On Tuesday, April 15, it snowed. Needless to say, this plunged many of my students, coworkers, and family members into despair. Never mind that spring has to come some time -- they remained convinced that the winter would never end.
So I decided to pull out all the stops.
Oddly, this week has been Passover as well as Easter Week for both Orthodox and other Christians. Can't remember the last time that happened. For Russians, this should mean the last week of "fasting" foods, i.e. foods without animal products. I went to one of my Russian recipe go-to sites, gotovim-doma.ru, to find a recipe for the lark-shaped breads that are guaranteed to usher in spring weather.
On Wednesday, I baked twenty zhavoronki. (I meant to take pictures, but apparently did not.) The dough was a "fasting" dough, i.e. used water, yeast and flour, but no eggs or milk, and was phenomenally easy to manipulate into little birds. Just doing my part to make spring arrive -- and now it has! I've posted the recipe in English here.
And although this violates all the rules of Russian culture, I had also promised my students bliny or Russian pancakes on the last day of class. It makes no sense to combine fasting and non-fasting foods together (not to mention to host an all bread-product feast), but the university calendar rarely aligns with Christian or even pagan calendars. Maslenitsa (or butter week) had fallen this year the week before spring break, when I was writing my paper for a conference in Oxford and did not have time for any student cultural events.
Instead I proposed combining Maslenitsa with Easter week and having a crazy kind of feast. I wanted to celebrate the students' achievements over the semester, since they had worked very hard and learned a lot. I encouraged them to bring food, but I knew they probably wouldn't; the last week of the term had them all scrambling to get their work done, especially as many of them are graduating this semester.
Earlier in the semester I had bought packages of prianniki (Russian spice cookies) and sushki (dry round cracker-like bread) from the Russian store, along with bottles of Borzhomi, my favorite Georgian mineral water, and figured that we'd manage. Several students had done a presentation on the foreign nature of many Russian foods: I would offer them a Russo-Georgian feast that mixes Orthodox and pagan traditions. I would bring my teapot from the Lomonosov china factory again and would brew some tea, which the students had definitively decided is a non-Russian drink. Imperialism or simply acceptance of the best to be had from foreign sources? The jury is still out.
My bliny are famously delicious, in great part because I cook them in butter. I love to make enormous piles of them, especially because it takes a while, and if I daydream, I am transported back to the Leningrad apartment where my friend Nadya taught me to make bliny. I've decided it's time to record her recipe, which we could call bliny na skoruiu ruku or quick pancakes rather than yeast pancakes, but I am going to call Bliny po-Leningradski. (I made the yeast pancakes early in my experimenting with Anya von Bremzen's cookbook and frankly I don't like them as well. I suppose I'll have to try a few more times to see if I can make them tasty.)
So Wednesday evening around 9 p.m. I started making bliny. I'll admit that I was very pleased with my students when I asked them which of the many Russian food proverbs we learned this semester was their favorite, and many of them replied: Pervyi blin komom. This is important for language learning -- the first pancake comes out in a lump, or as we might say in English: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Without trying -- and trying out loud -- and maybe even making a fool of yourself, you can never master a language -- or even a recipe.
I made so many bliny I lost count (maybe because I was daydreaming ... or maybe because I had a shot or two of some homemade horseradish-flavored vodka that I was not going to be able to share with the students). In other words, it was a long process.
The results were fairly gorgeous, if I do say so myself.
On Thursday I set up in the Slavic conference room at the university, with an electric griddle for reheating bliny, a hot pot for boiling water, and of course homemade jams and sour cream to doctor the bliny. I then proceeded to hold class -- the students were reading aloud from Ulitskaya's fairytale of post-war orphaned children, Cabbage Miracle, and we talked about the vocabulary, structure, word choice, descriptions, post-war tragedy and the story's happy ending ... as I continued to heat up and deliver bliny two at a time, occasionally stopping to write a word or phrase on the white board behind me. Professor, cook, waitress, cultural ambassador -- a very funny teaching day.
Today, Saturday, we have opened all the windows and are enjoying the sunshine. I had to make one more (small) pile of bliny, since I hadn't eaten a single one during our feast. Surprisingly, I had a new experience: poslednii blin komom. My last pancake was a flop. What does that translate to in English?
So I decided to pull out all the stops.
Oddly, this week has been Passover as well as Easter Week for both Orthodox and other Christians. Can't remember the last time that happened. For Russians, this should mean the last week of "fasting" foods, i.e. foods without animal products. I went to one of my Russian recipe go-to sites, gotovim-doma.ru, to find a recipe for the lark-shaped breads that are guaranteed to usher in spring weather.
On Wednesday, I baked twenty zhavoronki. (I meant to take pictures, but apparently did not.) The dough was a "fasting" dough, i.e. used water, yeast and flour, but no eggs or milk, and was phenomenally easy to manipulate into little birds. Just doing my part to make spring arrive -- and now it has! I've posted the recipe in English here.
And although this violates all the rules of Russian culture, I had also promised my students bliny or Russian pancakes on the last day of class. It makes no sense to combine fasting and non-fasting foods together (not to mention to host an all bread-product feast), but the university calendar rarely aligns with Christian or even pagan calendars. Maslenitsa (or butter week) had fallen this year the week before spring break, when I was writing my paper for a conference in Oxford and did not have time for any student cultural events.
Instead I proposed combining Maslenitsa with Easter week and having a crazy kind of feast. I wanted to celebrate the students' achievements over the semester, since they had worked very hard and learned a lot. I encouraged them to bring food, but I knew they probably wouldn't; the last week of the term had them all scrambling to get their work done, especially as many of them are graduating this semester.
 |
| I love this painting by famous Georgian primitivist painter Niko Pirosmani, Easter Feast (1906). A perfect image for our own "Easter kutezh." |
My bliny are famously delicious, in great part because I cook them in butter. I love to make enormous piles of them, especially because it takes a while, and if I daydream, I am transported back to the Leningrad apartment where my friend Nadya taught me to make bliny. I've decided it's time to record her recipe, which we could call bliny na skoruiu ruku or quick pancakes rather than yeast pancakes, but I am going to call Bliny po-Leningradski. (I made the yeast pancakes early in my experimenting with Anya von Bremzen's cookbook and frankly I don't like them as well. I suppose I'll have to try a few more times to see if I can make them tasty.)
 |
| Lump indeed! |
So Wednesday evening around 9 p.m. I started making bliny. I'll admit that I was very pleased with my students when I asked them which of the many Russian food proverbs we learned this semester was their favorite, and many of them replied: Pervyi blin komom. This is important for language learning -- the first pancake comes out in a lump, or as we might say in English: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Without trying -- and trying out loud -- and maybe even making a fool of yourself, you can never master a language -- or even a recipe.
I made so many bliny I lost count (maybe because I was daydreaming ... or maybe because I had a shot or two of some homemade horseradish-flavored vodka that I was not going to be able to share with the students). In other words, it was a long process.
 |
| Getting later... but still making bliny. Hard for anyone else in the house to fall asleep, given the lovely buttery smells wafting up the staircase... |
On Thursday I set up in the Slavic conference room at the university, with an electric griddle for reheating bliny, a hot pot for boiling water, and of course homemade jams and sour cream to doctor the bliny. I then proceeded to hold class -- the students were reading aloud from Ulitskaya's fairytale of post-war orphaned children, Cabbage Miracle, and we talked about the vocabulary, structure, word choice, descriptions, post-war tragedy and the story's happy ending ... as I continued to heat up and deliver bliny two at a time, occasionally stopping to write a word or phrase on the white board behind me. Professor, cook, waitress, cultural ambassador -- a very funny teaching day.
Today, Saturday, we have opened all the windows and are enjoying the sunshine. I had to make one more (small) pile of bliny, since I hadn't eaten a single one during our feast. Surprisingly, I had a new experience: poslednii blin komom. My last pancake was a flop. What does that translate to in English?
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| Saturday lunch at home! |
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