Less talked about

The storm started with a flawless sky.

– It will pour soon, take the raincoat, pronounced Anthony, eyes closed. The weather service on the phone showed it would storm, he continued, his head part of the pillow.

– Really? I open the balcony door to check. But it looks alright, clear and quiet, I say incredulously.

– They even graded it code yellow, a warning.

– A good storm starts with a warning, I say, half-jokingly, and look through the layers of winter jackets and trench coats. But I have to go, can't see the raincoat here, and it doesn't look like any storm out there, I add, grab my bicycle keys from the kitchen table. pull a ripe peach from the fruit bowl for breakfast later (wonder if it's actually going to be enough for breakfast; no, not really), and walk out. I shut the door closed behind me on my tiptoes, always holding back a little before the lock latch clicks. I'm stealth like that; no one hears when I come and when I go.

I leave home when the only light available is the flickering yellow of traffic signals. (I've always wondered why the red and green go after midnight; life on the road never ceases.) Away from the traffic lights and a crossroad, I move past a lengthy stretch of rose bushes, the soft sweet smell. I inhale noisily and it really gets into my head. I feel a subtle tickle along my spine and up my neck and down into my legs, like a buzz you get from a cigarette.

Stifled air keeps grating against my bare arms as I pedal. I look up; the eastern part of the sky starts to loose its stars, becomes mellowed, starts to lighten, comes down from a dark high.

The storm continues with a loud pop, no, two. One from a window pried ajar by the wind, the other from an overturned trash bin outside. I wash my hands clean from the chocolate batter, rub them dry against my apron and rush out to collect the scattered garbage bags on the pavement. In the thin dawn light I can see the storm now. I mean, I can see the low thunderclouds, they look like sand dunes. It's mesmerizing to see a white and blue jet flying into one, a man-made mirage. By the time I'm done gathering the egg shells that spilt from a loosely tied trash bag, the back of my chef's jacket is soaked. The temperatures have been in the upper twenties lately, no difference between the inside and out- on the skin, so the wet cotton feels good, cooling.

Back inside, I check the weather on my phone: heavy wind and showers for the next hour, code yellow. I'm about to go and fix the open window, but then I get a better idea. I'm going to have the peach now and watch the rainwater form ellipses on the window sill. Half-way into my breakfast, I realize, with a pang in my stomach, I don't have much else for seconds. I was right, a peach wasn't going to be enough. I try to distract myself from feeling the disappointment and think about how many of the commuters will pour onto the streets any moment now, see drenched roads and sidewalks and wonder if it's rained in the night. I'm still hungry but I have seen the dune fields in the sky, so.

In a week there will be another code yellow. It will knock off the trees, disrupt the traffic, make the news. It will hold on for over a day and everyone will know of it – the first summer storm of the year. To me it will smell like damp cow shit in the pre-dawn air – I prefer storms less talked about. But whatever, I'll pack a bigger breakfast at least.

Olive Oil and White Wine Cake

Makes one 24-cm (9-icnh) loaf cake

I wrote about this cake before. In November of two thousand and nine, to be exact. Lately I've found myself making it with a renewed zeal, and in doing so there have appeared a few tricks that make this cake even better, which is a long-ish sentence to simply say I'd like to talk about it again here. (Hi, Maud!)

First, in place of neutral vegetable oil I now use extra-virgin olive oil. It lends a level of sophistication to the cake, adds to it a pleasant savouriness. It shouldn't be anything too crazy, the olive oil. Something fruity would be best.

Second, regarding white wine, it should be dry and fragrant (and not too expensive). A Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio will blend in well with olive oil and you'd still be able to taste the wine after baking. For a little more wine flavour, because why not, I pour a few tablespoon of white wine over the cake top when it's out of the oven.

I don't remember if I emphasized before how good and unusual this cake is, so let me do it again now. It's a simple recipe, but it yields a way more complex outcome, with the most moist crumb out there. I'm pretty sure of that. You probably wouldn't know what to expect after the first contact. There is a possibility you'd be wondering if this is a savoury business or sweet. I'd say it's both as far as a cake could allow, a mix of olive oil and white wine in a sweet batter. A delectable happy thing that won't easily bore you out.

3 large eggs, at room temperature

¼ teaspoon table salt

300 g light brown sugar

180 ml extra-virgin olive oil

180 ml white wine, plus more for after baking (see above)

300 g unbleached all-purpose flour

1 Tablespoon baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a 24-cm loaf pan.

Separate the eggs. Add the salt to the egg white.

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or using a hand-held mxer), beat the egg yolks together with the sugar at high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Lower the speed and mix in the olive oil until incorporated; then add the white wine and mix until fully blended.

Combine the flour and baking powder together, add to the white wine mixture. Mix well.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff. Using a rubber spatula, carefully fold them into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake until golden brown, about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and pour a few more tablespoon of the white wine over the top. Let cool completely before taking out of the pan.

Wrapped in cling film, it will keep wondrously moist and fragrant for up to a week.

Goes great, like it should, with Earl Grey tea or black coffee, or plain, storms or no storms.

The right thing

I'm going to fucking need the ambulance – I want to pick up the phone and shout into the receiver. I'm having a crushing, no – squeezing, no – stabbing, no – burning sensation somewhere there, an inch deep under the ribcage, on the left of the sternum. I take a breath and it gets worse, a sharp pain shoots up my neck and into my shoulders, so I try not to breathe that much. As I wipe my cheeks dry there is a black residue on my fingertips, the mascara. I can't see, but I'm sure I must look like shit right now. Please fucking help me, I want to say.

That's stupid, so stupid to have wound up like this. I was going to unlock my bike, but I need a moment. I pull my bag off the shoulder, put it down on the pavement and place myself next to it. I pick my phone from the bottom of the bag and look at the black screen like it's a mirror. I do look like shit: the eyelids thicker than usual, especially the lower ones, puffy cheeks under the eyes, the mascara leaks. I search my bag for a napkin—the keys, wallet, lipstick, yes, a bruised ripe peach, a crumpled post-it with a grocery list (three exclamation marks next to 'cherries'), but there is no damn napkin today. I swipe the phone screen and dial Anthony. I tell him I'm sitting on the pavement, tell him about the chest pains. Take a deep breath, he says—but it feels there is a sharp fish bone stuck in my throat, I say back.
 
You are changing jobs, he says, with a very calm voice, and it's a lot of emotions, coping, accepting, and releasing, but you did the right thing. But did I? I ask.  

It's been a long while, Anya, seven whole years. Of course you did, of course. You needed to leave, to go and learn a new thing, you know it.

I baked and shaped my last breads there today, you know, I say and pull out of my bag an oval loaf of sourdough bread -- a batard -- I took from work. It smells sour and creamy, the time-old and visceral smell of good bread, and that's so very reassuring at the moment. The smell of these breads has always reminded me of my grandmother's well-used wooden salt-box (designed as Baba Yaga, the forest-dwelling deformed witch from Slavic folklore; this one was with a mortar, that's where the salt went). It had often been a centerpiece on my grandmother's dining table. I've got a baguette for you as well, your all-time favorite, I say with a stress on 'your'.

That's nice, thank you. But do something nice for yourself too today.

Something nice. I've been meaning to make a cherry clafoutis for a while now, maybe I should do that, I only need to pick up fresh cherries for it, yes, I'll do that. I'll get a kilo of fresh fat near-black staining cherries for a clafoutis. Only I won't make it. I'll eat the full kilo, berry by berry. Because fresh cherries are great like that. They make me very happy.

OK, I guess I'll get going, I say, wipe my cheeks dry again and get off the phone. I peel myself off the pavement, bump into a tourist with a camera a few steps away from my bike. Pardon me. Deep in my skull a headache is unfolding, the dull type. I take a deeper breath, still no better, it only pushes more salt out of my eyes. I put my sunglasses on, so no one sees the tears, unlock the bike to ride off.
 
Quick Flapjack Cherry Granola  
Adapted from Stirring Slowly, by Georgina Hayden

Serves 4

Since I don't trust myself around fresh cherries, I don't bother anymore to try and cook with them, at least for this summer. Dried cherries, however, are no problem, I can manage that. 

Why are you making a pancake granola? Anthony raised his eyebrows on a recent morning. Before I also didn't know that there is such a thing as a British flapjack and that it's not a thick pancake. The British understand flapjack as a chewy oatmeal cookie bar, and that's what the recipe in question refers to – good, chewy, toasty, crispy oats.

I tinkered a little bit with the recipe and came up with a formula (not that much different from the original) I'm particularly fond of. No cinnamon, but lemon zest; no vanilla extract but fresh vanilla bean seeds; runny honey with a neutral taste -- acacia honey works best here. The result is a pure, mild, well-rounded oatmeal flavour, a little savory, not undone by sweet dried fruit, with a few fresh and singing flavours (lemon zest and cherries) in between. 

 
1 Tablespoon flavourless oil
¼ teaspoon fresh vanilla bean seeds (from about half a vanilla bean)
125 grams rolled oats
grated zest of a small lemon (about ½ teaspoon)
50 grams dried cherries
50 grams dried figs
2 Tablespoons mixed seeds (pumpkin, sesame, poppy, sunflower) 
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt, such as fleur de sel
3 Tablespoon light neutral runny honey, such as acacia honey

Combine the oil, vanilla seends and lemon zest together in a medium-size non-stick pan with a good splash of water (4-5 Tablespoons) and place it on a medium heat. Scatter in the oats and stir it all together. Put the matching lid on and leave the oats to cook for 5 minutes, stirring often. While the oats are cooking, roughly chop the dried cherries and cut the figs into similar-size pieces.

When the oats have softened, remove the lid and add the seeds to the pan. Turn the heat up a little and toasts the oats and seeds for 2 minutes. Sprinkle in the salt and add the chopped dried fruit. Toss everything together and drizzle over the honey. Mix well and cook for 2-3 minutes until you have a golden chewy granola.

Leave in the pan for a few minutes to cool, then spoon over fresh berries and yogurt or leave to cool completely, and store in an airtight container until needed. It will surely keep well for up to 3 days, this much I can tell, maybe even longer, but it never lasts with me that long.

Variation

For a much brighter, sharper taste, use 1 Tablespoon pomegranate molasses to 2 Tablespoons runny honey instead of lemon zest. I must say I can't quite decide which version I like better. Depends on the day, I guess.

Hypnotized by it

A rich and modest square of François Pralus Cuba is starting to melt under the impatient tongue. I had to get out and pedal thirty minutes each way to get a bar. The day is tormented by rain and snow, they alternate first, then merge, land angrily on the skin. But I don't mind, have grown used to this. 

I gather speed -- I'll lose it in a minute to the next gust of wind. I only passed four or five blocks and I already feel my shirt slowly starting to dissolve in sweat on my back. I cross a traffic-laden road, the green light disappears quickly in the thick spew of hail. I wear mittens, but the skin on my hands feels raw, it burns. 

Neat, elegant stacks of chocolate bars, thin as ballerina's ribs. The eye stops at each, sends the mind reeling, wanting, in a free fall. I pull a Cuba off the shelf, my favourite. I habitually run my fingers across its wrapper, the paper feels grainier under the wet skin. But I know well what's underneath it: a taste of cigar smoke and rum, not direct, but rather plucked from somebody's lips. Before going back I decide to have a cup of coffee, an espresso. It comes thick as crude oil. The woman across the counter compliments the colour of my lipstick, she would like to know the name of the hue. I say it's dark wine, Merlot. I reach into my coat pocket for change to find a crumpled piece of writing paper, both damp from rain. 

I looked up, it was dark. The night was through, over, down to the last note in my pockets, each spent on wine. I alone must have had a bottle of young red, French, too. It knowingly blazed through the blood and softened the limbs. The phone buzzed and buzzed. I took a piece of paper out of my handbag, still blank but already folded, straightened it and wrote: Remember how you spilled wine over my dress (good it was black) as we stumbled in a dance and we laughed at it and at our ourselves louder than everybody else combined. Then I looked down at it and crumpled it up. The arthritic tree tops span overhead as I was unlocking my bike. I looked up, my head started to spin too, the stomach feeling dangerously close to the throat.

The tongue gives in to the slow dark buttery melt, becomes sedated, hypnotized by it. 

Here you are

I'm in front of an Henri Cartier-Bresson's black-and-white picture of a street in Italy. The title says it had been taken in Salerno. In it, a boy, maybe eight, maybe ten years of age, stands in the rectangular shadow from the wall to his right, behind him another wall and the carcass of a cart, both whitewashed in summer sunlight. One knows, sees, it's summer, the boy wears the dark shorts and white tank-top, and the light is bright, high, blinding. There is a distance between the boy and the camera, his face and the nature of the object in his left hand are kept unseen. His right hand cupped to the chin, he appears to be intrigued. Involuntarily I mimic the boy's gesture, I can't take my eyes off the picture. I probably take too long, soft words and rich perfumes steadily gather around me, mix in one, seep into my ears and nose. Someone steps on someone else's foot, "Pardon, pardon!" promptly ensues. I move on.

Outside are a fresh night and Paris. 

***
It was January when we started planning our trip. The four of us, girlfriends. We decided on the early April, a couple weekdays. Fewer people on the streets, more space for us. We rented out an apartment in Montmartre, on rue Lepic, curving and steep. To get inside is to walk through a courtyard, enclosed, unavailable for everyone else but the insiders and an occasional (and privileged) guest. A home for somebody's flower beds and herb pots, its other purpose, a more important one it seemed, was to collect, to contain, the evidence of everyday life. Piano sounds; a child's voice singing along with a song on TV; a plate breaking; even our loud and foreign exclamations about the light in the apartment as we stood by the elegant windows (two), and our "We have arrived!". Even those, perhaps. 

***
Ask my mother and she'll tell you I've been to Paris many a time.
In my early teens I dreamed of travelling like there was no tomorrow, and of all places I wished to see Paris was, somehow, the most important. I didn't have the means to go, so I was looking for a chance. 1998 FIFA World Cup was to be held in France, and Snickers® promised a free trip for the winner of their raffle. To participate I collected five (or was it ten) of the limited-edition Snickers® chocolate bar wrappers. I so hastened to send them in that I completely forgot I had to include an inspired letter about why I loved football, or was it why I loved Snickers®?  

I didn't get to be in Paris in 1998. 

Later one evening over tea I pleaded my allegiance with another city. It surprised my mother. 

"What happened with Paris?", she asked. 

"Nothing happened, but in my mind I've already been there more than a dozen of times." 

***
There are moments that attach themselves to one so strongly that no amount of time is enough to overwrite them. 

On our first night we strolled around the Sacre-Coeur, dignified, in no need of superlatives. We ascended the hill (by foot -- I refused to take the cable car) and our breath wasn't ours anymore. It was of Paris, among the breath of that homeless man who laid asleep by a metro entrance, and that of Hemingway who might have stood on the same spot and looked up the way we did. Silently and awed. Until someone threw an empty bottle at a taxi car and shattered the repose. We walked on, stumbled over the uneven cobbles. The night was fresh and clear, and in the distance were the Eiffel Tower's golden lights. 

I had to stop, stand still. I'd seen it countless times before, all through the eyes of others. From afar, through the bars of a fence, now I was looking at it. Here you are.

"I feel you've had quite an emotional moment there", said Morgane. She was referring to a heart-to-heart conversation we'd had earlier in the evening, over wine and dinner haute vitalité (Cafe Pinson), but I took it to mean this very instant.

   ***

A sight of worship for hundreds, thousands, millions. With each photograph I took I was stealing you from others. You are mine. You are everyone else's.

                     ***

We were at The Broken Arm, in pursuits of caffeine (without a doubt one of the finest filters I had) and sartorial splendor (the best top in color blocks I almost bought), when I saw a familiar face. "This man'' -- I nodded towards the entrance --  "was on the train to Paris with us. Doesn't he look like somebody we might know?" Correct. The father of a good acquaintance, in Paris briefly for a meeting, he will snap (iPhone) the only picture of the four of us together.

                                                ***
I have this image in my head from years ago, maybe even since I was fourteen. I forget what brought it about, a movie, perhaps, or a book. A moody day, soaked in autumn, the color of the sky matches the buildings'. I stand at the traffic lights, waiting for its permission to cross over. Barren trees flank the road, cars swoosh through the pools of rainwater gathering by the curbstones. Parisian houses, a story in each window, up and down the street for as long as the eye can see. Not so picturesque, this image. But it's not why it has stayed with me. It has because in it I had felt very accomplished, the way one does after nudging their dream into the outside world.

                                                  ***

I can't wait to go back to have more breakfast (pancakes strewn with crushed pistachio nuts and elegant pieces of fruit, in a pool of maple syrup, served with vanilla whipped cream; "Jesus!" escaped my lips when the plates touched down on the table), coffee, and lunch at Holybelly. A must! As is dinner at Septime, they say. And more of THE falafel sandwich (from L'As Du Fallafel).

La Fin

When it would be crazy not to

I don’t know if it is appropriate to be talking about apple pie as we are rapidly approaching the junction of May and June, the time when apples and pies and apples in pies seem so irrelevant, so unrelated to what is happening right now as we talk: fresh local juicy stubbly deep-red strawberries galore, soon to be followed by the myriad of other berries, so long-awaited, so bright. All right, it is crazy to just think about apple pie at this point of year. Insane, even.



Yet, I made Russian apple pie twice past week, strawberries notwithstanding. I don’t know how to classify it.

I was randomly re-reading parts of A Year of Russian Feasts, by Catherine Cheremeteff Jones, and a chapter on Russian tea ceremony accompanied by a recipe for a yeast dough apple pie (a.k.a. apple pie, Russian style) got me to recall my maternal grandmother’s delicious apple pie that she would make for me as I was staying with her in our river-bank country house for a week at the beginning of each summer as I was a kid, years and years ago. But however tasty the pie was, I also recalled I wasn’t looking forward to it.

I guess for many a kid, to stay in the country side with their beloved grandmother would be nothing less than fun. Not for me, though. I was terrified of it.

My maternal grandmother, Aglaya, is a high blood pressure patient. Every day of the week I had to spend with her in the distant picturesque summer country side was marred by my fearing that she would suddenly expire from a heart attack – please, no! -- in the middle of the night, and I would be left in the scary nocturnal darkness not knowing what I would have to be doing to get help for her, for myself, or whatever (that wasn’t yet an era of mobile telecommunication). Oh, doesn’t it sound dramatic! But hey, I was a sensitive kid, and I guess you can say troubled too!

The first two or three days of that bonding week, as my mother usually thought it be, would almost always go easy, to my relief. My grandmother and I would prune and water the vegetable patches in our garden, go swimming in the river, pay visits to the remote neighbors or the unwatched gardens close by, drink tea with store-bought sweets, watch black and white TV, and play cards. But then on the fourth day – mysteriously, it would always happen on a Thursday -- my grandmother would wake up to a bad headache, high blood pressure starting building up. As the day progressed, the symptoms wouldn’t budge, even despite the large medicine in-take. By midnight, my grandmother wouldn’t stop her I’m dying-s. I felt morbid. (I’m sorry, but at the age of seven, eight, nine and ten I took those proclamations very, very, very literally.) There was one thing, the last frontier, believed to be able to help: vinegar (a lot of which would be poured onto a small towel that would be applied to feet). I was eager to go and bring a bottle of it from our kitchen downstairs. To get down to the kitchen meant I had to take the outdoor stairs and then go around a corner of the house to reach the arched heavy kitchen door. At night with nature making weird unnatural sounds, a trek of a mere couple dozen steps felt like going down into a deep dungeon. I was ready to do it for my grandmother. I was happy I could help. Often vinegar did the trick lessening the blood pressure. Eventually my grandmother would fall asleep. I would regularly come out from my room to see if she was breathing.

The next day my grandmother would be on her feet again, preparing for my parents’ visit over the weekend. For me, it meant nothing else but joy: I would be going home soon. But besides the approaching weekend and the nearing this-year-I-don’t-have-to-do-it-anymore delirium, there was another thing for me to get pretty darn excited about: apple pie.

My grandmother has a thing with yeast dough. She is a yeast dough whisperer. If I remember rightly, never did I see a scale or at least one measuring cup in her vicinity when she would start the dough. All measurements were intuitive and always (!) worked. Of course, my childhood memories may not be crystal clear by now, but seriously! To see the dough risen and eager to crawl out from under the lid of a dented white pot was kind of arcane – and fun. My favorite part was to punch the dough down imagining I was a ghost buster at task of taming a cute monster. The sour-ish yeasty wisps emanating from it were full of promise of something good and safe and warm and lovely.

While the monster/dough was resting/rising, I’d get busy picking apples (an early summer sort) fallen from our apple tree and now lying idly on the shadowy ground. My grandmother would use them, cooked with sugar until just soft, for the filling. It was a simple apple pie. And it was tasty. Sweet apples, slightly tart at the heart, encased and relaxed between and into the two layers of the fragrant, a touch buttery, dough. Made with gusto, it was also a sign that my grandmother was doing ok again, and that she is a fighter.

I wanted to share my grandmother’s apple pie recipe with you today. I called her to ask for guidance. But she is an intuitive baker, and so it transpired she doesn’t need nor does she have the recipe. It’s why I resort to the one from A Year of Russian Feasts. Having made it twice by now, I’m happy to say the resulting pie is as good as the specimen from years gone, except that no drama and only dry active yeast is required.

All you need to do is to mix dry yeast with melted butter and a mix of lukewarm milk and water, add sugar, salt and flour, and knead it until the dough comes together and forms a ball. You then let it rest until it doubles in size, about an hour, give or take. Meanwhile, you cook tart baking-friendly apples with light brown sugar, for a deeper flavor, until they have released their juices. We tend to think that apples and cinnamon is a match, but try apples with fresh vanilla seeds. With them, an apple taste like its quintessential self. Should I be a Granny Smith in my next life, I’d spend it with vanilla seeds, I decided. Anyway, when the dough has puffed up and looks ready, form it into a ball and cut in half. Roll out the first half, place in a pie pan and send in the apples. Roll out the second half, slightly larger than the first, and cover the fruit. Pinch the dough edges together, brush the top with egg wash and bake until the pie is golden.

The pie is down-to-earth, and even basic, yet there is some simple magic going on in there, the moist fruit has bonded together with the dough, vanilla and yeasty aromas merged into one. And the butter, it’s quietly letting you know it’s there but that it’s not going to steal the show. As Cheremeteff Jones describes the pie: “a wonderfully delicate “apple sandwich”. Try it for yourself. If it seems – and it does! – insane to compel strawberries and the likes to wait, bookmark the recipe for the colder months then, when it would be crazy not to make it.

Russian-style apple pie
Adapted from A Year of Russian Feasts by Catherine Cheremeteff Jones
Yield: Serves 6-8

For the apple filling:
900 gr (2 pounds [about 5 large or 6 medium]), tart baking apples, such as Granny Smith, peeled, quartered, cored, and diced in big chunks
120 gr (4 oz) light brown sugar
seeds of one vanilla bean

Combine the apples, sugar and vanilla seeds in a large saucepan, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the apples are soft and the apple juices have evaporated, about 10-15 mins. (Drain if the apples are soft but the liquid is still there.) Remove from the fire and let cool. (The filling can be made up to three days in advance; keep covered and refrigerated).

For the yeast dough:
8 gr (0.4 oz) active dry yeast
60 ml (1/4 cup) whole milk
60 ml (1/4 cup) water
30 gr (1 oz) sugar
1 large egg, beaten
120 gr (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and still warm
310 gr unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
Egg wash (one more egg, beaten)
Light brown sugar for sprinkling, optional

1. Put the yeast in a large mixing bowl.

2. Heat the milk together with water until lukewarm. Add the milk mixture to the yeast and stir until the yeast has been dissolved. Add the sugar, salt, egg and butter (still warm!) and mix well until combined. Add half of the flour and using a mixer with the dough hook attachment work on low speed until combined. Add the remaining flour and mix until incorporated. Up the speed to medium and continue mixing for the next 4-5 minutes (scrape down the sides of the bowl after 2-minute mark), or until the dough is no longer sticky and forms a ball. If the dough remains sticky after 3 minutes of mixing, add more flour, 1 tablespoon (15 gr) at a time, until the dough comes together (the amount of extra flour needed can be between 1 to 3 tablespoons). Cover the bowl with plastic film and let the dough rise in a warm place for about 1 hour, or until doubled in size.

3. Pre-heat the oven to 175 C (350 F) and butter a 22- or 24-cm (9- or 9 ½-inch) pie plate.

4. Lightly flour a work surface. Take the dough and shape it into a ball. Cut the ball in two equal parts. With a rolling pin, roll out one part of the dough into a circle wide enough to fit into the prepared pie plate (if needed, continue to lightly flour the work surface and the dough to prevent sticking). Transfer the dough gently into the pie plate, and using your fingers, create an even 1-cm (1/2 inch) overhang. Place the apple filling evenly over the dough.

5. Flour the work surface again and roll out the second part of the dough into a circle slightly smaller in width than the first one. Carefully place it on top of the filling. Pinch and twist the edges of the dough together to seal them. Make sure to seal the wedges well, otherwise the top will disconnect while baking. Prick the top, cover with a clean dish towel, and let rise for 10 mins. Brush the top lightly with the egg wash. Sprinkle some light brown sugar (about 1 Tbsp or more), if using.

6. Bake for 30 mins, or until the top is golden brown. Let cool before unmolding. Wrapped up in plastic, the pie will keep at room temperature for up to three days.

Can't help it

Minutes before sitting down and writing this story, it dawned on me that there is one thing I talk about time and again on this blog (and pretty much everywhere else, which makes me feel for those doomed to converse with me). The recurrent theme is: potatoes, a stamp in my Russian culinary ID. Did I tell you that potatoes are no secondary thing for a Russian? Did I tell you that yet? I’m sorry, can’t help it. So here goes again.

It is my grandparents’ custom to buy large quantities of potatoes in mid-fall (before their price would jump up later on) for the family to feed off in winter months. It all begins with multiple visits to local farmers’ markets to first select samples to test taste. A good spud has to meet the following criteria: it should not darken while cooking, and once boiled, it shouldn’t turn rubbery, but it can’t crumble too much under the pressure of a fork either, and most importantly, it has to taste creamy without any assistance of butter or dairy. Once a specimen capable of accomplishing the mission is found, my grandparents would load their white nearly thirty-years-old Soviet four-wheeler with sack after sack of un-scrubbed jacketed tubers.

Every other week for the next four or five months my grandfather would go to his garage basement to pick over the potato lot, or rather what gets left after the family starts to pack it away, for sprouts. Now there being fewer heads to feed – my uncle’s whole family of three moved to Moscow; I’m living abroad – and a new, less sturdier, almost flimsy car to load, the annual potato purchase grew smaller in size, but its importance is, and always will be, high. The household in winter is not complete if there are not enough potatoes in that dark garage basement.

We had the spuds simply boiled, pan-fried with onions, roasted with chicken; stewed with tomatoes and river fish; as a main or a side; for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner; left over from a yesterday’s meal and freshly cooked. If I got sick and developed a bad cough, I didn’t have a chance to get away from having to stand over a pot with just cooked tubers and inhale the coming-out steam, my head covered with a towel to prevent the heat from escaping. The potato is believed to have particles with anti-inflammatory qualities and the steam to bear them in transit, was what my mother told me.

So I’ve had it a lot with potatoes, except that I didn’t have them cooked with sherry. Entirely by the way, I didn't have anything cooked with sherry. For one: there was no sherry around me in my formative years. The first libation "from the West" made its way to new Russia in early nineties and, if my memory serves me right, it was called brandy liquor. It came in dark-glass stubby bottles with a sail ship on the blue-sea label. I was uninterested to taste it then (and I'm not sure I would be now). My parents say it would never fail to give them a terrible headache, the best of possible bodily reactions to the drink.

Second of all, I think sherry falls into that category of fine drinks that one grows to appreciate with age. Also, I had to be old enough to stop believing that a sweet alcoholic substance such as the one in question should be reserved for an after-meal glass and not a pan of potatoes. But then again, it’s not your plain Jane pan of potatoes. In it, artichokes make an appearance as well. And the potatoes are those small springtime tubers that turn eminently fragrant in salted boiling water and whose thin skin crackles just so under your teeth giving way to the young creamy flesh underneath it.

The idea comes from the MORO East cookbook, a beautiful compilation of Eastern Mediterranean recipes by the owners of the acclaimed MORO restaurant in London, Sam and Sam Clark. Originally, the sampling in question goes by the name “artichokes and potatoes with oloroso sherry”. But I think the artichokes, though no lesser important to the accumulative taste of the ensemble, should, instead, come second in the title, for in my view the potatoes are the name of the game here. Hence what follows is "potatoes and artichokes with oloroso", the change is minor but imperative.

The actual substitute in the original is my use of marinated artichoke hearts in place of fresh ones, for which there are two reasons. One, artichokes in the Netherlands is not a local thistle. Which means I have to be prepared to live with a new dent in my wallet for months at hand if I wish to enjoy them fresh, imported, as is usually the case, from Italy. I don’t want to go down that road again. Two, I discovered that the sourness of the marinated artichokes is a perfect foil to the sweetness that comes with sherry. An additional bonus: a shorter cooking time.

You start by browning some onions. Once those are halfway to their color destination, you add the marinated artichokes, and let the duo cook together until the onions are golden and the artichokes develop a mild blush. Next goes a tiny bit of garlic, followed after a minute by sherry and water and fresh basil (MORO East uses mint, but I find basil mingles more successfully with the rest of the given ingredients). Finally, you nudge the cooked potatoes in the skillet, cover with a lid and let it all bubble for a while allowing the heat to leverage the unity between the subtle vegetables and the intense oloroso sherry. A few squirts of olive oil and more fresh basil at the end and you are ready for a delicious cheer on a plate. The caramelized onions and soft artichokes intermingle and soak up all that deep caramel flavor of the sherry, winding up to be sweet and sour all at once, making perfect companions for the mellowed plump spuds that got infused with the basil’s peppery herbal notes and nutty sherry, that same sherry. Oh, potatoes can get so lucky!

Potatoes and Artichokes with Oloroso Sherry

Adapted from MORO East, by Samantha and Samuel Clark

Serves 2 as a main or 4 as a side dish

This dish is an "all-year-rounder", considering you use the marinated artichokes. When new harvest tubers go off season, normal potatoes would be a bet just as good.

A word on sherry: while S. and S. Clark suggest medium oloroso sherry (“oloroso” means scented in Spanish) for this dish, I had delicious results with a dry oloroso variety as well. The bottom line is that regardless of what oloroso you get to use – it varies in types from dry to sweet – it should be good enough to be sipped on its own, as goes with any alcohol in cooking, you know.

500 gr (16.5 oz) new potatoes, scrubbed
4 good-quality (canned) marinated artichoke hearts, quartered
5 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 large garlic clove, thinly sliced
150 ml (1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp) oloroso sherry
100 ml (1/3 cup plus 1 Tbsp) water
2 Tbsp roughly chopped fresh basil

1. Boil the potatoes in slightly salted water until tender; drain. When they are cool enough to handle, peel them and cut the large ones in half or in quarter.

2. Over medium fire, heat 3 Tbsp olive oil in a large skillet. When the oil is hot, stir in the onion and a pinch of salt, cut the heat back to medium-low and fry for 5-7 minutes, or until the onion is soft and starting to color.

3. Add the artichokes, and stirring occasionally, fry for another 3-5 minutes, or until the onion is golden and the artichokes take on golden hue.

4. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more. Pour in the sherry and water; add half the basil. Place the potatoes on top and sauté, uncovered, for the next 2-3 minutes. Stir, cover with a lid and continue cooking for another 4-5 minutes more.

5. Squirt with the remaining 2 Tbsp olive oil and sprinkle on with the rest of the basil. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Entirely at peace

I am a girl entirely at peace now. At least for a while, until a surge of desire to bake strikes again, and like a junkie I will have to anxiously wring my hands while craving for my next fix, and nervously count down the days when I could possibly take over somebodys else's kitchen again. This is how it works for me. Baking is meditation as well as addiction.

This time, the initial plan was to make a few recipes -- for granola and Scottish scones -- at Luke’s, but like I wrote, I had a suspicion I wouldn’t stop there. Blimey, I was correct.

Luke is a banana buff. He loves the fruit and always keeps a bunch of them on a large, oval, mosaic-patterned plate on his kitchen countertop. Yet it so happens that sometimes he does not take a proper care of them, which would be eating the beggars before they eat themselves, so to say. We all know that the best way to reanimate a dying banana is to put it to use in a baked something or other. A great cook as he is, Luke is not much of a baker. As soon as I cast my shadow over his doorway and saw something that formerly looked like a glowing tropical fruit but with dignity long-lost by now, the first task I applied myself to was, of course, bake banana bread.

I am proud to report that the mission was accomplished ‘with gusto’, as Luke, the enabler of my baking dreams, said. I made Molly Wizenberg’s banana-coconut bread with rum.



The whole enterprise was not easy, I must confide. While preparing the batter, I had to combat an army of fat stinging wasps who didn’t seem to be bothered by the mere fact that the kitchen was mine for the weekend.

There were many of them and I was scared. No kidding. A good thing that the recipe called for booze; I had the swift intelligence to use that not only for the batter. A few sips, and things seemed less dreadful. I even didn’t cry when I saw the final product turn out somewhat flat. I now blame it on this self-rising flour (in place of all-purpose one) as well as on an oblong baking dish (instead of a standard loaf pan) that I wound up using, both being my only options. But never mind, because despite its being deflated, this banana bread tasted and smelled supreme. Its soft, moist and coconut-laced crumb was a home for a scent so heady that it felt like there were a million of ripest bananas inside. To me, it smelled like Opium of the banana world. To eat it unashamedly in excesses was the only way to pay respect to the goodness. Which Luke and I did.

Then we walked. And while strolling through the fields with grazing cows, we ate Italian gelato.

What you see in the picture right down there are scoops of hazelnut and pistachio gelato on the right, and banana and raspberry on the left.

When at home and awaiting for another batch of baked something or other, we played video games, watched movies and ate Luke’s home-made curry. After which we walked again. And ate more ice-cream, natch.

Then there were scones. Sweet Jesus, they were viciously good. In fact, these beasts were the highlight of my baking 'work-out' past weekend. Seeing that it was my first ever attempt at scones making -- there is no excuse why I spent previous twenty four years of my life without scones in the first place -- I can’t express my delirium enough about the fantastic results I reaped, courtesy of Molly and her recipe for Scottish scones with lemon and ginger (should you own Molly’s book, A Homemade Life -- which you really should; it is a truly beautiful, personal account of food, but most importantly of life itself -- the recipe is on page 174).

I made the scones in question on Sunday morning, and they were gone sooner than they reached the table. Basically, what I did was rub butter in flour, fold in sugar and chopped crystallized ginger along with lemon zest, stir gently to incorporate, and then pour in egg-milk mixture. After which I kneaded the batter until it just came together, patted it in into a circle that I then cut into wedges.

After having hopped around them in elation, I sent them lovingly into a pre-heated oven for a mere 10-15 mins.

Reaching over a kitchen counter, Luke ate three pale-golden, puffy wedges right after I’d pulled them out of the oven. I went for two, one after another. The rest disappeared within a few successive hours.

All I can say now is that, in my opinion, Sunday mornings are made for shameless affairs with baked goods named scones.

These particular species they don’t shout ‘butter’ or ‘sweetness’ or even ‘lemon-ness’ at you. Instead, they talk in low, subtle voice of mysterious ginger and lemon zest punctuated with sugar just enough so as to allow for a sweet layer of something or other atop. They are the scones of soft and tender crumb jacketed in a thin and rugged, ever so crispy outer layer. Once in your mouth, they fall apart, or, I’d even say, melt lazily, making you crave for more. They are both tantalizers and satisfiers, these simple scones.

As Molly writes: ‘They are pretty perfect in general'.

They undoubtedly are.

But soon it came Monday with its misty morning.

Daring sun beams sneaked in through the milky haze every now and then, falling on the hay-colored floor and a cutting board, and the granite kitchen countertop.

I packed my belongings including a huge box of home-made granola -- I’ll get to that in one of my next posts -- as well as the memories, and left back to Amsterdam, to my (temporarily) oven-less life.

Scottish Scones with Ginger and Lemon

Adapted from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg

Yield: 8 scones

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
4 Tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
3 Tsp light brown sugar
2 tsp grated lemon zest (from about 2 medium lemons)
1/4 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger
1/2 cup milk, plus more for glazing
1 large egg

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C)

In a large bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and salt, whisk and add the butter. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour mixture until it looks pebbly. Add the sugar, ginger and lemon zest. Whisk to combine.

In another bowl, beat the egg with the milk, using a fork. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and stir gently to incorporate. Don’t overmix. With your hands, form the dough into a rough bulk and turn it onto a lightly floured countertop. Knead it until it holds together. That’s ok if there is some unincorporated flour left. Pat the dough into a circle and cut it into 8 edges.

Position the wedges on a baking sheet layered with parchment paper. Using a pastry brush or a small piece of cotton wool, brush the tops of the wedges with the milk (2-3 Tsp) to glaze. Bake for 10-15 mins, or until pale golden. Let cool for a few minutes. Serve warm plain or with butter or jam or even both.

If sunshine had a taste

While crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s in my premaster thesis that I submitted today with the hope that my professor will finally approve it, I realized that many don’t get it why I chose to do my Master’s in English Linguistics in not exactly an English-speaking country – the Netherlands. To be honest, I still don’t get it myself. Nay, actually I do. I mean, I know what brought me to the country some four years ago in the first place -- I needed to resolve an unresolved relationship with my Dutch ex-boyfriend. That of course I did not do; some men are just cowards. Instead, I found solace in the beauty of Amsterdam and talked myself into coming back, preferably quite soon, not because of somebody but because of me. I got enamored with Amsterdam. And despite the fact that I was not sure this is really my city (there is Paris I haven’t yet been to, after all), I wanted to be an Amsterdammer. And since English, my old flame, had always held my heart, I decided I should start from there and pursue my Master degree in English Linguistics in Amsterdam.

But first was a break-up. Although I think I can call it the break-up, my, so far, the most painful heart-wreck.

I met Nikolai (a Dutchman with Slavic heritage) online --please, don’t roll your eyes; I was nineteen and naïve -- in the year 2002. During the next two years I would mistakenly believe that we had something what others call relationship. Would I so much as doubt him when he even asked my parents for my hand during the one and only time he was visiting me in my hometown in Russia, back in crisp and blue-skyed September, 2003? I didn’t smell any lies, not unlike my mother, though, who sensed a brewing hoax, and did not hesitate to inform me on her suspicions with a dedicated regularity, which drove me up the wall, although deep in my heart I knew she was right (I just didn’t have the crust to admit it to myself.The reason for all the doubts was that soon after Nikolai had gone back home, his telephone calls became as rare as rain in desert, and generally, every promise he’d make he’d easily break. The misery lasted until the August of 2004 when one windy afternoon I called to simply say hello and in return got dumped -- on the phone.

I knew long before that to be a dumpee is no fun. What I learnt this time was that to be a dumpee by phone is hell. The whole situation seemed to me unbelievable, as if I watched a waiter spitting in my presence on my sunny side-up, for instance. It just didn’t make sense. So after thirty minutes of telephone agony, I made a hell of an effort over myself as to finally hang up, my face purple from tears, anger and pain. The memories of what I did afterwards, besides crying, crying and crying, are blurry now, yet two things I do remember.

First, soon after I stopped howling like a wolf (in a week or so), I figured I should somehow go to the Netherlands to have Nikolai for a final word. That was a classic ‘easier said than done’ scenario, since I couldn’t afford to just nonchalantly hop a plane to Amsterdam or whatever. (That I would do one year later by participating in the Au-pair student programme in the Netherlands.)
Second, I emerged in the kitchen and made my mother’s eggplant ragout, or stew, something reminiscent of ratatouille, and yet not quite like it. In retrospect, I don’t think I intended to make this eggplant stew per se; I wasn’t in the mood for pretty much anything. Not even for chocolate ice-cream, my all-out mood booster. Yet I felt like chopping and dicing (one of the post break-up syndromes, I believe). And since there were those shiny globes of eggplants on the kitchen countertop, I jumped at the idea to turn them into the eggplant ragout. Seriously, it was the dish that comforted me while I was grappling with the rough waters of the break-up. I made batch after batch of it. As I stood by the countertop chopping onions, mincing garlic, grating carrots, dicing shiny red bell peppers along with glossy dark-purple eggplants, I felt all right. I felt still. I even smiled at the sight, sound and smell of the onion and garlic dancing in a skillet in a pool of heated olive oil, joined then by the army of the fragrant, vigorously chopped and diced, seasonal vegetables that eventually would mingle into something so infinitely delicious and simple, something that would taste even better on the second or even the third day making me aware that in certain circumstances time indeed works wonders.

I wouldn’t meet Nikolai during my first year-long stay in the Netherlands; like I said, some men they chicken out so easily, even when it’s only about closure. But that’s the deep past now, so be it.

Over the last two weeks I’ve been tirelessly making my mother’s eggplant stew again. No break-up involved this time. Today I, quite simply, value this dish for its miraculous capacity to remind me, at least over the summer months, that the sun is always shining, even behind the now-curly, now-thick clouds that are aplenty over here, in Amsterdam.

And if sunshine had any taste, in my world it would be that of the eggplant stew.

Russian eggplant stew (one of the many variations)

Although eggplant stew and its variations are thoroughly enjoyed in Russia throughout the summer months, there is no distinctive Russian name for this dish. It would be fait to say that Provencal ratatouille or Sicilian caponata are European cousins of this Russian eggplant stew in question. Unlike the former two, though, the latter also contains carrot as main ingredient. In the herbs department, fresh dill or flat-leaf parsley or both were what my mother would swear by when seasoning her eggplant stew. Served with boiled potatoes and more fresh dill for sprinkling, it was – and still is – my summer comfort food. Simple, smile-inducing and mysterious.

Yields 4 servings

1 large eggplant, diced
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 medium red pepper, cored, seeded and diced
1 medium carrot, grated
5 plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped OR one 14 oz. (400g) can whole peeled tomatoes, mashed and juices reserved
1 tsp ground coriander
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
½ cup or more finely chopped fresh dill leaves (or flat-leaf parsley or basil; no matter what herb you go for, just use a lot)
Olive oil

Put the eggplant in a colander and sprinkle with the salt (1 tsp). Toss well and set aside. (Salt will soften the eggplant and also rid it of its internal moisture.)

In the meantime, heat 2 Tsp olive oil in a large deep skillet over medium flame. Dump in the onion, and cook, stirring often, until soft but not browned, 4-5 mins. Add the garlic, bell pepper and carrot and keep cooking, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables soften, about 5-6 mins; they will slightly reduce in volume. Add the tomatoes, along with the reserved juices (I used canned tomatoes), and stir to combine. Add the eggplant -- you don’t have to rinse it, which is handy because this way you won’t have to need to salt the dish again -- black pepper and ground coriander. Stir well to incorporate. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and cook until everything is tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the skillet from the heat. Taste, and adjust the seasonings if necessary. Fold in the fresh dill (or other herbs of your choice).

Serve as spread on toast, side dish to meat, over boiled potatoes, in pasta, with greens. Possibilities are endless; joy is yours, Dear Reader.