Last of the Summer Salad

I miss Ukrainian tomatoes. Apologies for a cliche, but the ones you get in the supermarkets in London are never that good. However I grew my own this year and ended up with a decent crop of the sweetest, juiciest, loveliest Gardener's Delights. I made a quick raw veg summer salad with them adding a few other veg. It's a very typical salad you'd have all summer long back home.

Just make sure you use unrefined sunflower oil (see Cooking Essentials) and lots and lots of dill and parsley. To add an autumnal touch, mix in some diced gherkins.

Salads like this are used as a sauce/gravy substitute in the Russian/Ukrainian cuisine. They will typically be served with meat and mash or meat and grains dish, to provide freshness and juiciness. My husband and I often have this salad with sausages.

Summer Raw Veg Salad
(Makes 2 rather generous portions)

Ingredients: 

15-20 cherry tomatoes or 2-3 ordinary tomatoes (get the best ones you can - ones the vine are usually better)
1/2 cucumber
1 medium sweet pepper - orange or yellow
1/2 small red onion
2 garlic cloves crushed
Lot of dill and parsley
1/2 lemon
a couple of gherkins (optional)
Unrefined sunflower oil (see Cooking Essentials)
Salt and pepper

Method: 

Chop all the veg into a biggish dice. I quarter cherry tomatoes and chop sweet pepper fairly thinly. You don't want your salad to turn into salsa, but you don't want big pieces either.
Mix all the chopped veg and herbs in a bowl. Add the crushed garlic, lemon juice, generous glugs of sunflower oil, salt and pepper.

Serve with kotlety and mashed potato or buckwheat kasha, or with sausages or any other meat. If you are a vegetarian - try it with mashed potato. I tend to pile it up on top of the mash and delight in the juicy-creamy mixture.

The story of pet mice and a barrel of butter

Olga Kardovskaya. Haystacks. 1933.

I’ve never seen a photo of my babushka as a child. I guess no one was taking photos in a relatively remote Russian village back then. Or if the did, the photos didn’t survive collectivisation and the war. For some reason  I don’t think I ever tried to imagine how she looked like as a child. I guess she was my babushka and that was it.

It was easy to imagine all the things she told me about though. I felt like I was there with her in the village, shepherding geese, playing in the fields, doing thousands other not so exciting things that she must have done as a little girl.

Being the tenth child, she didn’t exactly get too much parental attention or toys. As in many big families her sisters took care of her and her mother was only consulted on the really big issues.  

Of course I only remember snippets of stories and maybe she did spend a lot of time with her mother, but I doubt it. Her great gran didn’t feature that much in her childhood stories and mum recently said that she didn’t remember babushka talking of her mother too often. I guess my great gran was a busy woman. Ten surviving children and two sets of twins who didn’t make it would be enough to keep any woman busy. But being a peasan't wife, she had the whole household on her shoulders.

- Babushka, tell me the story about your pet mice, - I would ask, tucking into a warm blanket.

- There were lots of mice in the village: in the wheat barns, in the fields and in the haystacks…

They must have been very used to people because babushka and her friends would make tiny little houses for them from hay and play with them like with dolls. Of course, when they came the next day, the mice would be gone. I bet the mice were happy to e free again!

- We were a little sad, that they left the lovely huts we made for them.

One day the children found a barrel of butter under a bridge. No one knew how it got there, but it was pretty unusual. It must have fallen off a cart or someone must have nicked it and hidden it under the bridge.

They were so excited that they started eating it.  It was, at the end of the day, a bit of luxury. They ate so much that they all got sick.

I always imagined that babushka’s childhood was much more exciting than mine. But I guess it was like any other childhood: a bit boring, a bit slow, with a few exciting events here and there.

Kotlety: Yummy Russian burgers

I would like to add another burger recipe to your cooking repertoire today - a Russian/Ukrainian one. An absolute staple in the East Slavic diet. Back home we make our mince ourselves, as the shop bought one used to be awful. (I just wanted to make mince joke, but when I translated it into English, it sounded so gross, I thought it may put you off your food, but do tell me if you want to hear it and I'll 'hide' it in the comments). Swiftly moving on...

The British shop bought mince is absolutely fine for this, just don't buy the cheapest one - as it may turn out to be made with horse meat. Nothing wrong with it, but not for this recipe.

I make my burgers with half pork half beef mince to add fattiness and juiciness, but most Ukrainians would probably just use pork. My babushka certainly did.

We don't eat them with bread though. Russian burgers are eaten like meatballs. A traditional way of serving them is with mashed potato and fresh veg salad or buckwheat kasha and fresh veg salad. You can have ketchup or mayonnaise, but the juicy salad is normally doing the job of the sauce/gravy. Watch this space for some Russian raw veg salads.

Kotlety: Russian Burgers
(makes at least 12)

Ingredients: 

500g - Beef mince (don't bother with the lean one - you want a bit of fat in it)
500g - Pork mince
1 large onion peeled and chopped into quarters
5 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 medium raw potato - peeled
1 small white bun - you can use a stale one, or any stale white bread
150ml milk
1 egg
Unrefined sunflower oil for frying.
salt, pepper

Method: 

Put the white bun into a cup and cover it with milk. Let it soften.
Put all the mince into a large mixing bowl.
Chop the onion, garlic and potato in a food processor. Add the bun when ready and soft. (Discard the milk).
Mix all the ingredients in the mixing bowl (don't forget the egg, it will bind it all better together). Season well. Don't be shy to use your hands - the mince needs to be well mixed.

You may ask why we added potato and a white bun? They moisturise the meat and soak up all the juices too, so you end up with soft and juicy meatballs.

If you have time, let the mince rest in the fridge for 20 min.
Take it out and divide into small burgers. The shape should be oval and slightly flattened. Twice or even three times as big as a meatball, but smaller than a burger.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the burgers on both sides until ready. As we are using pork mince, you can't have them medium or medium rare. They need to be well done, but with all those additional ingredients, they will turn out nice and juicy.

Serve with dill as part of a meal (see above) or on their own as cocktail party food with mayonnaise or ketchup. You can stick them in a bun too, if you want to go British on them.

Next - some Russian salads and stories from babushka's village.

A peasant life that wasn't to last

Sister Pasha's house in Solntsevo, on the site of the old house

Having to share a bedroom with my babushka was no hardship at all. I never even craved my own space. Having a kids' bedroom was an utter luxury and I din't know of anyone  then who had more than one of those even if they had more than one kid.

I loved sharing a bedroom with her. Every night I would ask babushka to tell me stories about her childhood. Or 'stories about the village', as I used to call them. And tell me she did, again and again, during those long Ukrainian winter nights, often falling asleep mid-sentence.

She was the tenth surviving child in a well-to-do peasant family in Western Russia. I've never been to Solntsevo, the village she was born in: the old house didn't survive anyway and the new one was occupied by babushka's older sister Pasha until she died before I was born.

But it's easy to imagine the place. White clay houses, surrounded by kitchen gardens and fields, a stream running in between weepy willows and fruit trees, unmade roads, that turned into mud baths in the rain, and daisies. Lots and lots of daisies.

It was a busy household. Mariyka's mother Natasha would be busy cooking, cleaning and washing, helped by the older girls. The boys would be working with the father in the fields. A typical life of a peasant family.

Babushka's first job was to look after geese and she didn't like it that much. They would hiss and pinch - a bit frightening for a 4-year-old girl. But everyone had to pull their weight.

It was mid 1920s when the Soviet Russia, starved and exhausted after two wars, allowed private enterprise, previously banned, to pop up all over the country, creating jobs, producing goods, growing and selling food.

My babushka's family was considered to be a 'kulak' family. A name given to well-off peasants, who could afford having hired help for working on the fields.
They were tolerated for now, at the end of the day, the new proletariat, which flooded the cities needed bread, and the 'kulaks' were particularly good at growing and selling food. But it wouldn't last too long...

How does Ukrainian Borsch differ from the Russian?

(can be Vegetarian if using vegetable stock)

Borsch is such a traditional Eastern Slavic dish, that every family has its unique recipe. There are several 'official' types of borsch including 'green borsch' which is made with sorrel, but this one is for the spring, as that's when fresh sorrel is first available. This recipe is based on my babushka’s way of making borsch. Though born in Russia she made it Ukrainian way. There is a joke that a Russian borsch is a bucket of water with one cabbage, two potatoes and three beetroots. Ukrainians, being blessed with rich produce, put pretty much all the autumnal vegetables in it. But the basics, what makes borsch - borsch and not just a vegetable soup, are the same: stock, potatoes, beetroots and cabbage. To make it more substantial, babushka would add to it pieces of boiled beef or pork from the stock bones, but you don't have to. Also, be warned, because it contains beetroot it may make your wee look pink!

Ingredients: Makes 6 portions

2.5l home made beef stock (see previous post. You can use veg stock instead, though it won't be authentic)

Sunflower oil (preferably unrefined, see cooking essentials)

2 large-ish beetroots - peeled and cut into thin batons - bigger than frites, but smaller than chips

2-3 medium carrots - cut into small chunks (I do cemicircles)

2 medium onions - thinly sliced

4-5 medium potatoes - cut into medium chunks

½ small white cabbage (400-500g) - shredded

2 red or orange peppers - cut into thin slices

½ tube (100g) of tomato paste

2 fresh tomatoes - cut into small chunks - or 1/2 tin of tinned tomatoes

1tbsp or so lemon juice or white wine vinegar

4-5 garlic cloves crushed

Salt and pepper

Sour cream or half fat creme freche and chopped fresh dill to garnish

Method:

Heat the oil in a large pot. Add the beetroots and fry for a few minutes, this is supposed to lock the colour in the beetroots as well as to tenderise then, as they take longer to cook. If you are using unrefined sunflower oil - smell it! There is no other smell that is so authentically East European! Add the carrots and see how the smell changes.  After a few minutes add the onions. Let the veg soften a bit then add beef stock.

Bring to the boil and let it simmer for 5 minutes on low heat. Add the potatoes. Season. Bring to the boil and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Add the cabbage, sweet peppers, tomatoes, tomato pure and lemon juice or vinegar. Taste it. It should have a slight acidity to it,  but still basically have a rich slightly sweet vegetably taste.

Simmer until the cabbage and potatoes are ready. Take off the heat. Add some crushed garlic.

Serve adding a spoonful of sour cream or creme freche and lots chopped fresh gill. Best eaten with crusty fresh bread.

A Mysterious Cup and a bit about meat retail in the Soviet times

Our Stalin style one bedroom flat, which my parents and I shared with my maternal grandparents was a typical example of a place a well educated but not terribly well off family of an engineer would live in. It was packed with the 1970s Soviet furniture, ‘Persian’ rugs on the walls, a black and white TV and net curtains on the windows. But in a sideboard full of Soviet and Czech crystal stood a cup. An unusual cup. A cup of an age gone long ago - a gilded, hand painted , beautiful cup. It was simply out of place.

(I since took it to Antiques Road Show. In its current cracked state, this cup which once belonged to a not-so expensive Bohemian set is worth about £40). Nothing too special, but for me it was a mystery. What was it doing next to these rather austere Soviet objects?

It was early 1980s - the height of the Cold War. The Soviet Union recently invaded Afghanistan, the US just boycotted the Moscow Olympic games. Bourgeois objects like this were not exactly the norm. 

But I was little and knew nothing of all of this. I was playing in the yard with my friends, observed by other grannies, and was following my babushka on her errands. (Mum went back to work when I was one and babushka was looking after me, which was the thing to do then).

I loved going to the market with her. We had to go really early - 7am or something like this, as it was all over by 8.30. Buying meat was the main thing. All prices were controlled by the state to prevent speculation, so to make money meat sellers used to give you meat cuts which always contained hidden bones. They were quite crafty too, only back home would you realise just how bony/fatty the piece of meat was.

But money was tight and nothing was thrown away. So the first thing my babushka would do is to make stock. Below is a recipe for beef stock, which we will use to make borsch. You can make borsch with vegetable stock or water, but (apologies vegetarians) it’s not the real thing. I tried making it with some shop-bought stock, but it just doesn’t taste right either. So don’t be lazy and make your own. (You can make it in advance and freeze it.) I always make masses and freeze some for the future.

Beef Stock for Ukrainian Borsch

There is no need to roast/fry the bones and meat. What we are after is beefiness, not delicate flavour you'd need for a sauce or gravy.

Ingredients:

2-3 pieces of beef/veal bones - you can get them from your local butcher.

½ of ox tail (about 500g)

2-3 medium onions cut into quarters with skins on

2-3 medium carrots - washed and cut into chunks

1 celery stick if you have it

2 bay leaves

10 black peppercorns

Method:

Put everything into a large pot, cover generously with cold water, bring to the boil and simmer on low heat for good 2-3 hours. Taking the scum off here and there.

The stock will be cloudy, but it doesn’t matter. We are here for the flavour not the looks.

Sieve the liquid. Discard everything else. Skim the excess fat from the top.

Cool. You will need 2.5l for the borsch. Freeze whatever you are not using.

Next time - Ukrainian Borsch.

Food from my grandmother's old cookbooks

Babushka during the WWII as Ostarbeiter in Germany

This is a story of my babushka (grandmother), who died when I was pregnant with my first son in 2008. I grew up eating her wonderful and sometimes not so wonderful food (her Uzbek plov - pilau - was terrible!)

When she died, my mother gave me her old recipe notebooks, which I will use to cook and share with you some wonderful and often weird Russian and Ukrainian food. Some recipes were never written down. Everyone back then was expected to know how to cook borsch and kotlety (meatballs) - so I'll cook them from memory. Some I will try and tweak to make taste as authentic as possible.

As I cook and eat all this food, I will tell you about my babushka's life and about what it was like living in the post-war Soviet Union. 

If you want to start making some Russian/Ukrainian food - you will need to have a few essential ingredients. They are easy to find in most big supermarkets in London, in East European shops (try Polish ones, if you can't find a Russian grocery) and of course online. Have a look at the Cooking Essentials page.

You may also wonder, why should you bother with East European cooking? Well, I'd like to convince you that it's worth a try. It's seasonal, it's fairly healthy - if you don't forget about adding veg to your meals and it's pretty crude - so anyone can make it! 

We;ll be cooking borsch first - a perfect harvest time dish with all the veg at it's best. Watch this space!