Here is another scene

Here is a scene. I'm in a small town on the Black Sea coast, on summer holidays with Mom. We are having lunch at a roadside restaurant near the beach. We just ordered and while waiting I'm thinking what to write on a postcard for Dad. He is back home working, toiling, through the hottest month, July. I aim to be funny and write that nothing over here, like our laundry or hair, ever completely dries out. It's humid over here, Dad. I capitalize 'humid' to make a point. Also, I add, Georgian food is the best. I underscore 'the best'. I'm having lobio for lunch. I'm twelve years-old here; a summer sea breeze tickles my knees. 

Here is another scene. I put two kitchen towels wrapped around ice cubes onto my knees. Anthony drapes a blanket over my shoulders, hands me a bowl of warmed stewed beans. My face is streaked with tears.

I caught a cab to get home. The car moves fast through the late-afternoon traffic. The driver, who is young, turns on the wipers and checks his phone at the traffic lights. I think he notices in the rear window that I've been sobbing. 

– Is something wrong? he asks.

– No, no, everything is alright.

I really don't want to be crying, it's involuntary. It could have been worse, this is probably nothing, stop sobbing, it's embarrassing, I tell to myself. I underscore 'embarrassing' and highlight 'nothing' in my mind's eye. It's green and the car jolts and starts moving fast again. It knives through the rain.

Anthony returns a call. I phoned him ten minutes ago or something like that to ask for help.

– What happened?

I came off my bike – my foot slipped off the wet pedal. I lost control, was on the ground in an instant. I wince at the image of my knees hitting the cobbled road, feel the lines on my forehead gather into a tense and busy intersection. I notice a rip in my jeans sleeve, a few frilly dark threads are sticking out. I took a taxi back home, I say, the steering wheel is badly bent, and the knees are starting to ache like hell, something similar to when a dentist hits a nerve ending with his drill. I hang up, the cab driver asks if I want to go to the hospital first.

– No, it's probably OK, I tell him. The forehead lines and eyebrows conspire into a frown now; I really don't want his attention.

When I get home, the ice cubes are ready to go, wrapped up into the kitchen towels. I pull off the jeans and sit down on the couch, two cushions under the knees – to straighten them now is beyond my willpower. In a little while the ice feels too cold to tolerate, I take a break. I eat the Georgian bean and walnuts stew that Anthony warmed up for dinner, amolesili lobio. I take a spoonful and the mouth is instantly comforted by the rich and creamy. And in my mind I'm twelve again, sitting at the roadside Georgian cafe, writing the postcard for Dad. I can almost feel the warm sea breeze too.

Amolesili Lobio (Stewed Red Beans and Walnuts)

Adapted from Saveur

Serves 6-8

Back in time (USSR) they used to say that Georgian, bold, fresh, spicy, was the best Russian cuisine. Lobio means 'beans' in Georgian, and there is an infinite number of recipes for it out there, from slow-cooked stews to crushed-bean salads. I favor this version: it's rich and earthy, beautifully colored, not quite purple and not quite red, highly aromatic. Heed the walnuts here: they enrich the stew and they freshen it too, similar to a cucumber's job in a stir-fry.

Without further ado:

100 g toasted walnuts

½ cup olive oil

6 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 medium carrot, finely chopped

1 large yellow onion, finely chopped

1 small red chile, stemmed, seeded and finely chopped

1 medium leek, finely chopped

2 teaspoons whole coriander seeds

1 teaspoon hot paprika

450 g dried dark red kidney beans, soaked overnight and drained

3 L water (or chicken or vegetable stock)

½ cup finely chopped cilantro

½ cup finely chopped dill

½ cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar

Salt and black pepper, to taste

Place the walnuts and half the olive oil in a food processor. Puree until very smooth, about 2 minutes, and set aside.

Heat the remaining oil in a large heavy-bottom saucepan over a medium heat. Add the garlic, carrots, onions, chile, and leek. Cook, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 10 minutes. Add the coriander seeds and paprika, and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Add the beans and water, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a bare simmer and cook, uncovered, until the beans are very tender and the cooking liquid has reduced enough to cover the beans by a fingertip, about 2 – 2 ½ hours Using a ladle, transfer half of the beans to a blender. Puree until smooth and return to the pot. Stir in the walnut puree, cilantro, dill, parsley, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Serve with country-style bread on the side.

Refrigerated, keeps well for up to 5 days.

That was great

I turn the oven switch on, a white round ribbed knob with my fingerprints of harissa and olive oil, from yesterday, on it. Alright. It's going to get hot, I holler to Anthony who is in the bathroom, under the water. Slowly the temperature inside the apartment rises to a hundred degrees, possibly more. A million of sticky, sultry, sexy centigrades that will loop the apartment to penetrate every surface, from the cotton blanket to the metal sink, and then fall out on the skin in the form of sweat. This last week it finally started to feel like real summer to me but everyone you ask is grumpy and inconvenienced. Too hot, they'll say, and wipe their heated foreheads with the back of their wrists. Some will point to the skin peeling off their pink shoulders, as if to say, See? 

– Even the coldest shower setting has felt like it's at room temperature. Do you really have to do this now? Anthony asks, out of the shower.

– Yes, I do. I really want to cook dinner for you now. It's our first free day together like, what, in a month? I say and extend a can of chilled beer. Besides it'll be quick, I just want to soften these apricots, no more, in fact they are ready. See?

I pull a tray with them out of the oven, a little juice oozes from each half. The room is filling with the smell of sauteing onions.

– Alright, alright, but whatchya making? Anthony asks and opens the beer can. Click.

– You'll love this – giant couscous with apricots and harissa. I made it for myself a few times before, a great dish.

– I love tiny couscous, and not in the least for its fluffiness. Is this one going to be fluffy?

– No, it's going to be chewy and soft and spicy and flavourful, I say. Then add, You'll smack your lips, trust me.

Anthony walks around the kitchen table, turns on the ceiling fan and picks up the big glass jar with giant couscous for inspection. Mo-gra-bia, he reads out load the name on the label, breaks it up in syllables. Never heard of it. Where did you get it?

– A Middle Eastern store in town.

I pour the cooked couscous into the prepared sieve over the sink, run cold water through it.

– If you could just mix these two together, the dinner will be ready in a minute, I say and point at the harissa and olive oil lined up along the cutting board.

The recipe is meant to yield four servings, but at the end we push each other's forks out of the bowl for the last bits – the sweet-tart apricot threads, the starchy lone couscous pearls, the left-out deeply savoury soft onion dice, the smears of harissa paste on the bottom of the bowl.

– That was great, thank you, Anthony says and pulls my silk skirt off the back of a chair to hand to me. Let's get out for ice-cream now.

I dump the dishes in the sink, check if I turned the oven off. I dab a little lipstick on my lips with my fingertips, notice how it still smells of garlic and cardamom and how the lips are still burning from harissa.

We shut the door behind us, only leave the ceiling fan on.

Pearl Couscous with Apricots and Harissa

Adapted from TheKitchen Diaries II, by Nigel Slater

Serves 2 (as a main) or 4 (as a side dish)

Unless you have apricots so ripe they practically ooze themselves inside out, I'd suggest to briefly roast them to get them juicier and more fragrant of the themselves. Not too long, somewhere around fifteen minutes in a hot oven.

I found the couscous needs plenty of liquid to cook and not get stuck to the saucepan's bottom, so I upped the amount of stock (water) from 300 ml, as per the original recipe, to 750 ml. (I thought to mention this in case you own The Kitchen Diaries II, look up the recipe and question my choices.)

For the couscous

750 ml vegetable stock or water

150 g pearl couscous

2 Tablespoons olive oil, plus a little extra

1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 teaspoons harissa paste

a small bunch of flat-leaf parsley

For the apricot dressing

3 Tablespoons olive oil

2 small onions, finely diced

5 pods of green cardamom, lightly crushed

1 clove of garlic, finely chopped

finely grated zest from 1 small lemon

250 g ripe apricots, halved and stoned (see headnote)

To prepare the couscous, bring the stock or water to the boil in a large saucepan. Pour in the couscous, bring back to the boil and salt the liquid very well, as you might for pasta. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the couscous is tender but still with a little bite. Drain in a colander and run cold water through it to cool it quickly. Tip it into a bowl and toss gently with a few drops of olive oil to stop it sticking together.

In the meantime, warm the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the onions and saute them gently till soft and lightly golden (don't brown it). Stir in the garlic, cardamom pods and lemon zest, and cook until the garlic has softened. Cut the (roasted) apricot halves in two or three and add to the onions.

Stir the warm onion and apricot mixture into the couscous, then stir in the lemon juice. Put the harissa paste in a small bowl, stir in the 2 Tablespoons of olive oil, then fold gently into the apricots and couscous. Taste and add salt if needed. Remove the leaves from the parsley, chop them roughly and stir into the couscous.

Where it's closest to sunrise

4:00 pm, Friday. 

I can't move and I'm in the middle of a busy intersection. The traffic light's changed already. I press my shoes into the asphalt, my toes, as if claws, curl down into the smooth leather soles, my hands meld into the handlebars of my bike that I had to dismount and is now hanging onto me, and for some reason I shut my eyes closed and clench my teeth. I don't see how in a distance an elderly woman falls over on the sidewalk, but I do see two men run up to lift her up.

7.30 am, Friday.

– I know you are sleeping, but you need to see this, it's Venus, Anthony nudges me on my shoulder, bends over the bed and points towards the window.

I'm looking at a pinhole in a sheet of black paper held up against a lamp – light is blazing through it. My eyes are hurting because I tore them open from sleep, but it's completely mystical and I sit up and look southeast where it's closest to sunrise and Venus shines bright. It doesn't twinkle and I don't blink.

4:01 pm, Friday.

I bend forward as if someone punched me in the stomach.

Car horns are bawling at me.

– Yes, it's reeeeeeed, I knooooooow, I shout back, to nobody in particular, the heart pumped up.

5:00 am, Thursday, one day before the storm.

– Good evening, someone says. I look around, there is a man. He is with another man, a friend, talks fast, holds a can of beer in his hand, but “good evening” is meant for me, and the smile. I wonder if he watches me ride off, and then, if my bicycle's rear light is on.

4:02 pm, Friday.

Canvas bill boards on either side of the road are flapping like trapped swans, as are my skirt and a coat. Beeeeeep in front of me, beeeeeeeep behind me. I'll run when it's green again, just another second to get out of this.

I dial Anthony.

– I got caught in a spectacular gush of wind, it almost knocked me off my feet in front of oncoming traffic. But I'm almost home, stopping for groceries now.

The heart's still pounding, the hands sweaty. I wonder what the weather is like on Venus.

Curried Lentil Soup 

Adapted very slightly from Molly Wizenberg, via Bon Appétit

Yield: 4 servings

This is a very soothing, very heartening soup. It is informed by dal maharani, a heady mix of black and brown lentils and beans, but with fewer spices, milder. Soft, silky and highly aromatic, it tastes and feels very creamy. For the most part it's because of the French lentils, they plump up and get fuzzy, sort of, in the broth. But should you not know there is is a puree of chickpeas to give the soup its richness, you would credit a stick of butter for it, or cream. It's quite ingenious, that.

4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, finely diced
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped, divided 
2 tablespoons curry powder (or a good-quality garam masala blend)
170 g French green lentils (de Puy) 
4 ¼ cups water, divided
1 * 400 g can chickpeas, drained, rinsed 
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
fresh cilantro or spring onions, for serving

Warm 2 tablespoons olive oil in a heavy large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and carrot; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook until the onion is translucent, stirring occasionally, about 4 minutes. Add half of the chopped garlic; cook for about 4 minutes longer until the vegetables are soft but not brown. Add the curry powder, stir until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the lentils and 4 cups water. Sprinkle with more salt and pepper, and bring to a boil. Bring the heat to low and simmer until the lentils are tender, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, puree the chickpeas, lemon juice, ¼ cup water, the remaining garlic and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a processor.

Add the chickpea puree to the soup. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and additional curry powder, if needed. Add more water by ¼ cupfuls to thin the soup to a desired consistency. To serve, sprinkle with finely chopped fresh cilantro or thinly sliced green onions.

It didn't feel ordinary at all

My hands are cold, the feet shuffle, the wait for the elevator feels long. I reach in my overcoat pocket and there is a whole tangerine, forgotten since morning, still fragrant, still carefree. I focus on its optimistic, arresting orange and the unblemished, glossy skin when the elevator finally arrives. I pause to look back outside the glass entrance door then step in. I think I heard hastened heels behind me.

“Respirez, vous êtes sur FIP.” I lean against the wall as the elevator starts to ascend. A French music radio station is streaming on my phone. “Breathe, you are on FIP.” 
 
It was a warm September day, two years ago. My friend and I walked down the hilly roads away from Montmartre. We were about to cross over when a bus slowed down in front of us at a stop. We made our way around it, and I felt the heat of its exhaust fumes on my bare ankles. It felt soft and pleasant, like a human breath. I thought then that it could have happened anywhere, but in Paris it felt less ordinary. Or rather in Paris it didn't feel ordinary at all.

Third floor. A neat arrangement of red gardenias in the hallway, in matching pots.

Fifth floor. I had to stop, stand still. I'd seen the Eiffel Tower countless times before, all through the eyes of others. Now I was looking at it. Here you are.

Sixth floor. I squeeze the tangerine a little, look into the dull elevator mirror. I'll buy a train ticket to Paris, yes, that's what I'll do. 
 
Eighth floor. I step out of the elevator to hear the roof rattling. I turn the key in the door: inside the apartment the windows rattle too, and the curtains are unsettled. I connect my phone to the soundbar. “Respirez, vous êtes sur FIP” fills the rooms -- jazz, classical, world, film music in smooth succession. 

I turn on the stove to make a pot of simmered black beans for dinner, a wonderful, powerful, flavorsome thing. I'll finish the tangerine, too.

Simmered Black Beans 

Adapted from The New York Times

Serves 6 

Pardon my bossiness, but make this dish, really. To soak the beans overnight, to remember to do it, is the hardest step, which is another way to say it's an easy recipe. I'd even take it further and say it's the easiest way to the best pot of beans, which to me means soft, well-seasoned, meaty beans suspended in a thick fragrant broth, which is achieved by languidly simmering them in their soaking water with plenty of garlic, onion and cilantro. I like them plain, with a hunk of good sourdough bread, or with cubed avocado, a ring or two of jalapeno, and a few shreds of roast chicken. But enough with lengthy sentences.

450 g black beans, washed and picked over for stones

2 L water
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
4 large cloves of garlic, minced
15 g (a good handful) chopped cilantro (coriander), plus more for garnish
Salt to taste

Soak the beans in the water for at least six hours or overnight.

Heat the oil over medium-low heat in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven, and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until it starts to soften, about three minutes. Add half the garlic. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about one minute. Pour in the beans and soaking water. The beans should be covered by at least two cm of water. Add more if necessary, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer one hour.

Add the remaining garlic, cilantro and salt. Continue to simmer another hour, until the beans are soft and the broth is thick. Taste. Add more salt or garlic if necessary. Let sit overnight in the fridge for the best flavor.

Needed to find out

I came to spices by way of a fairy tale.

Before I learnt to read I liked to while away my pre-school time listening to children's vinyl records that my mother regularly bought for me. There was a good deal to be all ears for, from Grimm's Fairy Tales to Kipling to Andersen to Soviet creations (some meager, some good), and I dutifully listened to them all. I had my favorites, but none was more loved than Hauff's Little Longnose. I couldn't -- I wouldn't -- stop listening to it over and over, often dragging the turntable needle across the scratched vinyl disk back to the start as soon as it reached the end.  

In a few brushstrokes, Little Longnose is a tale about a young boy, Jacob, who unwittingly insults a disagreeable woman at his mother's vegetable stall at the market. The woman asks him to help her carry her purchases, and when they reach her home she offers Jacob a plate of soup with knödel. The soup is so delicious it's unheard of, but the old woman being a wicked witch, it's imbued with magical herbs and spices that cast a spell on Jacob and turn him into a long-nosed hunchback. Unable to leave, he stays at the woman's house for the next seven years, during which he learns the magic of cookery. The story ends happily, but for our purposes today I just meant to say that it cast a spell on me. I listened lying on a couch in the living room, my eyes repeatedly examining a few cracks on the white ceiling, whily my mind, merging with the sounds flowing out of the spinning vinyl, was long gone to the old woman's garden, where I was beside Jacob, collecting musky herbs and blending mysterious spices. I could almost taste them.

Little Longnose got me intrigued, but for the time being that was that. I was too small to take any action of my own to hunt down the mysterious spices, my parents didn't seem that interested to do that for me, and in all honesty, in the Soviet eighties (not to mention earlier) there wasn't much on offer anyway. Intrigued I remained.

Then my mother started to (rarely) bake. She took to apple pirozhki with cinnamon, and often cinnamon wound up to be the key ingredient. I loved it. For educational purposes I liked to discover that a lot of cinnamon could cause my throat tingle, but what I really, really loved about cinnamon, even if it was past its prime and of dubious origin, is how different it suddenly made my everyday food. One moment it was the beloved baked apple with vanilla sugar, but add cinnamon and the deeply familiar fruit shifted ever so slightly toward the worlds far-off, an equally comforting and mystifying feeling. O the child's joys of discovery! Then my mother went on to use those spice mixes for fish or chicken or meat in her cooking, and faceless as they were they still took our meals off the beaten track. An interesting world was lurking somewhere in those spice mixes.

Then, at the age of twenty two, I had my first Indian curry. My friend Luke and I met up in snow-coated Saint Petersburg for New Year's then, and it was Luke's choice to have a hot Indian meal in the northern Russia. Did I want to? Hell yes, Indian sounds good. Equipped with the restaurant pages from a city guide I believe we went here. As a bold first-timer I ordered chicken karahi, the hottest on the menu. Our waiter giggled upon hearing my choice and pointed out that it was very spicy, pausing on 'very' for effect. Yes, I'm sure I'd like chicken karahi, please.

I cried and blew my nose through the whole meal. But, those piquant spices submerged in the incendiary sauce were such a revelation! My curry, it seemed, was otherwordly and I felt blue when the meal was over. My napkin was stained, heavily, with fragrant sauce; I took it with me. The aroma lasted for another day, and then, whoosh, the spices were gone. I didn't know what they were and I needed to find out.

Soon after I moved to Moscow for a year where I found an Indian grocer, and with him the vermillions, the scarlets, the ambers and the ochres of spices. For me, it was like upgrading from the children's watercolors to a professional art supplies store. I fell for Indian cuisine hard and fast. That comforting and mystifying feeling, a promise of discovery comes in tenfold each time I open a jug of garam masala or curry madras or toast cumin, fenugreek or mustard seeds in hot oil to make a tadka. Born and raised Russian to parents who till now never even ventured beyond the Soviet Union borders and so far with no experieces of my own of travels through India, I'm most certainly in no position to install myself as an authority in Indian cuisine. My only credential is that I'm mesmerized by it. I open a recipe, jack up the fire and let my mouth and my nose take me where I need to be. As my Indian friend Vijay once said, to cook Indian well all you need to do is listen to the pot and taste. I do! And so, me and my spices live happily ever after.

Chana Masala
Adapted from A Homemade Life, by Molly Wizenberg
Yield: 4 servings

A good chana masala (hello chickpeas!) is a balance between spicy and tangy, and this one delievers with a bang. The sour note traditionally is supposed to come from unripe mango powder (amchoor), but -- the purists, look away! -- you can strike the target by making use of lime or lemon juice instead, as done here. Taste and adjust the seasoning to how you like it. Does it need more citrus note and salt? It very well might. May I only insist that you use canned tomatoes that are more acidic than sweet? Somehow sweet tomatoes numb the dish. You don't want a numb chana masala.

I like to accompany this chana masala with basmati rice. Molly suggests to serve it with some full-fat yogurt (1/3 to 1/2 cup) to soften the flavors, or plain with a squeeze of lemon (I prefer lime). Whatever you choose, don't forget to sprinkle it with a pinch of garam masala and some chopped cilantro (or parsley). And be prepared, this dish gets only better the second day.

1/4 cup olive oil
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 medium cloves garlic, pressed
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp garam masala, plus more for serving
3 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
1 tsp salt, or to taste
Water
Two 400 g (14 oz) cans peeled tomatoes (see headnote)
a handful of coarsely chopped cilantro or flat-leaf parsley leaves, plus more for serving
A good pinch of cayenne, or to taste
Two 400 g (14 oz) cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 tsp lime (or lemon) juice, or to taste

Heat the olive oil in a thick-bottomed, preferably cast iron, pot. Add the onion, and cook, stirring occasionally, until it's thoroughly caramelized. The more color in the onion, the more flavor in the final dish. Adjust the heat if the browning happens too quickly.

Scale the heat down to low and add the garlic, cumin seeds, coriander, ginger, garam masala, cardamom pods, and salt, and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add 1/4 cup water and stir to scrape up the brown bits, if any, from the bottom of the pot. Cook until the liquid had eveporated. Pour in the juice from the cans of tomatoes, and add the tomatoes themselves, carefully breaking them apart with your hands as you add them to the pot. (You can also use a potato masher to crash the tomatoes directly in the pot.)

Bring the pot to an idle simmer. Add the cilantro (or parsley) and cayenne, and cook gently until the sauce starts to thicken, about 5 minutes. Add the chickpeas and lime (or lemon) juice, stir well, and cook for another 5 minutes. Add 2 teaspoons water, and cook for another 5 minutes. Add another 2 teaspoons water and cook until it's absorbed, for about 5 minutes more. This process of adding and cooking off water helps to concentrate the sauce's flavor. Taste, and adjust the seasoning.

Serve with basmati rice, yogurt, or plain (see headnote).

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.

A good feeling

Last time we talked I couldn't stop mouthing off about how fruit is my siren, how all I can do is eating it fresh, except that I would also like to cook with it more, somewhat. To this end, I told you, I had taken some measures, that being I'd got myself one special book -- Nigel Slater's Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard. (Ten Speed Press, 2012). When I heard Jess mention it once, I was on the edge of my seat. When Jess spoke fondly of it twice, wheels got turning. I got the book weeks ago and not a day has passed by since that I wouldn't lose myself in its pages. 

I think Nigel Slater is a magician. For most of us an apple, for example, tastes like, um, an apple, right? We can tell if it's sweet or sour, no problem there, and with some effort we could even decipher scents of grass or honey in the apple bite. But Nigel Slater sees beyond that. He tastes this apple and senses it has the flavors of strawberry, walnut and nail polish(!!); in that apple he picks up the notes of nutmeg, aniseed or pineapple. Isn't it pretty spectacular? He is also a romantic, that Nigel Slater. Just check this out: "Cherries bring with them a certain frivolity, a carefree joy like hearing the far-off laughter of a child at play. Their appearance, in deepest summer, comes when life is often at its most untroubled. A bag of cherries is a bag of happiness" (p.171). Or this: "I catch my breath and stand quite motionless; a moment of quiet excitement. I feel as if there is a butterfly in my chest. There, two feet away, is the first catkin of spring, already heavy with yellow pollen and dangling like a lamb's tail from a bare, brittle twig" (p.315). Beautiful, isn't it? The book is filled with such gracefulness and delicacy to the fullest.

Aside being instructive and educative, cookbooks for me are kitchen windows into somebody else's story and culture. Through recipes and stories of others I get to know what's there. And while filling my head with information and treble inspiration all right, Nigel Slater's sentient and observant writing does something else: it makes me want to never stop paying attention to what's here, right around me. I want to see for myself what shade of yellow is canary yellow, to walk through a monastery orchard, to find a sea rock and remind myself what hue it is exactly, to hear that noise that comes from the corners of my mouth as I bite into a fresh and juicy peach...You see what I mean? I think it's special when a (cook)book inspirits you to look at where you are right now. Ripe does that in tenfold.

To say that each one of three hundred plus seasonal recipes this beautiful tome holds would yield blog-worthy results wouldn't be a far-fetched statement, not at all. But I had to start somewhere, and because I'm not impartial to it I started with tabbouleh. 

                                                                                                       

                                                          ***

I was twenty-one and edging into my final year of college when, figuring out what I should be soon doing with my degree in English linguistics, I took a gap year and enrolled into the Au-pair program. For various reasons, I ended up in the Netherlands (the Hague), and for the year to come I was to take care of a lovely six-year-old girl in a single-parent family (a working mother). That year was supposed to be my coming of age of sorts, meaning not only that I was going to be completely on my own in a place far away from everything and everyone familiar, but also that I was now responsible for somebody else. That surely had to make me more mature, stronger, wiser, something, anything. That surely had to, and on some level it did, except only when I would step into my host family's kitchen, you know, to cook myself a meal. One day not too long after my arrival I thought to braise for my lunch white cabbage in tomato broth, with charred onions, laurel and all that, something I really liked, something that said home to me. I was standing by the kitchen stove stirring the cabbage when the mother walked in, her heels knocking urgent staccato on the black tiled floor, to say, her arm over her nose: It's shocking you can eat something like this; it smells foul. Did she just imply I eat shit? Lost for words on my side, I sheepishly smiled and kept stirring my food, deeply embarrassed and strangely hurt. Forward the tape and you'll see that other time over breakfast when I sat down with my plate of pan-fried potatoes leftover from the night before and her I can't believe you are eating this firing at me again, only now reaching somewhere deeper and making me feel so completely out of place.

And then there was ketchup. I liked to have it with everything, you see. Or better, I just liked to have it. A true fact: brain freeze from my necking heavily refrigerated ketchup straight from a bottle wasn't a foreign thing to me. So when my host mother said I've never seen anybody eating so much ketchup before, during a family meal, the words catching me in 'crime' as I was reaching for the stuff, to squirt some on rice, I recall, it just got me. And when I was repeatedly told it's plain stupid not to eat after 6pm, it got me even more, because I was twenty-one and stubborn and weight conscious and no-food-after 6pm was my thing then. It's then when I should have said something back, something like a friendly Your comments make me feel uncomfortable, to speak up for myself, for my bottle of ketchup, for my cabbage. Too fast to fold, I said nothing. Instead, I got into a habit of hiding what and when I would eat (yes sir, bad behavior). Which, given my sentiments, for the next eight months meant I would tiptoe down into the kitchen for breakfast (Weetabix, I got besotted by you!) and race against the clock to have dinner before everybody else, lunch being a dash in the neurotic sentence of my every day. In such developments, hunger soon got to thunderously and ceaselessly rumble in my every cell. And the irony is that I couldn't be any hungrier than then, what with all those wonderful, delicious, beautiful foods I hadn't known of before right under my nose at the farmer's markets (my first taste of avocado and leeks (!) and 'organic') and deli stores and ethnic supermarkets and pastry shops.

In the thick of it, I didn't see at all how things were spinning out of control. It pleased my eyes to see how much I thinned down (from eighty-five to forty-five kilos in less than six months), but I didn't pay much mind to how anxious of a weight gain I became (one apple, and I would be off to a gym, burning 'the fat'); how my hair started to suddenly falling out; how hungry indeed and drenched in fatigue I felt all the time. It was a shock when my host mother sat me down to say she is going to take me to a doctor to test me for anorexia, because she is afraid I'm hurting myself and need help, her face creased with concern. I'm not diseased, I cried, I need no doctor, no help, you are mistaken, no, I don't throw up my meals (I really didn't!), please everybody just leave me alone.

I so often wish none of that ever took place. I wish I didn't cause so much hurt and anxiety to my parents. Smashed to smithereens by what they saw -- a yellow-skinned skeleton; no exaggeration, that -- they stood there at the arrival gates frozen first, but coming to tears by the minute, my mother loudly and my father quietly so. What did you do to yourself, Anya? To which I just kept repeating, What's the big deal? I'm fine. The first weeks after I'd returned, my father, a man of a few words, didn't say much else on the subject; he only kept buying me bundles of bananas. I wish I hadn't scared my host mother like that. I wish I hadn't done such damage to myself. I hate to have been afflicted with an eating disorder. It absolutely sucks. They say anorexia never completely goes away, but I really don't know. It's been six years since then, and I want to think I'm through. Hey, I earn my keeps these days making pastries, eating my way through butter-loaded this or sugar-crammed that almost every day; how is that for a proof? Although, it hadn't quite been the battle with weight that sent me into a tailspin in the first place. My biggest problem of all had been the battle with self-confidence. It's my hidebound insecurity that had been standing squarely athwart on my way, taking good care I remain impressionable, and self-conscious, and that I listen really good to what others have to say about me. I'm wondering how much longer I'm going to battle that, though.

Towards the end of my stay, I went on a 24-hour trip to Brussels. The weather that summer day was chili-hot, uncomfortable. I was walking around town, shopping, and la la la, soaking in that beautiful city's air (rich in waffle scent), and the next thing I knew I was feeling weird, clammy. The feeling was that I had to eat something, all my bullshit notwithstanding. I made a pit stop at a nearby health food bar where I ordered smoked salmon tabbouleh. Strewn with raisins and cumin seeds, it was fresh, earthy and nutty. It was comforting and welcome. I loved it, for it was tasty. But what's more, I loved it because for a split, split, split second, the first time in so long, I didn't see food as a cunning agent of weight. It was a good feeling.

      

                                                            ***

Peach and Mint Tabbouleh

Adapted from Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel Slater

Yield: 4-6 servings

The charm of this dish is in a relationship between sweet and juicy fruitiness and zippy spiciness. One comes from the peaches, as you could have inferred; the other from the red chili. Theirs is not a tug-of-war game, because despite the obvious contrast there is no opposition: the chili just makes each mouthful sassier or something.

I am a person who can consume raw onion (thinly sliced) as a remedy for cold, which is just to say I am not an onion objector in no way or form. But I feel quite strongly against adding the onion to a dish if I want to keep it for later, what with the onion flavor becoming too pungent and unruly with time, its pleasant bite turning into the jaw clasp. Unless there are plans to finish the whole lot right away, add the onions only before serving, or skip them altogether, which I did.

I'm also a person who would like to be able to eat chillies, even the most fiery ones, by the handful. Alas, the nature didn't cut me fit enough for the job. But I still try and add extra chillies, seeds intact, whenever I can. Here I used two bird's eye chillies, instead of one, and left the seeds in, instead of out.

And a few more things...One, I cut down the amount of bulgur, the only reason being I like this tabbouleh better with the peach upfront, not the grain. Two: you absolutely need to get your hands on ripe peaches. It should give to your gentle touch but not be mushy. Yes, stay away from the mushy business. 

120 g (4 ounces) bulgur (I used medium-coarse type)

4 ripe peaches

1 or 2 hot red chillies, deseeded (or not)

6 bushy sprigs of mint, leaves only

2 large handfuls of cilantro leaves

2 large handfusl of parsley leaves

juice of 1 medium lemon

2 Tbsp olive oil

Salt, pepper

Put the bulgur in a bowl and pour just enough boiling water to cover; put a lid or a plate over the bowl to prevent the bulgur from drying and set aside.

Slice the peaches in half, remove the pits, dice the flesh and put in a mixing bowl. Finely chop the chili, coarsely chop the mint, cilantro and parsley, and add to the peaches. Add the lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. You will need a good grinding of both to balance the whole thing out.

Fluff up the bulgur with a fork and crumble into the peaches. Serve at room temperature. On its own, or with roasted or poached chicken, or fish, even.