The Soviet Diet Cookbook: exploring life, culture and history – one recipe at a time

7. Worshipping at the altar of the Uzbek food gods. Plov

Trying to make plov is like trying to copy Van Gogh – you know you’ll never get there and feel cheeky to be even trying, but the temptation is strong.

Plov is an Uzbek dish that traveled all around the Soviet Union and became popular everywhere. The difference between the plov in Uzbekistan and almost anywhere else is stark, though. In Uzbekistan, the locals treat food with all the seriousness and almost religious admiration it deserves.

There are rules to follow, and, if need be, sacrifices to be made. I once cooked plov and samsa (a type of filled pastry) with an Uzbek friend: we made our own phyllo dough, which needed a room with warm temperatures and no breezes.

When after four hours I begged my friend to open the window, for a second she stared me down as if I were a non-believer. I got the same look when I wondered if a slightly different type of rice to the one she used would work for plov. I learned to obey the rules and not ask questions, out of respect for the Uzbek food cult.

In the rest of the Soviet Union however, plov was treated like any other dish – if necessary, substitutions were made. And sometimes they were made even if they were not necessary. As a result, cafeterias served what my grandmother described as “rice porridge with fried meat, onions and carrots.”

The one place that served real plov was the Uzbekistan Restaurant – one of the oldest restaurants in Moscow. My grandmother says she and my grandfather used to go there a lot, as they did to many other Moscow eateries: “Restaurants were not that much more expensive than cafeterias, especially for lunch, so we used to go out all the time. After trying all the restaurants we decided Uzbekistan was the best. We couldn’t get enough of the Uzbek food.”

This was a rare occasion when I was envious of something in the Soviet era.

I felt jealous again when, some 50 years later, my husband taught the restaurant’s manager English and got free meals as well as being paid for the lessons. Although the Uzbekistan Restaurant still exists, its prices have very much adjusted to the capitalistic way of things. What was once everyone’s favorite is now a place only the better-off part of the population can enjoy. Vladimir Putin, Jack Nicholson and Mike Tyson all have dined there.

As for making plov at home, I thought what my grandmother made was real plov, until I made it myself and a friend told me it was “very nice….risotto.” She was right. The most important parts of plov are the spices and the meat, mostly lamb. There were no spices in the Soviet Union except for dill and parsley, and lamb, although available at markets, was too pricey. So plov was made with chicken instead of lamb and dill and parsley instead of cumin.

This time, when I made my “plov” from the Book (also with chicken, as decent lamb is still hard to come by), it turned out as nice risotto again, but I knew what I was up against. The Book’s recipe is similar to the one my grandmother uses, and it’s most certainly not plov. Real plov requires a special tall, thick pot called a kazan and a lot of dedication. You can check out my friend Nargiz Mukhitdinova’s recipe for real plov below.

Recipe:

400g lamb; 2—3 cups rice;

200g-300g carrots;

150g-200g onion;

200g fat or butter.

Cut the onion and carrots into thin strips. Cut the lamb into small cubes and fry in a large skillet or pot (preferably cast-iron) in fat. When it is cooked, add the onion, then the carrots and fry together with the meat. Then add to this mixture 4 cups water and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil.

Rinse the rice three or four times, then add to the pot with the meat and smooth over the top.

Close the lid tightly and cook for 25—30 minutes on very low heat.

Serve the plov in a dish with sides, with the lamb cubes on top. Sprinkle with sliced raw onions.

Nargiz’s Recipe:

Makes 8

500 grams long grain steamed rice(Mistral’ Yantar’)

500—600 grams carrot

500 grams beef or lamb filet

3 medium-sized onions

3 bulbs garlic

100 grams chickpeas

Handful of raisins

1 Tbsp cumin

100—125 mL oil

Salt to taste

A day before cooking the plov, cook the chickpeas, or buy pre-cooked canned chickpeas and rinse them.

Put the raisins into some warm water in a separate bowl when you start cooking.

1.Pour oil into the pan and heat it until it is very hot.

2.Cut up the meat into either small pieces or into 3—4 big ones. Put the meat into the pan and fry until it has a red crust; don’t stir it much.

3.Add onions, cut into rings or half rings. Fry until the onion gets red.

4.Add carrots, cut into strips. Don’t reduce the heat, fry until the carrots get softer.

5.Add cold water and put in chickpeas and whole garlic bulbs. Leave it for 30min without stirring; reduce the heat when the water boils.

6.Add salt, cumin, raisins and rice in one layer. There should be an inch of water on top of the rice, if there is not enough, add more water.

7. Make sure the rice cooks equally. Rotate the pot if you’re cooking on an electric stove. Move rice around with a big spoon, but don’t touch the meat and vegetables on the bottom.

8. Serve on a big plate with garlic and meat on top, add some spring onions.

8. A necessity for the Russian cook. Sour cabbage

When I started this project, I was prepared for a few errors along the way, and sour cabbage was the first serious one. This local take on sauerkraut is a suitable addition to any lunch or dinner. It is made throughout Russia mostly by older women who share their recipes as though they were the most exciting story ever. They belong to a kind of “cabbage club,” and I’ve witnessed a few of the meetings.

I had to stop my grandmother from using the exciting opportunity to tell me her version of the gripping tale. I have to follow the recipe in the Book, I told her. Much to her delight, I failed miserably. She laughed and told me to throw my cabbage out.

Now that the crisis is over I have to analyze where I went wrong. First, I couldn’t find a glass jar in any of the shops nearby. However, the Book says you can use a clay pot, and I had one at home. The recipe said to put pressure on the pot, so I got a jar of pickled ginger and put it on some little wooden slats to weigh it down. Then there was the birch stake I was supposed to impale the cabbage with – not one of the selection I had worked to stab the cabbage effectively. Granny said I had cut the cabbage too thickly, didn’t squeeze it enough, used too small a pot and didn’t have nearly enough pressure on top. She once again offered her own recipe. I promised to think about it.

I seem to be the first female in my family who can’t make sour cabbage. My great-grandmother apparently made it all the time. I remembered the story she told me about one occasion in her late teens:

“During the civil war, which lasted several years after the revolution, we lived in Kiev and the government changed eight times in a very short space of time. My family [parents and 6 siblings] had guests over – imagine how many people there were with each of us bringing a friend or two! We were playing games and missed the curfew, which meant everyone had to stay overnight. My mother was terrified as there was no food in the house. So my friend and I went to the basement and got some potatoes, some sour cabbage, pickles and pickled tomatoes out of wooden barrels, and set a beautiful table with just the four types of food. We still had beautiful plates and cutlery, so it looked very formal. I went into the living room and said ‘I’d like to invite everyone to the dining room.’ My mother looked terrified, as she knew there was no food in the house. Everyone was stunned at the dinner we’d scraped together.”

My great-grandmother would tell that story at almost every dinner. I always liked the idea of a fun atmosphere of so many young people playing games together, eating a simple dinner, then playing again until the curfew was lifted in the morning and they could go home. Pickled vegetables really can make any meal better, even during a civil war.

I was determined to get better at this, so I asked Granny for her recipe after all.

Recipe:

Sour cabbage can be made in wooden tubs. A small amount (5—10kg) can be pickled in glass jars or clay pots. Choose good heads of cabbage without green leaves, cut the heads into strips and mix with salt (250g of salt for 10kg of cabbage).

Cover the bottom of the cleaned tub with a tiny layer of rye flour, cover it with cabbage leaves and then put as many cabbage strips inside as possible. Cover the top with cabbage leaves. To add flavor and aroma, you can add carrots cut into circles, apples (the antonovka kind), cowberries and cranberries. Put a wooden circle on top of the tub and weigh it down with a clean stone. After several days, the cabbage will start to sour and a layer of foam will appear on the top.

The amount of foam will first increase and then disappear. When the foam is gone, the cabbage is ready.

During the souring process, poke the cabbage frequently with a clean birch stake to release gas. If it happens, that means that the cabbage is sour and ready. If mold or crystals appear on the top during the process, remove it carefully and continue souring.

Granny’s recipe:

3 kg cabbage

1 carrot

2 tablespoons rock salt

2 tablespoons sugar

6—7 liter enamel saucepan

Take the top leaves off the cabbage. Put some at the bottom of a saucepan and leave some to put on top. Slice up the rest of the cabbage leaves into fine strips, add the salt and sugar. Squeeze the cabbage, add it to the saucepan and push it down.

Cover with the remaining whole leaves, put a flat plate on the cabbage, and set a 3-liter glass jar of water on top of the plate. Add enough water into the cabbage to cover the plate.

After 24 hours, take the jar and plate off and poke through the cabbage with a knife to let the air out. Leave it open for 60—90 minutes. Replace the plate and jar. Continue this process once a day for 2 days. After 3 days, put the cabbage into smaller jars, close tightly and store in the refrigerator.

9. A circle of sunshine for a gray day. Pancakes with pumpkin puree

November was well and truly settling in when I made this recipe. It’s not the best time of year in Moscow – gray, cold, rainy, and the days get very short. For those affected by it, SAD (seasonal affective disorder) has spread its wings by now. SAD must be a recent phenomenon, because when someone is down, Granny says: “He/she has… it’s called… dep-res-sion!” Her look implies that Soviets only learned the term to talk about modern-day “softies” and certainly never had time for it themselves.

In Russian, the words for “recipe” and “prescription” are the same: “retsept.” Luckily there’s a pumpkin pancake recipe in the Book – in the “old recipes” section – as a prescription to cure that “softie” SADness. It looks like the perfect comfort food. It grabbed me when I saw it in summer, but I patiently waited till it was autumn and I could justify making a pumpkin recipe.

Pancakes have been around for a long time in Russia. Round, hot and golden, they remind us of the sun, and are therefore baked during Maslenitsa – the pagan holiday of welcoming spring, during which pancakes are consumed non-stop for a week. I get very keen on paganism that week. And then very keen on the gym the week after.

During Soviet times, Maslenitsa was still quietly celebrated in apartments, although not as widely as it is these days.

Granny remembers 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, without letting the potatoes cool, rub them through a sieve or crush them with a wooden pestle, add the butter and salt and, while stirring, gradually add the hot milk. Mashed potatoes are served individually or as a side dish to ham, tongue, cutlets, sausages and other meat dishes.

Fried turkey:

Salt the prepared turkey on all sides, place it on a pan with its back up, pour on the melted butter, add half a cup of water and let it bake in a medium-heated oven. While baking, use a spoon to pour the juice formed around it onto the turkey and turn it so that it browns on all sides (the turkey needs to be baked anywhere from one to two and a half hours, depending on its size).

When finished baking, remove the turkey, pour out the fat, add a cup of meat broth or water, boil and sieve.

When the turkey is not prepared in its entirety but in halves, the parts must be fried after the baking process. The turkey must be served on a warm platter divided into two halves, which should then be divided into 4—8 pieces. Pour the juice over the turkey and decorate it with parsley shoots or salad leaves. Baked apples or fried potatoes can be served on the side. Serve the green salad, cucumbers and marinated fruits and berries separately.

Baked apples with preserves:

Wash the apples with cold water, remove their cores (without cutting through them), prick the peels, fill the apples with preserves and place them on a pan or tray. Pour 2—3 tablespoons of water and place the pan in an oven with medium temperature for 15—20 minutes. As soon as the apples become soft, they must be removed, cooled and placed onto a platter or plate. Then pour the syrup formed in the pan onto the apples

For 10 apples – half a cup of preserves

For the stuffing it is best to use wild strawberry, strawberry, blackcurrant or cherry (without pits) preserves. Add crushed crackers, cookie crumbs, crushed almonds or finely chopped walnuts to the preserves selected for the stuffing.

Baked apples with sugar are prepared in the same way as apples with preserves, with the only exception being that instead of the preserves, the apples are stuffed with sugar.