Savage Feast

by Boris Fishman

  There, finally, I met Misha, her son and my birthday doppelganger, loping and sweet. It felt odd to—I knew things his mother felt about him that he didn’t. Just as Oksana knew things about my parents that they didn’t. Just as Misha surely carried information that they, and I, didn’t about Oksana’s experiences in New York.

  With Tanya, Oksana’s daughter, I tried to ingratiate myself by praising her mother’s cooking. “My mother’s cooking is no different or better than any other Ukrainian housewife’s,” she said curtly. My eyes “climbed my forehead” as I continued to pump her hand absentmindedly in the American way. Then I understood: She thought I was going to try to take advantage in some way. Entice Oksana into opening a café and make off with the profits—the only thing she could imagine, especially from a foreigner with all the power. Not even: Entice Oksana into opening a café—into just taking a chance. The Soviet way still prevailed here. To avoid trouble, avoid sticking your neck out in service to unguaranteed things.

  I felt a prisoner’s hunger. Oksana had made rabbit in sour cream, ribs with pickled cabbage, a radish salad, pickled watermelon, and a waiting table of cakes and profiteroles “Ukrainian style.” An empty chair had in front of it a vodka-filled shot glass covered with a piece of black bread—a commemorative spot for Oksana’s mother. The in-laws had arrived from their town with gifts from the village: canned river fish, canned zucchini, tomatoes marinated and brined. Also a five-gallon plastic drum of spring water that I belatedly discovered to contain not spring water but moonshine, and a huge jar of beet juice that had been fermenting for more than a week. A boy with jug ears and big teeth, some still finding their way, and a girl with a polite, serious look sat at the adults’ table, but Tanya’s youngest had set herself up with an iPad inside a suitcase Oksana had dragged from the States. Flattery or the truth, all present praised the borshch to which I’d contributed, and drank to the honorary new Ukrainian at the table.

  My contribution had been decidedly limited, but I felt a swelling, embarrassing pride all the same. It was different cooking for others—I understood why frying potatoes for Oksana made my grandfather so expansive (even if he probably didn’t). Even though I’d tried to paint many walls and replace many faucets, I would never be the painter, builder, and craftsman my father was. But cooking supplied something of the same sense of . . . I couldn’t pin down the word for it. Sitting at a writing chair, I used a part of myself that couldn’t feel more essential, and the fulfillment of that, even when the writing was going badly, had no comparison. So it was a surprise to realize that wasn’t enough. I needed to use my body. Was that because my elders had not really been mind people—safe haulers, furniture builders, haircutters, wall painters—and so there was an invisible birthright of physical labor I had failed to fulfill? Or was it simply that most boys had been less comprehensively kept from physical labor as boys, and so weren’t as restless?

  “In Moscow,” the food writer Alexander Genis has written, “they say that the Ukrainian kitchen differs from the Russian like twins separated at birth. Having grown up without its older brother, [the Ukrainian kitchen] has taken on a lot of foreign influence.” This is in keeping with the historical attitude of Russia toward Ukraine as “the little brother,” on such vivid display in recent years in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. In Russian jokes, Ukrainians are the hicks, both capricious and self-inflating in their exasperating insistence on independence. But it’s the Ukrainian countryside that always fed the Soviet Union. (“On business trips,” as Genis points out, “Ukrainian delicacies were the most effective form of bribery with hotel administrators.”) And it had fed Russia in the lean 1990s, when all was chaos after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At Expo 67, in Montreal, it was Ukrainian borshch (and Georgian kebabs) that represented the Soviet Union. “In Kiev,” Genis writes, “they fully agree with [the Moscow] thesis—if you invert it completely.”

  I was not set free from the memorial table until I was dazed from all I’d eaten and drunk. The sun was out in a late-day surge, so I begged to go outside and try to waddle it off. In another sign of my acceptance, I was told to round up the children and take them with me; three bedrooms or not, children in confined spaces, like dogs, needed occasional airing. I looked at Tanya for final confirmation, but she didn’t seem to object. The ill wind of first meeting—the mandatory suspicion upon encounter with something unknown—had seemingly passed.

  Outside, the sun was so bright off the knee-high snow that I couldn’t open my eyes. That meant I had a hard time keeping track of the children, but my hopeless stumbling around in the snow was comic enough that I knew they were close by their hysterical laughter. The broad, open smiles they wear in the photograph I have of our outing—open-mouthed, glowing, those shambolic teeth—feel endangered, because in just several years they will begin to live in the world that put such different expressions on the faces of the people I’d seen walking through town that day. As their giggles echoed around the scraggly, barren winter trees all around us, I understood in a different way why the first thing I felt from Tanya was wariness; why Oksana had gone halfway around the world to earn money even if it meant being mute and alone; why, all those years ago, my parents had wished so badly to shelter and save me.

  Oksana’s Borshch (v)

  Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

  Serves: 8

  The beet must not lose its color.

  —Oksana

  3 medium beets

  12 cups water

  3 medium Idaho potatoes, peeled and cubed

  1 medium parsnip, peeled and sliced into disks, the larger slices halved

  1/4 head cabbage, roughly chopped

  1 jalapeño, seeded and minced

  11/2 tablespoons kosher salt, plus additional to taste

  3 tablespoons vegetable oil

  1 medium onion, chopped

  2 large carrots, peeled and grated

  1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste

  4 large garlic cloves, put through a garlic press and divided

  11/2 teaspoons ground coriander

  11/2 teaspoons curry powder

  2 tablespoons white vinegar or lemon juice

  1 teaspoon sugar

  1 bunch dill, chopped

  sour cream to taste (optional)

  The day before:

  Cover the beets with water and bring to a boil in a pot with the lid mostly on. Boil until a small knife goes through easily. (About an hour—you may have to top up the water now and then.) Leave the skin on and refrigerate. This step helps the beet keep its color and not blanch when it’s cooking the next day.

  The day of:

  Bring the 12 cups of water to a boil, then lower the heat to medium and add the potatoes, parsnip, cabbage, jalapeño, and 1 tablespoon of the salt. Cover, with the lid slightly ajar, and cook for 30 minutes.

  Meanwhile, heat the oil in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until golden brown. Add the carrots and sauté until fully cooked. Add the tomato paste and half the pressed garlic and cook for another minute. Set aside.

  Peel the beets under running water—the skin should come off in your hands—and cut them into small pieces.

  After the soup has been going for 30 minutes:

  Add the coriander and curry. (Oksana always adds them toward the end, so their flavor keeps.) When I asked her what a Ukrainian might think of curry in her borshch, she said, “We’re Americans, aren’t we?”

  Add the onion mixture to the soup, deglazing the pan with a little water and adding that to the soup as well. Add the beets and the remaining 1/2 tablespoon salt and turn the heat down to low.

  Check the taste. Does the soup need salt? For a little acid, add the vinegar or lemon juice. (Oksana uses vinegar.) Add the sugar, the remaining garlic, and a generous helping of the dill.

  Taste again. At this stage, Oksana usually adds a little more salt—“The day after it’s made, borshch always tastes like it needs salt.”

  Turn the heat to high; at the fir
st sign of boiling, shut it off or the beets will start to lose color.

  Leave for the next day—the flavor will concentrate overnight. When reheating, reheat only what will be served, as repeated boiling will blanch the beets. Serve with a dollop of sour cream.

  Banosh (Polenta) with Mushrooms and Sheep’s Milk Feta (v)

  Time: 25 minutes

  Serves: 4

  Banosh comes from the Carpathians, the prettiest unknown mountains in Europe and home to the Hutsuls, pastoral highlanders who still take their sheep flocks to high pasture for summer grazing. Banosh was their bacon and beans. Cornmeal traveled easily, and the sheep were right there—summer was a good time for milk production, the lambs just having been born—as were the porcini. By Hutsul tradition, the men had to cook all sheep-related dishes, including banosh, which had to be prepared in a cast-iron pot over an open fire so the dish would be “impregnated” with smoke. (It’s nice when men take over the kitchen, but you see how they start talking among themselves.)

  Banosh was an autumn dish in Oksana’s household. “After we got the wild mushrooms from the woods,” she says, “I threaded a thick, sturdy needle with fat yarn and then ran it through the mushrooms, one by one. You hang it over the stove, cover gently with cheesecloth so the flies don’t get at it, and after 2–3 days of cooking one thing or another, you’ll have dried mushrooms.”

  If you can find dried porcini, as in the recipe for Cabbage Vareniki (Dumplings) with Wild Mushroom Gravy, use the same amount (around 1.5 ounces dried) and soak them in hot water, as that recipe specifies. Otherwise, ordinary button mushrooms will do—this dish packs plenty of flavor.

  11/4 cups milk

  2 cups sour cream

  2/3 cup fine cornmeal

  Kosher salt, to taste

  Sugar, to taste

  1 tablespoon vegetable oil

  8 ounces mushrooms, sliced

  1 bay leaf

  Ground coriander, to taste

  Curry powder, to taste

  Paprika, to taste

  1 clove garlic, put through a garlic press

  Handful of chopped dill

  Sheep’s milk feta cheese, for serving

  Polenta

  Combine the milk and the sour cream in a large pot, stir until the sour cream has blended with the milk, and heat over medium heat until boiling, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.

  Lower to a simmer—“it needs to breathe”—and pour in the cornmeal little by little, stirring as you go, to prevent clumping. (Oksana insists that only a wooden stirring spoon is right for the task, per Hutsul tradition, but a whisk does the job fine, too, in addition to giving the mixture more fluffiness.) Cook, stirring, until quite thick, 10–15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and sugar.

  Mushrooms

  Heat the oil in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms, bay leaf, and salt to taste and sauté until the mushrooms have let off their liquid and it has evaporated. Add the coriander, curry, and paprika (the piquancy of the paprika works well with the sweetness of the mushrooms) and sauté until the mushrooms are browned.

  Stir in the garlic, and sprinkle with dill.

  Serve the mushrooms over the polenta and crumble some feta on top.

  Skip the feta and mushrooms and you have a fine breakfast base. The tang of the sour cream also begs for the sweetness of something like pork, so consider topping with your favorite cut. Or just buy extra rib tips when you’re making Braised Rib Tips with Pickled Cabbage (recipe follows).

  Braised Rib Tips with Pickled Cabbage

  Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

  Serves: 6

  1/2 cup vegetable oil

  2 pounds pork rib tips

  1 large onion, chopped

  1 pound sauerkraut

  1/2 pound fresh cabbage, roughly shredded (optional)

  12 pitted prunes, chopped

  3 garlic cloves, put through a garlic press

  1/2 bunch dill, chopped

  2 tablespoons chopped parsley

  Note: If the sauerkraut is too sour for your taste, rinse it under cold water or add the 1/2 pound of fresh cabbage. As for the rib tips—the triangular ends that come off spare ribs if a butcher is trying to make the ribs more neatly rectangular—Oksana uses them because they are inexpensive and tasty; other cuts work well, too.

  Heat the oil in a deep cooking pot over medium heat. Add the rib tips, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned, 10 to 15 minutes.

  Turn the heat to low and cook for another 20 minutes, covered, stirring once in a while to make sure they’re not sticking.

  Add the onion to the pork. Raise the heat to medium-low and cook the onion for 10 minutes.

  Add the sauerkraut/cabbage to the pork and onion. Oksana doesn’t mix the ingredients at first. (The liquid from the cabbage should help things along.) Cover and keep at medium-low heat. After 5–10 minutes, gently mix the contents. Cover and cook for another 20 minutes. No salt or pepper necessary—the dish is getting all the flavoring it needs from its ingredients.

  Add the prunes, garlic, dill, and parsley and cook for 5 minutes more.

  “Sand” Cake (Cocoa-Lemon Layer Cake) (v)

  Time: 45 minutes

  Serves: 12

  The “sand” in the name of this “special-occasion” cake refers only to the Ukrainian word for the way shortbread pastry sheets crumble—not the texture you’ll have in your mouth! After the filling soaks in, you’ll be reminded that it’s not so far from Ukraine to Vienna: It’s a delicate and airy improvement on any slice of Napoleon cake you’ve ever had.

  1/4 cup flour

  1 tablespoon cocoa powder

  2 cups milk, divided

  3/4 cup sugar

  3/4 cup butter

  1/4 cup lemon juice

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  6 prebaked shortbread pastry sheets (approximately 9 by 7 inches)

  Note: Shortbread pastry sheets—pesochnye korzhi (peh-SOTCH-knee-yeah kor-ZHI)—are commonly available in Eastern European food markets, but if there isn’t one near you, make them yourself using the recipe below. They should have the consistency of butter cookies—shortbread—rather than pie crusts.

  Note: The milk mixture will take a while to cool after step 4, so you may wish to schedule something else to use up the time.

  1. Whisk together the flour and cocoa powder. Whisk in 1 cup of the milk until smooth. Doing all this in a graduated measuring cup with a pour spout will make step 3 easy.

  2. In a small pot, bring the remaining 1 cup of milk to a boil.

  3. When the milk comes to a boil, reduce the heat so it doesn’t scald, and pour in the flour mixture slowly, in a thin stream.

  4. While continuously stirring with a wooden spoon, turn up the heat and bring the mixture to a boil. Lower the temperature and simmer for 2 minutes, making sure to keep on stirring.

  5. Remove from the heat and let cool completely to room temperature. You can accelerate the cooling by placing the pot in a wider container filled with ice water.

  6. Using an electric mixer or a food processor, cream the sugar and butter until fluffy. Slowly mix in the lemon juice and vanilla.

  7. Once the thickened milk has cooled, add it to the butter mixture one tablespoon at a time, using the mixer.

  Note: Acid like lemon juice can cause dairy to separate, but if you see clumping, don’t worry—it won’t affect the taste or be visible in the final result.

  8. Crumble one of the pastry sheets using a rolling pin. Spread the rest out on a countertop. Reserve some of the filling for covering the sides of the cake, and divide the rest among the pastry sheets. (Or “go with God,” as Oksana says—eyeball how much is right for each sheet as you go without first spreading them out.) Spread the filling almost to the edge of each layer, stack the layers one on top of the other, and coat the sides with filling using a spatula. Then cover the uppermost layer and sides with the crumbs from the crushed sheet.

  Note: The cake needs to sit
so it can soak up the filling and won’t crumble when you cut into it. Overnight is best. Oksana “puts it on the balcony, and by the morning it’s ready.”

  Pesochnye Korzhi

  Time: 2 hours (including 1-hour wait)

  Makes: 6 rounds

  2 sticks (1 cup) butter, softened

  1 cup confectioners’ sugar

  1 egg yolk

  1 whole egg

  2 cups flour

  1/2 teaspoon baking powder

  1 pinch salt

  Using an electric mixer or a food processor, cream the butter and confectioners’ sugar until smooth.

  Add the yolk and mix until fully incorporated, then add the whole egg and mix until smooth.

  In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat into the butter mixture with a wooden spoon. Depending on the size of the eggs, you may need more or less flour. The result should be soft and a little sticky.

  Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and leave in the fridge for an hour.

  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

  Divide the dough into 6 pieces. Roll each one into a thin disk between sheets of parchment paper.

  Cut around the edges of each pastry disk to make a smooth edge. Circles work as well as rectangles; if so, each one should be uniform in diameter (about 7 inches).