Meze - to be eaten with or without underwear

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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?..