny, very tart and impossible to stone, but once put together with a bit of sugar and water, the magic begun. The fruits had quickly lost their shape, became slushy, bubbled up into a pretty fury of white and pink syrup and just a few minutes later re-appeared as a beautifully dark and nourishing soup - quite far in taste or texture from Polina’s perfectly formed jams, but nevertheless immensely smoothing, relaxing in its sugarness and languid consistency – a beautiful and melancholic link between the things long past and the things soon to come.

The beauty of pig trotters

2009-07-08T20:36:00.015+01:00

Arent’ they fun?! A test to an omnivore kinda dish, I say. Yes, not only did I buy these pink creatures quite on purpose (the all organic tootsies of a - hopefully! - happy piggy), but cleaned them, boiled them until no more, dismantle them and put them all together into a glorious Soviet grandmotherly dish of kholodets, or pork in aspic, or ham and chicken terrine.

The name Kholodets stems from a Russian word meaning cold, frozen or chilled. The dish basically consists of shredded boiled meat (which can be anything from chicken to rabbit to beef), jellified by the means of a pork stock, made out of pig trotters (the bones and other tissue in the feet make the liquid go jelly-like when chilled. In fact – read closely, my vegetarian friend - all jelly like treats are made with at least some use of a pig essence). I believe the must have it roots in the Fresh obsession with everything jellied in the 18-19 centuries (and as everyone knows Russians were bonkers about the Fresh in those far away days). The wobbly and transparent texture must have signified something bizarrely sophisticated and - yes - fun.

I'd been dreaming of re-creating this dish of my childhood for years, battling the seeming impossibility of sourcing the named tootsies from local butchers. Kholodets could in the past be found in any canteen or restaurant throughout the Communist kingdom - in different shapes and disguises; but I always remember the long evenings at home, in our kitchen, when my mum would slowly go through buckets of just-boiled meat, carefully separating the edible tasty bits from not so. Her utilizing all the possible plates, cups, bowls and saucers in our house to make the little individual portions of kholodets - a bit of meat on the bottom of a plate, some crushed garlic, then goes the stock and in the fridge for 12-24 hours. My mum almost always used chicken meat and put lots of garlic, so the result was incredibly tender, delicate and flavoursome at the same time. We ate out little kholodets (ki?) out of the bowls where it’d been chilling, with some nose-bitingly Russian mustard or grated horseradish and, of course, black Russian rye bread.

Well, I repeated the experiment the other night, freakily enjoying the sweet and meaty smell of chicken and trotters boiling my kitchen away for good 4 hours (take the trotters and bony joints of chicken, add cold water, a few spoons of vinegar, onion, carrots, lots f salt and spices - basically chuck the ‘left overs procedure’). And this is the initial result:

I felt like a villain – a wonderful, life-affirming feeling!

My kholodets was more of a fresh terrine - an ample amount of meat in each bowl (with added parsley, cracked pepper and garlic, which I mistakenly omitted) and only enough stock to cover the filling (no more than a cm or so).

Voila! (sorry about the amateur-ish photo)

Have your pig trotter concossion with some pickled cucumbers (mine were very spicy with lots of chillies), a lovely fresh salad, soughdour (home-made in my case, but this may be optional) and - an absolute requirement which was refused to me in my years of pioneer youth - a shot of very, very cold vodka.
Na zdaravye, tovarishi.

On conquering an eight-legged monster

2009-06-30T22:08:00.004+01:00

Octopuses are generally sold dead, but you feel you struggle a powerful, living sea-creature when immersing its foot-long muscular body into a saucepan of boiling water. The way it curls, spasms and turns from milky-grey to crimson makes you feel both powerful and cruel; in awe of the nature, how it allowed you to evolve and develop skills to conquer such animal.

We spent blissful two days on the island of Vis, Croatia, totally occupied by this many-legged creature. The octopus adventure started with an early morning trip to a little local fish market - a quiet covered space right on the sea front, with a handful of fishermen carefully laying out their catch on the smooth, stone tables. Feeling just a tad self-conscious (predatory white shorts and large sun-glasses) I breathed in and walked in...The men weren't particularly bothered either way, probably not quite believing that a young laaaady like me (remember, Vis is a 'luxury' island, full of yachts and London priced restaurants) would actually dare to buy a whole fish and cook it in her rented apartments. Well, I went for the weirdest and most daring (and, yes, the most dear! although peanuts compared to the prices in near-by taverns). I didn't even see its size when buying - the wrinkley paunchy fisherman just pointed towards a blue plastic bag and grumbled 'this, octopus!'. I accepted the unspoken challenge, internally steadily telling myself that if it all goes pear-shaped, it's only about 15 quid down the drain. The man must have spotted an octupi novice in me and offered to clean the mollusc (for a fee). Thank God I said yes, because, firstly, I realised I'd bought two octopuses; and secondly, that the amount of ink that came out of the creatures would swamp our entire 'euro-furbished' kitchen! I left the cool market room feeling adventurous, if slightly terrified.

My next move was therefore wise - checking how to cook the inky, slimy thing (I wouldn't normally go into such preparations, relying on my general sense of cooking requirements). Unlike a tender little squid, octopuses need to be cooked for good (aa!) 2 hours before being fried or grilled (apparently, octopuses live for a lot longer than the squid for example, hence having time to toughen up. They die, by the way, within just a few weeks of conceiving their off-spring: endocrine secretions are the cause of genetically-programmed death). So, our dinner had to be improvised whilst we got to the task of 'tenderising' the octopus’s meat. We spent the whole evening in the sweet vapour of the cooking octopuses. The oven was electric, and so I just couldn't find the way to keep the temperature constantly low, so the monster just lied there, bathing in a pot of very hot water. Eventually, around midnight, we made a decision that the folk could 'easily go through the fresh', poured out the water and let the two leggies rest.

I dreamt all night of legs, suction cups, corals...

The morning felt like a Christmas day to me. I jumped out of bed, sprinting to the kitchen, as if expecting that something magical would have happened to the cooked molluscs! They just lied there sleepily, very tender pale pink colour all over with darker, almost indigo-coloured thin layer of skin on top. They looked beautiful and humble to me.

Our second octopus day started with a delicate operation of taking some of the darker skin off the octopuses together with various fatty tissues in between, carefully trying to keep all the succulent suction cups intact. I then sliced all the 16 legs in one inch pieces: half was kept for our grandiose lunch, another half was marinated with just some olive oil and lots of lemon (this was mainly from the smaller octopus, who we, quite rightly, expected to be tender). The main feast was prepared like this:

Octopus a la Vis

glugs of (Croatian of course) olive oil

sliced onion

crushed garlic

all the sliced octopus legs

cubes of boiled new potatoes (4-6 depending on their size)

juice of one squeezed lemon (and some rind if you like a bit of extra zing)

a few table spoons of white wine

lots of finely cut parsley

(chilly flakes would go very nicely here, but I didn't have them in my rented kitchen)

Sweat onions and garlic in some olive oil, until tender and just a little brown. Add the octopus and potatoes, fry on a gentle heat for a 2-3 minutes, add the wine, let it evaporate for a minute or so. Chuck all the parsley, and stew for a few more minutes with a little bit of water if necessary, so that the whole thing comes together in a glorious and messy pink-yellow-green stew.

Eat with more chilled, crisp white wine and chunks of fresh and crusty baguettes.

Our verdict? The sweet and slightly citrusy flavour of the octopuses is unforgettable: fresh, meaty and juicy; it felt like sucking and chewing on the essence of the Mediterranean. If only I’d insisted that the stove the previous evening did it job properly – the bigger mollusc definitively needed an extra half an hour in the pot, as we needed at least a couple more jaws to chew through all the legs (a surprisingly pleasant meaty chewing gum of the octopus I fact!). I know this because the smaller legged creature had just the right texture of chewiness and melt-in-your-mouth tenderness… Perhaps the octopuses did have its upper hand (leg?) on us at the end. We were equals in the fight. I take my hat off in respect and… sharpen my knifes in preparation.

On communist idiology and erotic fruits

2009-06-28T10:41:00.010+01:00

I have come to a conclusion that one of the main criterion (let’s be honest, THE main criterion) in choosing my future place of residence ought to be its proximity to a good farmers’ market. And by ‘good’ I don’t mean a bijou type of a market, with a handful of artfully set up stalls of organic burgers and couscous with sun-dried tomatoes. I am after gluttony of shackled tables, all offering the same, all offering something different...

I have come back from a week in Croatia, you see. I am a new person, with a renewed belief that a (post) communist space, sea and sun can work together, even if the first few days you are in a haze of (seemingly) incompatible sensations - clean and luxurious sea, rude and haughty service, lightly (as opposed to Northern European 'cook to death' method) fish and vegetables, uninterrupted kind sun and a rumble of Slav sounds all around. I felt on the edge at first, not being able to put my finger on my feelings and the surroundings - a sense of displacement, disbelief and even envy that the hoards of Slavs managed to settle in this Adriatic paradise some many centuries ago - well done, bro! My predecessors in the not-so-far-away Ukraine chose steppes and sub-zero winters. The territory of Croatia was part of the Roman empire, and invaded by everyone from Turks to Venetians - the Italian influence is particularly strong here, with many local Serbo-Croatian dialects (a language so close to Russian that I could almost read newspapers) sounding positively Italianised - ciaos, sing-song rhythms and energetic gestures added to my overall Slav-Latin confusion. But it's Croatian markets (surprise-surprise) that made me feel if not at home then definitely homey.

The nearly orgasmic feeling of being able to just pop around a corner and have a selection of 10, 15, 30 little stalls all offering the same basic, beautiful, fully ripen products; all differently priced depending on their size and purpose (eat now or can for later); all having their customer and making a small but a buck. I aimlessly dreamed of organising guided tours here for the English farmers and producers, to show how selling the same product can still work in one market...

Unfortunately, we know well that the underlying structures of the markets in Britain are too different for us, on the Island, to even dream of having a market culture (things are changing, but the result is still uncertain). The Continent (and in my view ex-Communist countries in particular) still have masses of people with their allotments, growing a little bit of this and that, some for their own bellies, some to earn an extra coin. In Croatia it is a combination of a fertile land, mild climate and many years of Soviet food shortages that result in proliferation of markets. In the olden days growing your own was almost a necessity, even for the city dwellers. My own theory is that for many people under the Communist rule of no private property having an allotment meant having space for that Cosmo-induced 'me' time, freedom to have different conversations with your friends, creating something of your own, for yourself, getting away from the concrete reality of party-enforced limits. Perhaps it was all a lot more relaxed in Yugoslavia (I still remember my parents dreaming of a Czech 'garniture' - Yugoslavian furniture was highly desired for the unknown to me reasons), but things are clearly different here now. Even in food-phrensied countries like Italy and France markets are more professional than here it seems... But I'm transgressing away, here are the highlights of what you should try:

Figs - the freshness, light perfume and obvious eroticism of this large and squishy, lime-coloured fruit with its pale purple inside is unbeatable consumed with lashings of (local, lavender)honey and morsels of very mild (local, goat) cheese or just devoured as it is, lying Emperor-style by the sea, gazing leisurely at the surrounding female bodies.

Cherries - tiny, intensely sweet and sour jewels, the colour of a gypsy girl's eyes (and why not??), are surprisingly refreshing in the heat, especially when chilled and swallowed first thing in the morning after a thirst-inducing night. I kept dreaming of having them with peeps and all sunken in an almost-frozen vanilla ice-cream (note, NOT of local variety - overly-creamy and sugary - but hard and Italian, to sunk your teeth into).

Prošek - sweet dessert wine made out of dried grapes, syrupy in texture and blood-coloured. Highly recommend the kind produced in the isle of Vis (the island was closed to public until 1990's being a military post and the main hideout of Tito). Drink it cold after the abundant dinner of fish and molluscs; it gives energy and sweet dreams.

And of course, THE fish, on which just a bit later...

When Lucullus dines with Lucullus

2009-05-11T20:35:00.005+01:00

Lucullus, a Roman emperor famous for his elaborate dinners, got tired of dining with guests and enemies, and ordered a dinner just for himself. The dishes prepared by his usually reliable chef came out slack and clearly below the expected standard. On questioning the cook admitted to certain laziness due to the number of diners present, to which Lucullus icily retorted ‘it is precisely when I’m alone, that you require to pay special attention to the dinner. At such times you must remember, that Lucullus dines with Lucullus’.

The importance - and incomparable pleasure - of lone dining, I judge, should not be underestimated, be it in gentle temperatures of Rome or polluted streets of London. And I propose that the art of dining alone is indeed an art that pleads for resurrection; particularly at times of lonely tv consumption and pseudo-gregarious McDonald's’s gobbling. A balmy May Saturday evening in Soho seemed a fitting occasion for such a crusade, especially when dressed handsomely and faced with small tasty dishes, served by a compact tasty waiter.

‘Barrafina’ is a lively, modern ‘taparia’ – a way I’d like to call a little boisterous place that serves little, lovely tapas. The eatery came into fame with quality of its ingredients and the length of its waiting list, but for a lonesome diner with restrained demands there was an outside table, next to a guttery and a beer-drinking couple. The raised brows of the charming waiter and his doubtful are you by yourself and more insistent are you eating too meant that good-looking signoras don’t often frequent such places, especially on nights of horny cock-boys and honest hen-girls. I liked my place and the position of its unexpected power: a glass of bone-dry cava and a pen, please - would you like some bread and oil, he returned tentatively and admiringly - I do, and dunk a chunk of sour-dough into the grassy, peppery pool. The collection of little plates that was to follow was perfectly shaped, if overly polite; they were served well too, if overly polite.

The luscious razor clams with copious amounts of butter, garlic and herbs, were plump and satisfying, if slightly overcooked. Thickly sliced fuet de catalonia – cured pork sausage with pokey glorious fat – tasted husky and appropriately porky, above all when eaten with tiny cornishons which tasted as if (could they?) they’d been pickled in masses of sauerkraut. Olive bullets of soft and tart caperberries busted gloriously in my mouth and were a perfect accompaniment to the fatty mains; just as was a concluding shot of espresso – a disappointingly luke-warm but still a satisfying blast. I then ordered the boy to get me a cigarette – the ending that was cheap and rough, and even more delightful after the restrained luxury of my solitary banquet. I drank and looked. I dined with myself.

Middle-age men in tinted cars were passing by, salivating at the spread of meat on the table and at the table…. My waiter, curious but also guarding, seemed expectant or perhaps just slightly tired. I paid the bill, wanting to give a stupid tip, or offer some Russian tea for the boy, and quietly retreated, wanting to savour the taste of the evening, the rare moment of thoughts luxuriously passing through the mind, half-smilingly watching the world go by. I was in piece and aware. I dined with myself. Long live Locullus, and long live the art of solitary dining.

Gnawing on London bones

2009-01-04T14:08:00.017Z

It was still dark and bitterly cold when we arrived in Canary Wharf two days before the New Year's eve celebrations. I had worked in Canary Wharf before for several long years, but have not been back in the area for over four years now. Lifting up my head to see the top of - until very recently - the tallest building in Europe, surrounded by gleaming beauty of otherworldly architecture, gave me the same sense of awe as some 10 years ago, when I arrived at newly opened Canary Wharf station for my job interview. I felt like I'd been miraculously transported to another country, somewhere very stylish, powerful and rich; somewhere like New York or Paris. It was difficult to imagine that only some 20 years ago the area of Canary Wharf (the site of the old West India Docks and Isle of Dogs) was an all-forgotten, derelict district of docks. What brought me here on this bitingly cold December morning, however, was something that would not make me a million before the age of 30, but would plunge me straight back into the years when the presence of the river was the raison d'etre for the activities in this area. Fish.

'We have a tradition that every 31 of December we go to...' - the phrase known to every Russian from the legendary 70s film on saunas, vodka and melodramatic soviet realities. Transported into the 21 century East London a few days before the New Year's eve, I realised this phrase should end with 'we go to a..fish market'. In fact, not just any old market, but the biggest and oldest fish market in the UK, located in Canary Wharf - the Billingsgate. The market has been in this area since the 16th century and is still bringing here everyone from a simple deli owner to celebrity chefs. Being mainly a wholesale market, it is also open to public; and at the end of December the market swells up with many Eastern Europeans coming down here to stock up for the all important New Year's eve dinner.

The market itself is unsurprisingly bright, all EU-approved white tiles and overcoats. There are nearly 100 traders here selling all possible types of fish in one big space. Apparently, about 60% of the fish here come from the UK seas, with 40% arriving from foreign waters. It may be that we arrived a bit too late for the proper trade (mere 7am instead of the expected 5am), but a lot of what we saw was entitled either Asian or Exotic. Natasha - my big fish loving friend (a big lover, not a big Natasha!:) - took a particular liking to a stall that had a lively crowd of the Chinese and Koreans around it. I am not able to list the fish they have on sale for the simple reason that the sellers themselves didn't know. After several attempts addressed to four people, we got a name of one fish (which was not the one on the left unfortunately, which I think should just be called a pointy sprat) - it was obviously a kind of place where people who knew came. We were not in the know, so we moved on.

Since better deals can be gotten by buying in bulk, we wanted to find a box of fish that is fairly versatile and inexpensive. Natasha laid her eye on a stall that was only selling sea bream in boxes for a tenner. It was almost the end of trading, so I was convinced we could bargain. We approached the stall holder, in our most pink-cheekily and eye-flatteringly, and asked to give us 6 pieces of fish for 10 quid, one more than was already in the box. The guy looked at us blankly and replied, how about 4 fish for £10. At first we thought he was joking, but soon realised that he was dead serious - he was not happy with us daring to bargain! piss off, we thought, and walked to the central part of the market where we could see another crowd of people.

I am far from being an expert in fish (my expertise starts and finishes with looking admiringly at the shiny fish eyes), but the fish we saw next was clearly of a higher rank: a pale white turbot, a bright red mullet, a fat and lustrous sea bass. Maybe I was also impressed with the quantities of fish on offer (limited) and the advice given by the seller (assertive, but friendly), which made me think immediately 'good stuff'. The charming stall holder with a reassuring American (don't ask why) accent told us about the difficulties in the sea over the last few days (the weather had been icy and windy), and explained why the fishermen may be reluctant to do deals (not much fish in winter generally). Natasha went on to question him about the fish with 'eggs' inside. The American didn't grasp what she was after at first, but eventually told us to come back in spring, when caviar is more likely to be found. The decadent Russian ways, eh? Natasha and I made a mental 'wyll by bahck'.

Having made another three circles around the market, and seeing how most stalls were already packing up, we settled on three bags of frozen seafood (for Natasha's famed paella), five individually sold sea basses and breams, and a bag of enormous raw prawns. I also bought three fresh cuttlefish from the mysterious Asian stall. I had never bought, let alone prepared, the cuttlefish, so was anticipating and slightly dreading the prospect of cleaning the fish to get rid of its ink. The de-inking operation would work well later, transforming the slimy things into cute and neat rings. But for now we needed breakfast.

The market has three cafs, proper East London joints with men having big mugs of PG tips with milk, scoffing economy Tesco toasts with mounts of baked beans, making loud, dirty, but innocent jokes. I loved the atmosphere the moment I walked in.

There were black and white pictures on the walls, big steaming kettles of water for drinks, a curious smell of baconfish (ie fried bacon and fried fish, smelled unanimously, eaten separately) and - something very rare and almost politically incorrect these days - a rumble of pure Cockney speak, with no additions of Eastern European voices. As you can imagine, Natasha and I were a hit.

We quickly made friends with several breakfasting fishermen, thanks to Natasha's long blond hair and me ordering a Kippers breakfast. One of our new friends, having fished out from Natasha that she was from St Petersbourg, proceeded to telling us that he had a neighbour from Tomsk, north of Russia, and that was the most important, and evidently the only, piece of information he had about Russia. Fair enough, we knew just as much about cockney London .

Back to my breakfast. Well, it was spectacularly awful. But those who think that I am a food snob (you know who you are!) will be glad to know that I loved every bit of my scarily bony fish, plasticy scrambled eggs, melting bread and sugary instant coffee. The atmosphere made the meal so right and memorable. I could really imagine myself some 50 years ago, having come back from the cold sea, all smelling of fish and ocean breeze, be ravenously hungry having got up at ungodly hour to earn the bacon (or fish?) for the family...

We came out of the market into the sunny winter morning. It was barely 9am, but the working day of the market and all its inhabitants was already over. Smelling unashamedly fishy, we went shopping into the fabulousness of Canary Wharf, which felt very decadent, almost revolutionary, remembering the years I had spend labouring away just a mile away from there. I then walked all the way to Limehouse,breathing in the sights and smells of nostalgic East London. It was a great way to celebrate the last few days of the year. I felt at one with the city, with my city, enjoying its newness and its oldness - and the exhilarating aroma of defrosting fish in my bag.

The importance of pig trotters

2008-12-03T19:16:00.008Z

To perform this delicate operation one must use a special metal device that is long and slim, and is shaped as a double-edge fork. One uses one side of the apparatus with its two prongs to insert it carefully into the opening of the bone and lift up the thick fluid inside. Then, with the other side of the tool that has a shallow spoon-like ending, begin to remove the substance inside, making sure not to break the fragile internal walls of the bone. One should then pick up the griddled slice of bread and spread this milky-grey matter onto the toast, sprinkle it with a few large grains of sea salt and some parsley leaves. Put the prepared slice in your mouth and savour the rich flavour...

The taste of the bone marrow, even without all the add-ons, is that of delicious and savoury…fat. A milder, runnier version, perfect to add to your Sunday morning scrambled eggs or mix in with some boiled new potatoes. We had the marrow as a starter: four vertically standing stubs of the bone brought in spectacularly from an open-plan kitchen. This visually slightly unsettling and gustatory reassuring dish was a telling beginning of a very memorable dinner to follow.

When Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver opened ‘St John’ on the premises of the former smokehouse in the City of London in 1994, their idea of ‘nose to tail’ eating was pre-revolutionary really. The ethos of eating every bit of an animal had come long before it became somewhat of a norm amongst the British foody folk. But the restaurant quickly became a sensation and acquired a half-legendary reputation over the years. 'St John' is situated around the corner from London's Smithfield Market, the old meat market that has existed in the area in various forms for over 800 years. 'St John's proximity to this carnivorous centre is not a coincidence, but, one really feels, its raison d’etre. Smithfield is a very fitting setting for a restaurant that values an animal's flesh and bones in its entirety and is not afraid to offer such delicacies as lamb tongues and pork chitterlings in the same confident fashion as a workers’ caf supplies bacon and eggs.

Before entering the restaurant we wondered around the market. It was a very quiet Sunday morning, and so only a few estranged tourists were around. An empty carcass of this centuries-old market with its high-ceilinged arch reminded us of its bloody history of executions of heretics and political opponents. Smithfield is one of the oldest markets in London and one of the few not to have moved from its central site to a location further out. The cold aired walk and the voluptuous poster images of meat and plump wives on sale (apparently a normal activity in England in the Middle Ages) made us even hungrier, and so we turned into a small road with a sign of a pig above the door.

'St John' first appeared to us as a cosy production unit: the walls are white washed, the floors are wooden and pale, and an enormous bread oven is the first thing you see. We then went into a spacious room simply decorated with white-clothed tables and – a relieve after the Sunday emptiness of the streets – many chewing customers. A charming young waiter elegantly crouched down by our table to answer our questions: what is a Berkenwell (a type of cheese); how do you serve your Mince and Tatties (a baked potato with the meat sauce poured over it); what wine will go with my order of Bone Marrow and Parsley salad (Le Clos Domaine Boudau ’07 – lots of red berries and spice). Our second starter was a Rolled Pig Spleen and Bacon which came as a thin pate-like slice served with red onions, tiny gherkins and red vinegar. We both agreed that the combination of the liver-esque pate with a crunchy bacon was a very promising beginning to the meal. They say the quality of the bread a restaurant serves is a good indicator of what’s to come. Well, the chunks (and they were chunks and not slices) of big pored, crusty soughdough, white and wholemeal, we devoured with some comforting butter, set our expectations very high. But we were wrong…

The dishes to follow were even better than we had anticipated. As a main course I had a Grouse served on its own, just with some properly made bread sauce on a side. This plump Scottish bird, known to the majority by its complainty association, should be very happy knowing that its wild life ended merrily on our plates with flesh still bloody and taste so intense that its £27 price tag seemed like a very fair deal. Jonathan said the taste of the bird reminded him of both sea fish and grass-fed lamb. Not a very appetizing description I admit, but the grouse’s meat does have that iodine, fresh flavour. If you like the gamey taste at all, the grouse is the most concentrated version you can get.

Our second dish was an almost too normal in this setting - Roast Beef with Horseradish and Shallots. The two thick slivers of pink beef were everything that a standard pub equivalent isn’t – juicy, lots of real cow flavour, tasty. The horseradish was so much more radishy than creamy that my Russian tastebuds went into overdrive and so I ate all the remaining relish with the remaining bread. The side dish of sprouting tops, bitter with copious amounts of butter, was so good that we thought to come back the next day just to have them for lunch.

By the time the puddings came we felt greedy and even more adventurous. The waiter slightly lost his chilled composure on receiving our order, big enough for four. My favourite plate was an Eccles Cake with Lancashire cheese. I was curious about this unusual combination and was rewarded for my interest: the cake with its flaky pastry and a rich filling of spicy raisins matched perfectly the mild, crumbly and ever so slightly sour cheese. The second dessert of the Burned Cream Ice Cream had a divine textural combination: velvety ice cream and crunchy warm pieces of caramel. The best pud came annoyingly last just as we started loosing our determination: the Steamed Treacle Sponge Сake (for two!), all butter and sugar, was so light and syrapy that we just sat there smacking our lips, going slowly but steadily through the whole dish, pouring more and more of the warm custard. We were full and happy. We knew we would be back.

'St John' is a rare find – a restaurant that manages to be so effortlessly unpretentious, and at the same time so elegant and self-assured. The short menu that only lists the main ingredients of each dish means that you order the food and not the intricacies of its preparation. This restaurant knows its value (eg the Christmas party arrangements firmly discourages festive paraphernalia from the tables), but does not brag about it. There is no music in the restaurant and waiters talk to you with the knowledge that comes from not just loving the food they serve, but from having detailed understanding of the processes involved and what this information means to you, the customer. We want to come back to try every single dish on the daily changing menu (Snail, Sausage & Chick Pea? Faggot aqnd Celeriac? Fig Bakewell Tart?). Oh, and we will be back because having the whole roasted suckling pig seems like a fabulous idea to celebrate my entry into the next decade!

Learning how to boil water

2008-11-17T22:42:00.004Z

Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food has received a colossal amount of media coverage recently. Oliver’s theory is that if you teach one person to cook, that person will pass the skills onto others close to him, thus transferring the knowledge to a continually widening group. Jamie’s experiment in Rotherham has certainly had an impact (although how far this programme can go without the man’s celebrity endorsement is a question at the moment), but few have questioned the assumption that cooking is actually of value, to an individual and to the society. Why is cooking so good for you? With all the frenzy surrounding TV chefs and such overused terms as seasonality and sustainability, we seem to be taking for granted that knowing how to cook is in itself better than, say, saving one’s time by buying a ready meal and engaging in some other activities?

Just how important is cooking to the nation’s psychic and, importantly, its belt size? Is the government’s attempt to make people want to learn to cook is just a disguised (or rather explicit?) attempt to reduce the NHS bill – an understandable but somewhat mechanical effort? Can cooking skills actually bring about more profound changes, such as getting communities together, opening up people's taste buds and, hopefully, their minds to other influences?

I like cooking; I love food and I am very open to tasting new and different things. I attribute my overarching love affair with food to my mother – who was born in the WWII in the south of Ukraine in a family of peasants who had moved to a city to survive the shortages of food. For my mother, as for the majority of women then and now, cooking is an essential part of life. It is their domain, their comfort zone, their way of expressing themselves. I remember vividly learning to light a gas cooker at the tender age of seven or eight; baking biscuits from a recipe in the old soviet good housekeeping encyclopedia at the age of 12; and my mother teaching me how to make a traditional Ukrainian beetroot soup, borsch, when I was about 14. As most women who had learnt to cook from their mothers, she could not provide precise instructions or measures when transferring her skills to me. Her ‘a bit of salt’ and ‘until it looks cooked’ puzzled me a lot, but it gave me a sense of food. It later allowed me to apply the learnt skills to many other dishes. As many people across the world, my mother associated food with comfort and love. Cooking allowed her to be creative. She passed these skills and feelings onto me, so later, when I wanted to re-connect with that sense of homeyness, I tried to recreate her dishes: the activity allowed me to feel less lonely living in a new country; it gave me a sense of confidence when wooing men.

I am now a fully-pledged foody, but my becoming an obsessed food-lover, I believe, has been influenced as much by the developments of the food trends in the UK over the last 10 years, as by my mum’s cooking skills. I have arrived at a point where I can combine such basic knowledge given by my mum of how to make a beetroot soup sweet (fry onions, slowly and carefully) with the ideas found in cook books (add vodka for an extra effect), and my own twist (chopped chilly adds so much fun). But I have spent the last ten years in London, being actively curious about the food developments, wanting to go beyond simple, basic combinations. Can cooking skills alone change people’s habits and attitudes? Or by force feeding them the skills we make them detest the idea of ‘labouring’ at the stove even more?

I am thinking back to my mother’s relatives living a simple life in a large industrial Ukrainian city. For them cooking is still a normal way of life. Women in the family tend to stay at home, and so they start their day by making hearty breakfasts, planning filling lunches, and spend afternoons shopping for and preparing dinners. Such factors as seasonality are not just trendy words for them, but a practical reality – food in season is cheaper. And so pretty much every meal they have is freshly made from seasonal produce available locally.

Just as ‘normal’ for them is, however, to consume large quantities of – processed, cheap – meat; and to eat every meal with alarming amounts of – cheap, factory-produced – mayonnaise. The reasons for these habits are manifold: as in many other, more conservative and/or traditional societies, meat is equated with status, with power, with strength, which means that for men in my family there is no meal without meat. Buying fresh, good quality meat is simply beyond their purse capability, however. Besides, butchers have almost completely disappeared following the years of happy communism. Mayonnaise is another tradition. It had become such a staple throughout the USSR (plenty of sunflower oil? Preference for sharp taste? Long shelf life? Or is it just good for covering up bad and tasteless food?) that many seemed to have lost their ability to taste salads without a thick layer of the white stuff.

In my opinion, what Jamie calls ‘knowledge poverty’, plays a big role here. My relatives in Ukraine, as do many other people across the globe, want their husbands, children, parents to be strong and healthy. But they don’t know how to cook healthily (or the knowledge is out of date, or too limited, or simply erroneous). They have limited knowledge of how to connect food that they consume with healthy arteries and strong muscles (this is particularly noticeable in men’s diets, where fat in food doesn’t translate into fat on bodies straight away, as is often the case with women, and so they continue gorging themselves on sausages full of preservatives to a happy heart attack at the age of 60).

With all my love for food and cooking, I wonder if teaching people the skills to cook does actually bring about the required change. In the Middle East where cooking is still a norm in people’s houses, the levels of obesity are growing fast. The link between people’s knowledge and their habits had evidently been broken down in many industrialised, developing and developed countries. So is it a role of a state to explain and inspire? Do such models as Hugh and Jamie really help to re-connect the broken link, or does is it just about learning a few trendy skills to show off in front of your mates?

My personal shift in understanding food and its role in health and community building happened when I started trying to appreciate food I was eating. It came to wanting to taste the difference between a paper-thin slice of Hovis and a chunk of sourdough bread from a local bakery. Just a few days ago, after initiating a silly and pointless argument with my husband (which even thoughtful foodies do), I was chewing on a piece of bread whilst sulking and feeling righteous. After a couple of minutes of mindless chewing I started noticing the depth of the bread’s flavour, its fresh and robust texture, its delicate pale crust. I imagined the careful hands who had spent good several days making this loaf – yes organic, and yes artisan – and my anger begun to dissipate. I just couldn’t continue self-pitting myself when there was something so beautiful and so wise in my hands. But then I had an idea about the quality of this bread and the labour involved in making it. I had allowed my tongue (and my brain) to take time and effort to learn the difference. And, yes, cooking had been part of this learning experience, but only just that, the rest is about time and priorities (and I firmly believe it is not about money, at least not in the industrial world). Is it too much to expect from a single mother living on a council estate? Well, if Jamie can teach her how to boil water, I would like to think that something, or someone, will allow her to take time next time she puts a piece of bread in her mouth and notice the difference.

Borsch a la Katyusha
serves at least 10

200 g onions, chopped finely
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1 tbs tomato paste
200g carrots, grated
1 red chilly, chopped finely
1 small leek, sliced finely
around 600g of boiled beetroot (please, not the vacuum packed kind), grated
350g potatoes, cubed
250g white cabbage, finely sliced
200g swede, cubed
300g red kidney beans, previously soaked and boiled until well cooked
50 ml vodka
oil for cooking
half a lemon
4 litres of cold water
salt, about 7 black peppercorns, 2 bay leaves
to serve - sourcream and chopped parsley

Sweat onions, with garlic and tomato paste over low heat for approximately 15-20 minutes. Add carrots, leek and chilly, mix and allow to cook a little whilst you are heating up water.

When water is boiling, put peppercorns and bay leaves. Add potatoes and swede and simmer for a couple of minutes. Then add cabbage and simmer for another couple of minutes. Finally add the prepared earlier onion and carrot mixture, making sure that all the juices and scraps from the pan go into the stock. Add beetroot, squeeze the lemon and let the skin infuse the soup whilst all the vegetables simmer for another 10 minutes or so (the lemon allows colours to come to life and adds a certain zing).

A couple of minutes before the soup is ready, add beans and let them simmer slowly for a minute or so. Add vodka and stir well.

Blend 3/4 of the ready soup, retaining some of the chunks as they add texture and taste to the final combination. Check for seasoning, add parsley and heat up the whole mixture gently. Cover with a lid and let the borsch stand for at least 1o minutes (it's even better the following day). Eat with a dollop of sourcream, more sprinkled parsley and milled black pepper.Do the soup justice by serving it with proper rye bread, or at least some robust sough dough. Na zdorovye!

Borek: layers of dough and family history

2008-10-27T16:52:00.011Z

You walk into the light and airy room, and immediately you are transfixed by the movement of two hands: they swirl, they throw and caress what seems like a flexible and rapidly expanding circle of material. These masterful hands are old, but strong and knowledgeable. You realise quickly that they are the centre of everything that happening in this room, and that everyone’s eyes are following this play between the inanimate material and live limbs. You then come to hear the cling-cling of tulip glasses, the whisper of moving chairs and eventually the chatter of those who, just like you, have come here to witness the repeated magic of borek-making. Master Tefvik’s borek-making.

Tefvik is a modest and wise king of this heart-warming place that is the size of an average kitchen that has just a few simple white tables with low stools and a heart of an old and faithful oven in the middle with an ordinary fork serving as its lock. The master has been making his boreks for over 40 years; and his little bakery-cum-café had been run by his ancestors since 1930s. You want to understand the secret of this magic and sit down at one of the tiny tables, smiling shyly but happily. You watch again the assertive hands, this time noticing that their owner takes a shiny ball of dough out of a tray, roll it out lightly, throwing the small circle in the air, rotating it, making it double, triple its size; scatter the filling of ricotta-type cheese or mince meat; fold it; brush it with a golden glue of warm butter and feed the oven with this envelope. This is not the usual pie encountered in so many bakeries around

Turkey

…Whilst waiting for your breakfast you reminisce at what you know about the omnipresent borek and think back to your first encounter in Istanbul…

Borek is a filled pie made out of flaky dough that has many incarnations around the Mediterranean sea and the Balkans: it is a Byrek in Albania where it is made with pumpkin and spinach; it is a Boereg and spicy in Armenia; in Bosnia the Burek is always meat-filled and shaped like an American cinnamon bun; even the Tatarn Cheborek is a brother of Turkish Borek – it is made with an unleavened dough and deep-fried. In Turkey the word Borek refers to many variations of this dish, but almost always it is made out of thin flaky dough known as phyllo dough (or yufka dough), and is filled with salty cheese (often feta), minced meat, potatoes or other vegetables. You often see large round trays of Boreks in windows of bakeries throughout Turkey, where the pie is cut into different shapes (depending on its filling and cooking method) and sold by weight. Turks eat Boreks for breakfast with tea, for lunch with ayran (a yoghurt drink), as a snack through the day, and for dinner as meze. Its popularity amongst all society levels throughout history is probably of the same origin as of a Cornish pasty or a Russian pirozok – it is a piece of bread with a filling, that can be eaten hot or cold, as a fancy dish at an aristocratic table or in a field under the tiring sun.

The king of boreks is a su borek, or a water borek. Called like this because the preparation of the dough for this kind is a laboursome method involving briefly boiling the sheets of dough, blanching them in ice (to stop the cooking) and smearing them with melted butter. The result is a heart-stoppingly delicious square of layered dough and a filling, often cheese, very light and scrumptious. You were very fortunate to taste this expensive treat at a small birthday gathering in Istanbul – su borek had just been baked and was only still warm. The silkiness of the dough layers on your tongue, the aroma of the sunny melted butter and the freshness of the citrusy cheese filling slowly going down your throat were a thrill to all your senses. It was both a comforting and intense feeling…

You are back in the warmness of the Antalyan kitchen; you realise that you were awaken from your thoughts by the saliva collecting in your mouth, triggered by the smell first – the combination of just-out-of-the-oven pastry mixed with juicy meat filling, sprinkled with parsley; then the hardly noticeable sound of crispy dough waking up to the oxygen presence in the room (the uncommon presence of oil in the dough creates this extra crunch); and then the sight...It is a perfect borek, a unique hand-made creation even more perfect from the randomness of its making. You bite into it and are awash with your own memories of the sun-baked Anatolian villages and the warmth and generosity of their inhabitants; you are flooded with the unspoken recollections of the borek-maker. You can almost see Tefvik’s face some 50 years ago, standing by the side of his dad, his head hardly reaching the height of the table in a room dusted with flour, lit by the sun and amber of tea. The boy's little curious face was witnessing the same magic you have just been part of…

And you desperately want the circles of lives and pastry to continue existing for another billion of years, in spite of the worrying tabloid headlines, crushing reality of big cities, or broken family chains, when children want to live in a modern world, away from the magical, but repetitive movement of the wise hands.

The belly revolutıon

2008-10-13T15:28:00.017+01:00

But thıs country does have some successful women storıes. One of them ıs partıcularly close to my heart.

Ebru Baydemır ıs what the Lonely Planet calls a 'local character'. She ıs young, attractıve, dynamıc and owns a hugely successful - and lıcensed! - restaurant ın Mardın, south-east of Turkey. Mardın ıs a jewel of thıs part of Turkey. Some compare thıs mellow town wıth ıts hıllsıde settıng and honey-coloured houses lookıng over a breath-takıngly beautıful Mesopotamıan plaıns to Jerusalem. The town ıs only a short dıstance away from Syrıa and so ıts past and ıts archıtecture ıs a mıxture of old Syrıan orthodox churches and elaborate mosques. Mardın also houses a lovely bazaar. The street that runs ın parallel to the maın drag ıs shady, relatıvely quıet, wıth women ın long robes strollıng up and down pıckıng the best pomegranets, hagglıng for the best value tea sets. The place has no cars or motocycles, and so the maın mode of transport ıs an old and relıable donkey... Thıs was the fırst tıme ın Turkey that I felt I was taken back to my beloved Morocco - a forgotten medıeval pıcture, copper plates and a smell of mud...

Thıs parts of Turkey ıs also one of the most conservatıve and just a few years ago saw very few women on the streets . Ebru wıth her, now a legendary restaurant, 'Cercıs Murat Konagı' has done a lot to change the town and ıts ınhabıtants.

Several years ago Ebru, who ıs orıgınally from Mardın, was workıng ın Istanbul as a tourıst guıde. She realısed the potentıal of Mardın, wıth ıts faıry-tale archıtecture and dıstınct Turkısh-Arabıc feel, and started brıngıng vısıtors to the town. People needed to eat durıng theır stay and so she arranged for a local restaurant to cook for them. The food was always the predıctable kebab and çaı, but ıt was suffıcıent for a whıle, to fill the hunger hole and move on. One day she had a group of women vısıtıng the town who had been so sıck and tıred of the usual, meat-heavy, Turkısh flaır that they asked ıf somethıng lıghter and more ınterestıng could be arranged. Ebru went to the chef to dıscuss the request, but he (who was of course a he) categorıcally refused to prepare anythıng dıfferent, I would assume beıng ınsulted that someone was not content wıth hıs menu. The women were not happy wıth such attıtude and were goıng to move on the followıng day. Ebru came back home, angry and sad, sharıng her emotıons wıth her mother. The older women saıd 'we wıll work somethıng out, brıng them to our house tomorrow'. And so she dıd..

Ebru's mother wıth the help of local women prepared a memorable meal for the group of vısıtors - a combınatıon of trıed and tested dıshes served out of the mıx and match plates and cutlery, all out of the dowry boxes of women from the neıgbourhood. The lunch was a success and gave rıse to Ebru's ıdea to set up her own restaurant, servıng vıllage dıshes wıth some ınventıve touches, prepared by local women. Ebru also became a head of Mardın tourıst assocıatıon and changed the attıtude of thıs heavıly male-domınated town towards women's roles, who at the tıme were almost never workıng outsıde theır homes, let alone opening theır own busınesses. At present, the restaurant employes nearly 20 local women ın the kıtchen. You can actually see them at work vıa a large screen ın the maın restaurant hall, somethıng whıch could not be ımagıned just a few years back when women had to be partıtıoned whılst workıng. But the fact that makes the restaurant a partıcular achıevement I thınk ıs that the food that ıs produced there really ıs good.

I spend good half an hour chattıng to a refreshıngly camp and cheerful waıter, askıng about the ıngrıdıents of varıous dıshes and choosıng what to eat. I then had a stupıdly delıcıous - tart and comfortıng at the same tıme - lentıl soup, whılst dunkıng huge chunks of fluffy Turkısh bread ınto ıt, then followed ın wıth a a number of mezes: a caper salad (capers are apparently grown ın that part of Turkey ın abundance but are rarely eaten by Turks themselves) - the salad was surprısıngly fresh, lemony and not overly salty; muammara (as the waıter explaıned 'thıs ıs a çic kofte wıthout the meat, the latter beıng a popular meat course ın the area made out of the raw beef or lamb 'cooked' wıth a myrıad of spıces, such as hot pepper, mınt, nuts, and lemon juıce), tebbel (actually a Lebanese dısh of a smoked aubergıne mashed ınto a paste) and a fırık salad (Fırık beıng a local varıety of rıse that has a texture of bulgar). I gluged ıt all down wıth an surprısıngly decent local Turkısh wıne called Mahleb - spıcy, unsweet, cold. I fınıshed the meal wıth a lıght dessert of semolına halva - crumbly semolına mıxed wıth nuts and a bıt of honey - and a tıny cup of dark and syropy Turk kahvesı...

I left Cercıs Murat feelıng satısfıed, ın my belly and my mood, wıth an attıtude a lot more posıtıve towards the future of thıs country and ıts people. The days to follow were ınevıtably to brıng some occasıonal dıssappoıntment and sadness, but that evenıng I could really see how a wıll of one person - and happy bellıes of hundreds! - can brıng about a revolutıon, a quıet, salıvatıng type of revolutıon...When I was leavıng the restaurant the waıter wınked and saıd that the owner was away ın Istanbul - puttıng fınal touches to her new restaurant.