Manic Bookstore Cafe

I'm not sure what came over me. It could be that it looked like it might start raining, and might even settle in for 24 hours or more (which it did). Or maybe because it was the day before school started for my kids. Or because I've only recently returned to my beloved kitchen with its marble pastry board and welcoming orange walls. Or because we had invited some friends over for dinner. Whatever the reason, I had a truly manic baking day yesterday. It was supposed to be hot out, but I had bought the muenster I usually use for Georgian Cheese Breads ( Khachapuri ), and that was the center of my meal plan. Khachapuri  are always a crowd pleaser, and I figured I would make cold soup to go with them. I had also grabbed an eggplant at the store in case I felt up to making eggplant caviar, though some people in the family thought that Russian food would be too heavy for this sudden warm weather. I was doubtful myself, since really good eggplant caviar requires standing at t...

In everyone's life there is a teacher who motivated her to try harder, strive for more, reach beyond. Or in my case, a teacher who teased, goaded, poked, pried, laughed, lampooned, and somehow created an atmosphere where I was ready to work my tail off to make him proud. Randy Nolde, we will miss you. Mr. Nolde was my Russian teacher in high school. I first got to know him as a younger person -- the Russian Club Banquet was quite the event in my home town, and my grandmother used to take us regularly even before my sister enrolled in Russian language class. Every year, the high school cafeteria underwent a magical metamorphosis. Huge murals of scenes from Russia -- fantastic, colorful onion-domed churches, and young peasants reaping wheat, and Armenian maidens with long braids and colorful costumes -- hung all around the edges of the room. On the menu: chicken Kiev made by the cafeteria ladies, supplemented with cafeteria salad, but also khachapuri  and piroshki  made b...

Vail and Genis's Russian Cuisine in Exile Teaching this course on Russian cuisine, my favorite book has become Petr Vail and Alexander Genis's Russian Cuisine in Exile . It's a wonderful set of essays that are part nostalgia, part recipe, part cultural commentary, part advice column ("If you want to buy a clay pot for stewing Russian soups, best to go to other immigrant shops -- African or Caribbean.") I'm quite sure they named the book after Gleb Struve's classic Russian Literature in Exile , but it is eminently more readable and inherently more fun. I couldn't help quoting Vail and Genis while making tea the other day for my students at our big Russian feast: "[The Russians'] habit of diluting tea with boiling water is a historical misconception. This custom arose from poverty and grew into a superstition according to which it is unhealthy to drink strong tea." The authors go on to explain that this is utterly preposterous, and t...

I have to admit it. I'm a fraud. I learned most of my Russian cooking from a truly Soviet girl. Komsomol member, former factory worker, daughter of Udmurt peasants, Nadya taught me much of what I know on the hotplate in the tiny entryway to our Soviet university dormitory blok . Fried potatoes with onions and garlic. Soup made with (yes) potatoes and onions and garlic. I watched her and my other Siberian roommate, Liuda, bake  chicken tabaka or assemble the occasional elaborate salat olivier  for a special meal, but as a committed lacto-ovo vegetarian, I didn't even partake of those beautiful holiday tables. What I mostly learned was how to make bliny  -- Russian pancakes, so light and delicate and buttery that even when they were tiny my children could consume 5 each. They begged for Russian pancakes most mornings, and I made them almost every weekend. Rolled up and filled with jam for my son, American-style (drenched in real maple syrup) and cut into bite-si...