The Soviet Diet Cookbook: exploring life, culture and history – one recipe at a time. Anna Kharzeeva
think the kind of lunch described in the book was a typical one for my grandmother. When I described the feast-like lunch to her, she said: “Wow! Amazing! We never had cream soups though – didn’t have the equipment to make them.”
Fortunately I did have the equipment to make everything and it all turned out more or less ok. I followed the Book’s recipes to the letter for the mushrooms and eggplant, and I was pleased with both of them.
The recipe for the cream of chicken soup comes from the “healthy” section of the book, which is recommended for people “malnourished after difficult diseases and surgeries.” It doesn’t specify that in the menu though, which is a shame. My recommendation: unless malnourished, don’t make it. The consistency is really strange, I don’t think chicken is meant to be turned into cream. It looks like it’s already been eaten and the flavor is pretty dull.
The recipe for kompot is also pretty standard. It’s still made frequently for schoolchildren in Russia, except that now, some moms sneak in some ginger and cinnamon to add a little extra flavor.
I enjoyed the mushrooms, eggplant and kompot, and felt like a proud Soviet housewife having made it all. But not enough to give up my regular Sunday brunch spot!
Recipes:
Stuffed eggplant:
Wash eggplants, take ends off, cut open (not to the bottom), and take seeds out with a teaspoon. After that, put eggplant into salted boiling water for five minutes, stuff with chopped vegetables or mushrooms. Put in a greased, oven-proof baking dish, cover with sour cream and bake approximately 1 hour.
Mushrooms in sour cream:
For 500 grams (about 1 lb) fresh mushrooms, use 1/2 cup sour cream, 120 grams (1/4 lb) cheese, 1 teaspoon flour, 2 tablespoons oil
Clean, wash and pour boiling water over mushrooms. Drain, chop up, salt and fry in oil. When almost fried, add a teaspoon of flour and mix, then add sour cream, boil, add grated cheese and bake.
Before serving, sprinkle mushrooms with parsley or dill. You can also bake pickled mushrooms. In this case, drain the marinade, wash and chop up the mushrooms and fry.
Continue as with fresh mushrooms.
Apple or pear kompot:
Peel apples, remove the core and cut into 6—8 pieces each. So that the apples don’t go brown, before boiling, put them into cold water with a little lemon juice. Put sugar and 2 cups hot water into a pot, then add the apples and boil on low heat for 10—15 minutes until apples are soft.
Creamed chicken soup:
100 grams chicken meat; 15 grams butter; 10 grams onion; 10 grams white root vegetables; 10 grams flour; 50 grams cream; 1/2 egg yolk; 750 grams water
Boil chicken until ready. Fry onions and root vegetables in oil with flour until yellow, add broth and boil 15—20 minutes, then strain.
Mince the chicken meat twice then add it to the broth. Mix well. Add cream mixed with egg yolk.
You can serve with white bread croutons or meat pies (pirozhki).
4. Real food and realistic expectations. Fried eggs with tomatoes and croutons
After working my way through Book of Healthy and Tasty food for a month, I was pretty familiar with most of its main myths. It’s clear that propaganda was as strong in the fields of soups and stews as it was in art, labor and politics.
The main surprise for me was the quantities of food a Soviet citizen was meant to procure and consume: starting with a protein-heavy breakfast of fried meat or fish with boiled eggs, bread, cheese and milk, tea or coffee. This was followed in just a few hours by a second breakfast consisting of a vegetable bake or sandwiches. Then after work was “lunch” or the main meal of the day, which involved an appetizer, soup and a main meal with fruit kompot or dessert.
After all that, you’re supposed to have dinner, about two hours before bed. This should consist of prostokvasha (a kind of dairy drink like buttermilk), and an omelet or a salad.
The Book also reminds housewives of the importance of a balanced and diverse selection of dishes: “One must vary the menu. A housewife has the habit of making 10—12 meals… that get repeated throughout the year. As a result, members of the family get monotonous food.”
Russian, and especially Soviet food, has never known much variety, but this was mostly the result of a lack of available ingredients, rather than a lack of desire to feed a family well.
My childhood memories of “monotonous food” are confirmed by my grandmother.
“There was no food. What we ate was very much the same, no variety whatsoever,” Granny said. “There wasn’t a cult of food, like there is now. Today I think of what I want to cook, then go to the shop and get the ingredients for it. Back in the Soviet times, I went to the shop to try and find anything, and then cooked with whatever I found. There was never a fuss about food – you just cooked and ate what you could find, that’s it.”
Then she added: “Don’t forget, the Book was an ad for the happy Soviet life. Sure, some recipes were realistic, but a big part of the Book is just for show.”
And what a show it is! The variety of recipes is truly endless. Time has worked in its favor, too. Now that you can get the ingredients, the Book of Healthy and Tasty Food can be ranked up there with some of the best cookbooks I’ve seen. Although it could be more user-friendly. Of the overall lack of instructions, I can only assume the authors thought: “Why write it all out if no one’s going to be able to make it anyway?”
For this “light” dinner, I chose to cook fried eggs with a side dish – a meal that didn’t really suffer from a lack of instructions. The meal was pretty simple and quick and, I must say, absolutely delicious! I cut up dark bread and fried it in a pan, and then added tomatoes, which I stewed for a bit before pouring the eggs on top. If you have a lot of “base” and add other vegetables, it will be a little bit like Israeli shakshuka, in which eggs are poached in a tomato base. I had never before thought to fry eggs right on top of tomatoes and fried dark bread, and that was clearly my loss. Eating breakfast for dinner makes sense, too, when you’ve had meat for breakfast.
Recipe:
To make fried eggs with a side dish you need to first fry pieces of dark bread, lard, ham, sausages, salami, zucchini etc..
Then put eggs on top, salt and keep on the stove for 1—2 minutes and then bake for 3—4 minutes. As soon as the egg white is the color of milk, serve it on the frying pan or a warm plate.
If you don’t have an oven, the frying pan with eggs should be covered with a lid or plate.
5. In praise of grechka. Buckwheat
My second Soviet breakfast was a meal with which I was very well acquainted. Every Russian kid I knew grew up on it, and I’m pretty certain all Russians have loved it at some point in their lives. It’s grechka, the ubiquitous buckwheat porridge that is served not only for breakfast but also appears as a side dish at lunch or dinner.
Buckwheat has to be sorted before cooking, and as a kid, I always had the task of picking out all the bad grains. I remember sitting at a table filled with uncooked buckwheat, talking to my mother, grandmother and brother while sifting through it – it was a bonding experience for every Soviet family.
There are many different ways of cooking buckwheat, and someone adept at a particular