The Soviet Diet Cookbook: exploring life, culture and history – one recipe at a time. Anna Kharzeeva
that “when we were evacuated” (which she often talks about, referring to the period in World War II when all Muscovites had to leave the capital for the countryside) they stopped at someone’s house at a village. The hostess made a bunch of wheat pancakes. “I still remember she served the pancakes with melted butter that was poured over the pancakes – it was delicious,” she said.
It seems like Russians consider themselves a cut above anyone else at consuming pancakes. I can just hear someone in a Russian town saying, “I’m not proud of much, but I sure know how to down a couple of dozen pancakes.” Chekhov wrote a short story called ‘Stupid Frenchman’, in which a Frenchman thought the Russian next to him was trying to commit suicide by eating too many pancakes, whereas the Russian was just having his normal appetizer.
Opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya wrote in her memoirs that when they had foreign guests over they never had much food to offer, but thank goodness those foreigners got full on three pancakes each. Needless to say, no Russian would ever be full on three pancakes – they might have their citizenship revoked!
I halved the book’s recipe as it looked like a huge batch (I put in 2 eggs instead of 3, as it’s pretty tough to get half an egg). I stewed the pumpkin and added some cinnamon and ground ginger to make it more interesting. Granny always adds a tablespoon of sunflower oil into the batter to avoid oiling the pan each time, and that’s what I did, too. It does take a while to wait for the batter to rise, and then each pancake takes 3—4 minutes to make, so it’s more of a brunch recipe, although a delicious one. Half the batch made 18 rather big pancakes, which went well both with melted cheese and jam or honey and plain yogurt!
To prove my Russian-ness by pancake consumption, I devoured my pumpkin pancakes in just a couple of sittings (minus the three my husband took to work). They aren’t like the Soviet food I’m used to – especially if you add some cinnamon – and in fact it isn’t a genuine Soviet recipe (as it comes from the “old recipe” section), but they make for a lovely addition to the Book and are sure to cure any autumn blues. Plus you can recycle the process in a few months for Maslenitsa!
Recipe:
Cook 1 kg pumpkin, peeled and cut into cubes, until soft. Press through a sieve to make puree. Pour pumpkin puree into 1 liter of milk and heat until it is the temperature of fresh milk. Into the milk-puree mix, add 15 g yeast and 3 eggs. Stir. Add 2—2 ½ cups flour until the dough is the right consistency. Put in a warm place and let sit for two hours. Then, add 1 tbsp oil, ½ cup sugar and a sprinkle of salt. Again sit in a warm place until it rises. Then, form and cook the pancakes.
10. Thanksgiving dinner on the Soviet diet. Fried turkey, mashed potatoes, baked apple with preserves, cranberry mousse
By the end of November, Russians are slowly getting excited about the biggest holiday of the year – New Year’s Eve. It’s the Soviet substitute for Christmas, which in Russian Orthodoxy is marked on Jan. 7 and not widely celebrated. In Moscow, New Year trees are being set up, people are starting to shop for presents and everyone is dreaming of the main dish on the New Year table – Olivier salad. No one is thinking about turkey and pumpkin pie.
I don’t think many Russians know much about Thanksgiving. They may be aware that it exists, but if you asked anyone on the street if the fourth Thursday in November is different from any other day in the United States, I doubt they would have an answer. I know I didn’t have an answer until about four years ago, when a Canadian/Australian couple invited my husband and me over for Thanksgiving dinner.
Now I remember, and if you ask me what’s special about this day in late November (or in October, in the case of Canadian Thanksgiving), I would say that it is special because there is turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie… and I don’t have to cook any of it! I love Thanksgiving dinner – my Australian friend Karen is a spectacular cook and I remember crawling out from under the dinner table and plopping myself on the sofa, wondering if I had indeed had enough – or could I maybe fit just one more heavenly slice in?
Since then I’ve been very lucky to get to go to two more Thanksgiving dinners with a bunch of Americans who were all away from home, gathered together in a Moscow apartment, and having a wonderful time.
This year I thought I’d give it a go myself. On the downside, I had to make my own dinner, but on the plus side, I found some recipes in the Book that worked really well. There was just one turkey recipe, so that choice was easy – the Book says that turkey should be served with baked apples, which is a great idea. I also used a cranberry sauce dessert recipe with less sugar and, of course, mashed potatoes. I didn’t have an American around to test it on, but my Australian husband and I thought it was an appropriate Soviet Thanksgiving dinner.
I asked Granny if she knew much about Thanksgiving and the food that’s usually served: “Thanksgiving? American Thanksgiving? I know of it, but don’t know anything about it. I think they eat turkey, a whole one. In the Soviet times I’d never even heard of turkey – we certainly never cooked it. It’s surprising there’s a turkey recipe in the book. As for mashed potatoes – I always loved them, and they are very handy as you can always use leftovers to make a zapekanka or patties.”
Making this dinner wasn’t nearly as time and energy-consuming as cooking a real American Thanksgiving dinner. To make the sauce, I crushed the berries and rubbed them through a sieve, then boiled them for about 15 minutes, adding a little bit of sugar and semolina as suggested. I didn’t follow the rest of the recipe, as I wasn’t after dessert, and it worked well. With the mashed potatoes, I just followed the recipe and they turned out nicely. My husband is the mashed potato expert in our family, and while he said the Soviet potatoes weren’t as good as his, they did the job.
As for the turkey, the book’s recipe seemed completely weird. I didn’t see the need to pour melted butter on the poor bird, or why I should boil the already-roasted turkey. So I just read the part for turkey fillet and fried it in a pan, which worked for me.
Baked apples are a common dessert at Granny’s and in many Russian kitchens. Granny pierces whole apples with a fork, adds a little water and bakes them until soft, for about 30 minutes, which is what I did, ignoring the part about adding jam, as I wanted them as a savoury side.
I know Granny would love to try a real Thanksgiving dinner – she enjoys cowberry sauce with meat, and now that the Soviet Union no longer exists, hopefully she’ll have the chance to!
Recipes:
Cranberry mousse with semolina:
Place the washed, sorted-out cranberries into a pan and crush them with a wooden pestle, adding a third of a cup of boiled water and sieving them through gauze. The juice should be kept cool.
For one cup of cranberries, use one cup of sugar and three tablespoons of semolina
The crushed berries should be boiled for five minutes in three cups of water, strained and the mix should then be used to cook the semolina. Pour and stir the semolina gradually into the boiling mix.
After 20 minutes of slow boiling, pour in the sugar, let the mass boil and remove from the burner. Pour the juice into the cooked mass and whip it until obtaining a thick foam. When the mass has increased twice in volume, pour it into containers and place them in a cold spot. The cranberry mousse can be served with cold milk.
Mashed potatoes:
Boil the peeled and washed potatoes, drain the water and keep the pan with the potatoes on a small flame or in the oven so that the remaining water evaporates.
For one kilogram of potatoes, use one cup of milk and two tablespoons of butter
Afterwards,