That is a must

“Wait, wait, I still can't believe it – and the phone hasn't rung before that in years?” I shout, incredulous, over the jet engines, stressing and drawing out 'e' in 'years'.

We are close to a runway, planes are taking off. I squint then raise my eyebrows and repeat what I just said, but my pitch is no rival to the taxying jumbo jet, so I wait before Anthony can hear me again. On the far side of the runway a plane lifts itself off ground, the jumbo jet is next.

“My father said it hasn't, no. Not a single phone call, not a single text message for the last eight years, since his retirement from the police force in fact – it used to be his work phone.” We are cycling side by side, towards a course of tall trees down the narrow road. The plan is to drop the bikes somewhere there, Anthony stretches out his arm to point, and watch the planes sprawled out on the grass in the cooling shadow. In the event of peckish-ness we've got a bag each of tortilla and ridged potato chips.

We had lunch at home before the ride: thick unapologetic sourdough toasts with bean confit, impossibly good and addictive. I placed the beans on top of the toast and smashed them gently with a fork. The best part is never the soft plump fragrant beans but the richly flavoured (garlic and herbs) olive oil that has to be mopped up off the plate, and then from the bottom of the pot, that is a must, it's non-negotiable. When we reach for the pot with the remaining beans, more bread is required, more hunks of moist and yielding sourdough crumb. We killed that sourdough loaf (a boule), the kitchen table surface is covered with the oily fingerprints and the floor with the crust shards, these prick the skin under my feet as I walk towards the sink to wash my hands and mouth.

There is a cold six-pack of Heineken with us in the rucksack, in the event of thirst.

I press my hands to my ears and the jumbo jet's roaring softens and sounds like seashells. A magic trick – physics. Airborne, it starts to look like a white ink dot.

“But when did you hear about this?”

A tractor chugs by, turns down a farmer's field across the road.

“We talked last night when you were asleep.”

We have recently gotten back from a two-week trip to Southern Russia. Where my mother filled our plates with the tenderest of cutlets and the tastiest of stuffed bell peppers, my father poured us birch sap vodka, my uncle took us well past midnight to a roadside cafe where they caught and grilled for us a whole carp, my grandmother made for us her signature Don Cossacks fish stew and fluffiest piroshki with stewed cabbage or chicken mince. There, from my old room, Anthony skyped with his parents in the States. And then his father's unused phone rang.

“He couldn't tell if the woman on the phone was Russian, but she did sound Eastern European, he said.”

“And what did she say?” I ask and follow the jumbo jet with my right eye, then with the left.

“She wanted to know if he worked for an American company or the government. Hu aar u, she said. I'm Ron, said my dad.”

Bean Confit

Source: “The Temporary Vegetarian” series, from The New York Times

Yield: 2–4 servings

As far as which fresh herbs to use, it's completely to taste and adaptable. Originally, these are rosemary and oregano, but I like to sub rosemary for thyme, for instance, and when I had neither thyme nor oregano but only basil in my fridge, I used basil then and it was great.

But what beans to use, it's strict. Not as in what sort of white bean matters (that's also adaptable and a subject of taste), but how old they are. Old dried beans will take forever to cook, salt or no salt. If possible, use Rancho Gordo dried beans, those are the best (but sadly, not available in Europe, which is why I sometimes ask Ron for a shipment.)

100 g (½ cup) dried cranberry beans, Italian white beans, or other white beans

1 sprig thyme

1 sprig oregano

2 cloves garlic

375 ml (1 ½ cups) extra virgin olive oil

Soak the beans overnight in plenty of cold water.

In a heavy ovenproof pot, combine the beans and 1 liter (4 cups) fresh cold water. Put over high heat and bring to a boil, then scale the heat down to low. Simmer gently, uncovered, until moderately tender, 30-45 minutes, or longer if needed (beans can take from one to three hours to cook). Do not boil or stir to prevent the beans from breaking into pieces or the bean skins to separate from the beans. As the beans cook, check periodically for water, adding hot water as necessary to keep the beans covered with liquid by at least a fingertip.

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius (300 degrees Fahrenheit). Drain the beans, then return them to the pot and add the fresh herbs and garlic. Cover with the oil. Place in the oven, and cook uncovered until the beans are completely tender, 30 to 45 minutes. Remove from the oven, let cool and season to taste with salt. For best flavour, allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate overnight or up to seven days.

To serve, gently reheat the beans and serve with a slotted spoon, leaving the oil in the pot (reuse the flavoured oil for various dressings or a vinaigrette, OR mop it up with good bread!). Serve warm, and crushed, on top of toast, or mixed in with rice or farro.

I look away

"I'm sitting down to write. I'll call you back later, I don't exist for now, only in my head." 

The bedroom window is chilled, a thin line between the post-sleep warmth and a day as grey as smoke. I've been at my desk since morning, in front of the blank page. Sentences circle in front of my mind's eye, but they are like an empty baggage belt. I'm thinking back to my trip to Russia in October. It was 4 a.m. when I landed, one of the few flights to touch down at such hour. I flew through Istanbul, it was a soft day, sunny. No one aboard expected to step into the rain. I found myself wondering if coming down from a high feels like this, dark and cutting. Someone joked it was for us to get a cold faster.

A man in front of me in line to passport control sneezes, then coughs -- I roll my coat collar up, as if this would protect me. Somebody hasn't filled out the migration form correctly, the line stops moving. I pull a pack of mints out from my pocket. The cool on my tongue distracts me from joining in the angry groans and hissing whispers. I'd been up for twenty hours, my stomach growls. Except for the two in-flight meals, I didn't eat much that day. I take another mint, and one more. I look forward to my grandmother's crepes, thin and delicate, as if made of lace. 

Another hold-up, now with the luggage. The waiting's turned my thoughts inconsequential. I'm thinking about why I often now prefer a splash of bourbon or gin to a glass of wine. Maybe because I'm getting older. The gin they offered on the flight tasted of ethanol and burnt my tongue, I couldn't finish it. It must have been over half an hour, but the baggage carousel still moves around unladen. 

I look away from my computer screen to find the daylight darker. My stomach growls again.  I go and toast a slice of sourdough bread. The warm crust, crisp and yielding, a layer of almond butter and honey on top, a winter mouthfeel. I toast a second slice. South Park is on TV. I end up watching a few episodes. "I'm cereal, I'm super duper cereal!"

It wasn't a long trip, only a week and a half, but a third day into my stay I was habitually counting down the time until my flight back. It's a terrible thing, it once more felt like a betrayal. 

The daylight's gone, the windows face the night again. A distant row of road lights line the horizon. I pick up the phone to call my parents.

"How have you been? Kak u vas dela? Skuchayu."

Where you may be now

Dear Grandmother Glanya, my gentle babushka --

Never in my life I wrote you a letter before, and now that it's been three months since you are gone I can't help it. I still can't accept the fact that you are no more. There are many things I want to tell you now, but nothing is more important than this: I love you. Hard to tell what's gnawing at me more now: the fact that I didn't tell you as much when you were there to hear it or that I'll never, not in this lifetime, be able to again. I was thousands of miles away when you left. You went so quickly. That time when I hugged you goodbye this May, I should have hugged you more, I should have said I love you. After my mother called to tell me you'd left, I went out onto my balcony and looked up at the sky. It was dusky and the air was smoky, fluffy clouds unhurriedly drifting across the lavender sky. I watched planes ascending, and a few bird flocks heading somewhere far. I kept thinking, looking, even, where amidst all those clouds and birds and planes you may be now, the images getting distorted and blurry from tears.

You ended but I have yet to visit your grave. And your home. It must be so empty of you there now. Before, you would be in your kitchen hunching over your flower pots or shredding cabbage for your signature sauerkraut with redcurrant berries, or in your living room reorganizing your limitless cache of medicine or reading a history book with a magnifying glass, stating loudly it's not working but turning page after page after page. Today, no one there. Your winter coat and a couple dresses must be hanging purposelessly in your wardrobe, sharing spare space with this summer's jams and jars of pickles (you and your canned goods!). I can't believe you are gone. I know you are, yet in some sort of a haze I sometimes secretly dial your number to see that maybe, just maybe, you would pick up and ask when I would come to visit and I would loudly say that I would come soon, please wait for me.

I've told Anthony so many stories about you. His favorite is that about your two names. He finds it incredulous that when for some reason you had to renew your passport in your mid-thirties, a consulate clerk told you she didn't know of such name as Aglaya and so she typed in Alla instead. You said you didn't want to waste more time to re-new your renewed passport and carried on -- so nonchalant! -- with Aglaya, or Glanya, for us and Alla for everybody else. And everybody else it was. I recall running errands with you. It seemed that every other passer-by was somebody you knew, a former colleague, a friend, a friend of a friend, an old neighbor. You stopped for a hello, how's life? with everyone.

It snowed here today. Winter holidays are coming up. I miss the way we used to celebrate. Annually, we would have you over at my parents' place for New Year's, and come Christmas, January 7th, we would all go to you for a flamboyant meal. Even these years when you grew weaker and weaker to cook, the table still moaned under all that food: herring, boiled potatoes, shashlik (cooked on an upright grill set up right on the table!), chicken tabaka, pickled wild mushrooms, salad olivier, napoleon cake, and so much more. I loved it all, except for what had mayonnaise and sour cream, but your fresh cabbage salad was the best thing in the world for me. You turned that tight-lipped cabbage so juicy, and you could cut it into paper-thin shreds even with the dullest of knives. Utterly delectable. At the table I always chose a seat closest to that glass bowl, the one with tiny spikes on the outside, you used to pile the salad into. A week later, on the eve of Old New Year, my mother and I would come over, and the three of us would spend the night forecasting our fortune. We each burnt a piece of paper on an upended saucer, and after the flame had ceased we had to make out what exactly the shadow from the paper's silhouette resembled. I remember the shadow often looked like a standing bear, but I don't recall what it meant. Or candle wax, we would hold a lit candle over a bowl of cold water to see what shape molten wax will form into. Mostly it would coil into bizarre abstractions, but occasionally we could see a tea cup, an open book or a horse. One time we tried the cards -- they said you would live to see your ninetieth. Grandma, you came only six years short.
                                                       
                                                 ---
                

My Grandmother's Fresh Cabbage Salad with Carrot and Apple
Yield: 4-6 servings

1/2 small to medium white cabbage, outer leaves and core removed
1/2 tsp table salt
1/2 medium carrot, coarsely grated
1 medium to large apple (such as Jonagold or Golden Delicious), peeled, cored and coarsely grated
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
a small handful of finely chopped fresh dill

Slice the cabbage as thin as you can. Place in a large bowl, add the salt and mix by hand for a minute, kneading and crushing the cabbage to release the juices. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Adjust the seasoning, if needed, and serve.