This time

This time I didn't want to leave Russia. It's all rather interesting, you see, because when I go there I habitually count the days  -- and then feel very guilty about it -- until I'm finally on the plane back to fairy-tale Amsterdam, away, away, away.  Of course this time I counted the days too, but only because I wanted none of them to end. And that, dear Reader, came to me as a surprise of the size of an elephant, no, a jumbo jet.

We started our Russian vacation in the south where I'm from. We hadn't yet boarded our flight, but I was already rolling my eyes and warning Anthony about Shakhty's limited number of sights: four main streets, an obligatory Lenin stature (every city and town in Russia has one) and a green park (that goes by the name The Park of Culture and Relaxation). What else is there to see? Maybe that newly rebuilt church, its walls whiter than white, that once was wiped out (the Bolsheviks) and the plot converted into a tram depot? What else? Overgrown playgrounds, and beat-up buses, and heavily dented roads, perhaps?

We landed in Rostov-Don at midnight. When the air suddenly turns into velvet -- sultry, fragrant, green velvet -- you know you are in the southern Russia. I always forget how luscious and scented the late spring there can be, in fact, alway is. My parents met us at the airport, and off with a taxi we went to Shakhty. You can rely on me to arrive with a bang, by which I mean I'm such a idiot. I managed to lose my phone when the taxi driver stopped to fill up on gas and we had to get out of the car and my phone slipped off my lap and none of us heard it drop on the gravel. The next morning, ratracing our steps, my mother and I again took a taxi and went to the gas station in question. The phone lay untouched (!) on the ground, only by then it had been run over by a fleet of cars. I'm such an idiot! Or was it an early misfortune for the fortune later? And what fortune that was, Reader! Our week and a half in Shakhty was a ton of fun, and cake, and family dinners, not to mention sun, and short-sleeve weather, and more food!

I'm loving it, Anthony didn't fail to say every day. Russia may be rough arounds the edges, but there is something so charming about it. Like that colorful make-shift stage next to my parents' apartment block where, back in the 80s, children could act out their performances, only by now the benches for spectators were almost all long gone, the rusty thills in their place fully consumed by grass. Or that iron play house where I kicked it as a child, it still stands there hiding now under the canopy of trees. And that old man's little patch of soil next to the rusty garage fenced off by the bushes of tea roses the color of the fire engine and filled to the brim with garden plants, each row a geometric line. And what about my grandparents' next-door neighbour who turned her patch into an open-air exhibition of garden statuary, that is, if one can call statuary the swan figurines made of frayed car tires. All those things I had, worryingly, overlooked but Anthony took notice of. And you said there is nothing to see!

Did I mention that neither of my parents speak English -- although my father did extraordinarily good this past year in regards of mastering the ABC's of English grammar and the beginner's vocabulary -- and Anthony is only starting on his textbook Learn Russian the Fast and Fun Way? What would they do when I wasn't there? I don't know if you can tell, but I was worried about that too. Indeed, what would they do? Here is what: they would watch The '80s: The Decade That Made Us on National Geographic, the Russian voice-over for my father and the English original in the background for Anthony. They say vodka connects people? I say television! (There also were Goodfellas and Rambo: First Blood Part II.)

My seventy-eight-year-old grandfather outdid everybody on the language front.  I mean, he cracked everybody up when he limped towards Anthony and, combining his microscopic knowledge of German with even smaller expertise in English, introduced himself as the gross father. We all bursted out in laughter, each probably giggling for different reasons. I chuckled from the realization that we were together at the time, and it was all that mattered, god damn the unswept side-streets, and dented roads, and other such things! My favorite moment every day was sitting down across the open balcony in the living room after everybody had gone to sleep and, one lung-ful after another of the sullen and soft air filled with the scent of acacia blossom, find comfort in the fact that Anthony snoozed in one room and my parents in another, and for the time being I didn't have to miss either.

I'm not even going to start on the food we had had. It's the subject for another post or two or three. We sat down for a full-scale dinner -- zakuski, first course, main, and desert -- every night. One thing Anthony thought could be bad, or mediocre in the least, was Russian food -- and this I don't know where he got from! --  but it only took him a day to fall head over heels with the local fare. Stay tuned!

On our last night in Shakhty we all went to a restaurant to celebrate my mother's birthday. We sat down and raised our glasses, and then a band started playing and a red-faced woman the shape of a watermelon from the table next to ours ran up to Anthony, grabbed him by his shirt, and swirled him into a dance. Don't scare him, mom said rushing after her. Let me dance with a foreigner!, cried the red-faced woman the shape of a watermelon. Rough around the edges but charming.

Next afternoon we flew to Moscow -- the city of 24/7 everything: weight loss clinics and breweries next door (!) -- to see my uncle's family. When we weren't at my uncle's devouring the crayfish he expertly cooked in a heavily salted broth with dill and bay leaf, and washing it down with beer, we walked. 

I sprained my foot and it swelled, but we walked on! We did the obligatory saunter around Red Square, and through Kitay-Gorod, and down the Boulevard Ring. We took a boat ride along the Moskva river and saw beautiful things like the new Cathedral of Christ the Savior that had been demolished by the Bolsheviks and in its place came a public swimming pool. 

One late evening we returned to Red Square to see it in the lights, and it was special. By which I mean there were hundreds of people and more flash lights coming off every second wherever you looked, and yet somehow I found myself standing there a few meters off the stone gate leading to Red Square and there was not a soul around me, a soft breeze the only disturbance. It felt quiet and comfortable, as if the whole world just folded itself up and I had nothing to do other than to feel the breeze in my face, and look at the colorful onion domes of Saint Basil's Cathedral on the horizon, and at Anthony ahead of me taking pictures with the enthusiasm of an American who finds himself at Red Square. And I felt very glad about where I was and where I'd just been. As if there were cracks in me, and now, for an instant, I was whole. I remember saying to myself: Please do not forget this moment. A second later -- hundreds of voices around me again and even more thoughts.

I've been thinking about that moment everyday since. But most of all, I've been thinking how I can't wait to go back.

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).

And how

Not boasting of a hundred and one sauces and more garnishes, Russian food can nonetheless be puzzling. I'm trying to coach Anthony on the matter before our trip to Russia (his first) in a while, and it seems like no easy task. And why should it be when there is no dearth of confusing material? Just look at what's what. Vinegret, for instance. You'd think it's a Russian deviation from vinaigrette, except that it's surely not. Vinegret happens to be a beet, potato and sauerkraut salad. Or kasha: while in English it denotes buckwheat groats, in Russian it's porridge in general, and not exclusively the one made of oatmeal as an English-spoken mind would expect. If you want pierogi, you are in with a good chance to get some if you say varenyky to a Russian cook, because similar-sounding pirog in Russian means a pie, not a dumpling. No easy feast, I'll tell you that.

The same, of course, goes for a Russian abroad, except that it can get an ounce more embarrassing, especially if one claims to have affection for cooking. It's one thing to be able to tell vinegret from vinaigrette, and quite another to have no idea how to make Beef Stroganoff, admittedly the most familiar of all Russian dishes to the Western eater. I can't even tell you how many a soul I disappointed with my incompetence in the matters of sautéed slices of beef in the sour cream sauce the way Count Stroganoff liked it and plunking gleefully in front of them a bowl of borscht followed by a plate of delicious buckwheat porridge (kasha) instead. The truth of the matter is, Beef Stroganoff is not traditional per se. You see, there is Russian food, simple and genial as most Russians know it in their homes, and there is European-influenced Russian fare, for the most part with a French accent.

Following Catherine's the Great lead, the nineteenth-century Russian aristocracy was besotted with the French culture. I don't think it would be a complete exaggeration to say that St-Petersburg was the French-spoken Russian capital at the time. Naturally, anybody who was anybody and who could afford one had a French chef over. The likes of Beef Stroganoff, Veal Orloff, Strawberries Romanoff, Charlotte Russe were the French creations through and through. Sadly, when communism plagued the country in the early twentieth century, the food the French turned in shared the misfortunes of the Russian aristocracy: a wipe-out by way of execution or immigration. Hence not so much competence in the matters of Beef Stroganoff and such on the part of an ordinary Ruskie. But interestingly, some things the Europeans brought to the table over time stayed, and how. Sharlotka is a Russian variation of Apple Charlotte, and it happens to be the most popular teatime sweet in Russia. Ironically, it's relatively unknown outside of the Russian borders.

A Russian child's baking life begins with mastering sharlotka, although mastering is a strong word here. There is nothing simpler than beating a few eggs with sugar, adding flour to the lot with a pinch of baking soda, and mixing in a heap of apples. You can even bake it in a frying pan, it's that undemanding and unpretentious. What a child (or me at the age of 27) wouldn't know, though, is that baking soda needs to be "put out" with vinegar or lemon juice first -- otherwise the crumb will be tight as a leather boot, a downfall of all my sharlotkas of yesteryear. Thanks to grandmothers for their wisdom.

There is no dairy, oil or butter to legitimately call sharlotka a cake. With the massive amount of mellow and soft apples in its pockets, I'd say it gravitates more toward the fruit pudding, but with the scarce crumb still characteristic of a moist sponge cake it's really unclassifiable. For convenience's sake, let's call sharlotka Russian apple cake, although a description in Russian would read yablochny pirog ("apple pie"). Of course, seeing there are no crusts of any kind in sharlotka, yablochny pirog will only confuse an English-spoken mind. And here we go again.

P.S. Happy Easter, dear Reader! (And since we are at it, this year Easter in Russia is in May. Differences, differences!)

Sharlotka (Russian Apple Cake)

Another description of sharlotka would be: an unprecedented amount of tart apples resting in and moisturizing the vanilla-scented billowy crumb. A scattering of (lightly toasted) walnuts to finish, and you are set. You can go on and add a touch of spices as well -- classic cinnamon or tickling ginger -- but I made it a point for myself not to this time. I'm always in the pursuit of something else, amending simple things right, left, and center, wishing for them to be more complex and mysterious. This recipe is simple as simple can be, and delicious just as is. Although, one time I didn't have enough white sugar for the bake, so I used light brown. It brought in distant caramel notes and I am a sucker for caramel notes. I've stuck to light brown sugar since.

I use a 20×20-cm (8×8-inch) square baking pan, because I like how neat and composed a square piece of sharlotka looks. It is, of course, allowable to call for service a 24-cm (9-inch) springform pan. For fear that the apples might stick to the pan (with so much fruit chances are high) I line the bottom and sides of it with parchment paper and leave an overhang on two opposite sides. When sharlotka is baked I easily remove it from the confinements of the pan by lifting up the ends of the parchment paper. Nothing stuck, nothing burnt.

It's a real wonder how with no fat at all sharlotka stays hydrated for as long as a week. No oil or butter, and moist for a week, at the very least! A week! Those apples, man. I see this sweet with plums or apricots (maybe somewhat less sugar then) in the summertime, but traditionally it's always Malus domestica.

Sharlotka only gets better with time. It is therefore not a bad idea to let the apples and the crumb sit together undisturbed for an hour or two before cutting into. But this is not to say there is no pleasure in devouring it fresh and warm. 

Source: Grandmother

Yield: 10-12 servings

1 kg (2 pounds) of tart apples, such as Granny Smith, peeled

juice of ½ lemon plus 2 tsp, divided use

200 g (6.5 oz) light brown sugar

seeds from 1 vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla extract

3 large eggs

130 g (10 oz) flour, sifted

1 level tsp baking soda

60 g (2 oz) walnuts, coarsely chopped, to finish

Warm the oven up to 175 C (350 F). Line a 20×20-cm (8×8-inch) square baking pan with parchment paper (see headnote).

Cut the apples in quarters and remove the core. Cut each quarter into three wedges, and then halve the wedges and place them in a medium bowl with the juice of half a lemon. (If your apples are large, do the same, only cut up the quarters in four, and the resulting wedges in three.) Toss well and set aside.

In another bowl, beat the sugar, vanilla seeds (or extract) and eggs by hand or with a mixer until well-combined and bubbly, for about 1 minute. Mix in the flour (sift it directly into the bowl). In a small cup, combine the baking soda with 2 tsp of lemon juice (the baking soda will bubble up), and immediately stir into the eggs and flour mixture. The batter will be very thick. Fold in the apples.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly with a spoon or a spatula. The apple slices shouldn’t stick out; if necessary, slightly press the fruit down. Bake for 45-55 mins or until a tester or the tip of a knife comes out clean. Check after a 20-minute mark. If the top browns too quickly (mine did every time), cover loosely with a tent of foil and continue baking until done. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then lift up the ends of the parchment and transfer to a rack. When cool enough to handle, flip sharlotka out on a big plate and peel off the parchment, then flip back onto the rack. Evenly scatter over the walnuts.

Eat plain. Eat with a drizzle of caramel sauce on top (Anthony’s idea). Eat with unsweetened whipped cream. Make it an accompaniment to a cup of tea (coffee), a snack or an after-dinner sweet.

Keeps well wrapped up in foil or in an airtight container for up to a week.

A peculiar month

Advisory note: this post contains verbal images of a spitfire cat lady and a butt-naked roller-skater (of an unidentifiable age). If you have an impressionable and sensitive mind, read on anyway -- there will be dark chocolate almond butter cups as well.

February has been a peculiar month. First, I angered a cat lady. I'll call her Olivia here, since I don't want to anger her some more by disclosing her real name without a permission, not that I think she reads my blog or something. Technically Olivia is a bag lady, with a noticeable preference for pink garments, winter headwear year round, and sweat pants tucked into the knee-length socks that from a distance look like a pair of galife breeches. I know her from my work where she is a fixture, in that she comes in every morning at a quarter past eight, puts down her two neatly-packed standard-size suparmarket bags next to the cupboard, and depending on the day, goes back out or sits down for a cup of coffee and a knitting session. She's been doing so for more than four years, although earlier she used to say she would go to the countryside after the baby's been born. She never explained whose baby it was or when it was due, and she doesn't mention her plans to move anymore. French, English, and Dutch are in her full command (really), and if you ask her she will tell you a lot about cats. It is is why we call her Olivia the Cat Lady. That and because of a lasting bond she formed with our bakery cat, Marie, who is sadly no longer there on the grounds of being outlawed, which hasn't detered Olivia from bringing her gifts of wrapped Kleenex and canned cat food up to this day. Miaow.

For the most part, I think Olivia is angelic. Except a rare moment earlier this month when she asked me if I knew the meaning of my name. I should have lied and said yes, because I never want to see, never again, Olivia angry. Not bacause I think anger is a cell-killer, but because she looks evil when angry. And evil Olivia the Cat Lady looks like this: she turns around to face the subject, porches her arms on her sides, tilts her face downwards, and looking up from under the gray eyebrows, pierces you with the eyes that a minute ago were blue and now steely. As her eyebrows raise into two carets, her chin moves forward to expose a couple stray teeth, and her tongue, finding no dental objection, slithers out mid-word while she says, in high tones: "You should know what your name means. It's not making me happy now." For a second her face looked like it was pulling itself apart, upwards and down-, and I got worried that a hand might thrust out of her throat to strangle me. I like Olivia non-angry better. (She later told me it's a flower, but I'm not sure about that.  Anyway, we are good now.)

Next, I got smacked in my face. By a drunkard. With a rose.  Things like this ordinarily happen on a Saturday morning, around 5 a.m. That's when the party goers take to the streets and fill up the roads, sidewalks and bike lanes in their search of the right way, mingling thereby with those driven outwards at such an hour by the call of their professional duties. I myself stopped on a few occassions to tell the appreciative lost how to get to the Central Station, for example. Turns out I was testing my luck all those times by breaking the unspoken rule of the sober: ignore the heavily drunk. But, one lives to learn -- or in my case, one gets smacked to learn. When this scrawny teenager, balancing precariously on the sidewalk ledge, waved at me to inquire if he could ask me something  I had no misgivings to stop and hear him out. He had a rose-holding friend with him, equally drunk, but the opposite of scrawny. It transpired that they simply needed a cigarette. I simply had none. Which simply explains the smack. But still...

One more: a butt-naked roller-skater. I was on my bike carving my way to work (again!) through a dark, early weekday morning when my path converged with his. Oy! Because I wasn't expecting to see anybody's rear end exposed in the middle of a road in the city centre, despite it being Amsterdam, and because he was still a block away from me, I gave the roller-skater the benefit of the doubt and attributed his well-outlined tooshes to, you know, a pair of Spandex. Closer, and the truth was revealing. Besides the roller skates, his whole getup was compounded of a swimming cap, a pair of goggles (in the dark!), and a pair of sunburnt-red thongs. When I caught up with him, he slowed down to give me the right of way, and not looking back off I went. I later heard the man is sort of a local celebrity, roller-skating the streets butt-naked for years. From what I saw he is probably in his upper fifties or lower sixties, but what do I know? The fact that I saw him only now makes me think that Amsterdam is finally opening up its true gems for me. And if so, who knows what I can see next...

And one more: dark chocolate almond butter cups. This is from the department of good finds. Taking no longer than ten minutes to make and a bit more to set, they help February to go off with a bang. Themselves they are here to stay. The confection is purely what it is: dark chocolate that crisps up to enwrap in a frilly cup a blob of good almond butter. The latter is only slightly reinforced by honey and powdered sugar to hold its shape, but I also crushed up an amaretti cookie (a surplus from last Christmas) and grated half a tonka bean (I got a few from a friend, years ago now) to go in the lot, for good measure. A minute pinch of sea salt on top, and one tiny cup cinches you good and thorough. The best part for me? The way the thin layer of chilled chocolate cracks under my teeth and gives way to the filling inside, which in itself is a mini playground for the tongue, what with the cookie nibs and pieces and an occasional shard of almond, all in one knob. Try to resist. I should constantly have one handy to appease Olivia the Cat Lady if she loses her cool on me again, but these cups are best eaten cold, so I probably won't.

Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups

Adapted from The Sprouted Kitchen
Yield: 12 mini-cups

First few times I made these, I invariably had a good bit of chocolate left over (a perfect thing to spread a hunk of fresh baguette with, by the way). Could be the paper forms I use are smaller, but forcing more chocolate into the cups to use it all up only made the top thicker than the bottom, which I didn't like. I reduced the amount of chocolate altogether.

An amaretti cookie (store-bought) is not a must here, but I highly recommend it for the crunch. Give it a couple good bashings, but be careful to not pulverize it. Tonka bean is completely optional, although it imparts such an interesting flavor, a cross between vanilla and almonds and cinnamon...

If you have a mini-muffin tin, use it to help the cups hold their shape. But without the tin everything works out just as well. I use baking cups 35-mm (1.4-inch) in diameter.

And, these little things are really at their best cold. Their chocolate encasing cracks just so when chilled, such a joy!

150 g (5 oz) dark chocolate (70 % cocoa solids)
150 g (5 oz) organic almond butter
2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp table salt
1 amaretti cookie, crushed (optional)
Tonka bean, a few generous gratings (optional)
Fleur de sel, for topping

Break the chocolate into small pieces and let melt in a small bowl set over a pot of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl shouldn't touch the water). Stir to make sure it's completely melted and smooth.

In a small bowl, mix the almond butter together with the honey, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, salt, and amaretti cookie and tonka bean (if using). The filling should be firm enough to roll into a ball. Depending how smooth or runny your almond butter is, you might want to add a bit more honey and powdered sugar to seize the filling up.

Place the liners on a large and flat (!) plate or in a mini-muffin tin. Working with one liner at a time, poor in a teaspoon of chocolate on the bottom. Tilt and twist around so that the chocolate coats at least one-third of the sides of the liner. Repeat with the remaining cups. Scoop out a teaspoon of the filling, roll it gently between your palms into a ball, give it a slight press-down and put in the middle of the cup. Repeat. Poor another teaspoon of the chocolate over the almond butter ball, and tilt and twist around so the chocolate covers the filling completely. Repeat with the remaining cups. Sprinkle a tiny pinch of fleur de sel on top of each one and send off in the fridge to set.

Keep in a container, covered and chilled. The cups will stay good for up to a week.

Hundreds of them

I'm twenty-eight and so far I've given a ton of thought to the matter of what foodstuff I just wouldn't feel comfortable without. I wouldn't align such meditation with the ubiquitous desert island or doomsday scenarios, no. It's more of a benign pondering about a bite of what I, a serious and devoted eater, would be happy to have on any given day, come what may. In general terms, I can't do without fruit. But: there is fruit and then there is fruit, by which I mean there is fruit and there are...apples. One, two, three apples a day -- that's for me. Of course, of course I wouldn't collapse on the floor in tears if there is none, oh no, I wouldn't, especially if there are slurpy, oil-coated fried noodles around, or spicy chana punjabi, or cake, yes.  Yet, should one thing be stripped off my plate for good, please, for fruit's sake, may it not be apples.

But look, don't think I'm so noble. My views don't stand unwavered. Every summer I run away with the circus of fresh berries and stone fruits thoroughly trimming my old allegiances to the bone. It surely is joy to frolic in the sun with the summer's ruby-cheeked and gentle offsprings, and it would make me such a big liar to say I would never not do it -- I'm not so prudent (who is?). But even then, ask me what my all-time favorite is, and apples I'll say. But wait, it's not because I'm so healthy either. I don't find it outrageous at all to start my day with a slab of one cake and to finish with another. Not to take away from the nutritional value of cake, but you know what I mean.

My fondness for apples -- beyond their crunch, and the way their skin splits open under my teeth, and their sweet and tart flesh, and how they quench my thirst  -- may have something to do with longing. Ivan Bunin wrote about such kind of longing in his Antonov Apples. I was fifteen to read the story for the first time. I didn't pick up much on Bunin's nostalgia for the times of land-owners and their peasants, but I did smell from the pages that honey and befallen leaves and ripe apples in the thinning autumnal Russian countryside, and that longing of his, not the ideological kind but the physical pulling in the gut, was somehow -- through the obsolete words, and the barking of a stray dog below my windows, and the air around me heavy with the smoke and the scent of decaying leaves -- also mine. Mine, because I, too, longed.

There had been a year earlier when my grandparents' apple trees bore the unexpected bounty of late harvest fruit, and so a lot of it was stored in wooden crates for winter. My cousins and I got a couple of crates each. Every day while my fruit stash lasted I popped out onto my parents' balcony where the crates sat to pick up a few apples, each not larger than a tennis ball, in the morning and a few at night. Those that hadn't yet become wizened and started to smell of a cheap cider were as crisp as air on clear and frosty days and had a vague scent of tea roses. I devoured hundreds of them, already reaching for the next while only a few bites into the first. As if I knew that I should -- what if next year the apple trees wouldn't bear fruit at all, or the year after my grandparents would sell their dacha. As if devouring those apples meant to devour the barking of a dog at dawn, the cotton fog lifting slowly off the ground, the image of my grandfather trying to knock the fruit off the brunches with his cane, the soft and quiet sun...

I don't mean to say that every apple I hold now sends me down memory lane and into that place where a continuous anticipation for, and apprehension of, the moments to come competes with a constant longing for the moments that passed. That would be overwhelming. But eating an untoward amount of apples appeared to be somewhat habit-forming for me -- I'm glad things didn't go down the aversion road -- which is fine with me seeing my predilection for cake three times, or more, a day (see above).

Apple and Spelt Muffins

Yield: 12 muffins

These are my favorite muffins. To communicate how much I like them, let me tell you this: if nobody ever invented cake (again, see above), I would never complain to spend the rest of my life with only these muffins around. That's how much.

A few years ago I teamed up with a food photographer to do a project together. We brainstormed and agreed to play around spelt, now that it's reliving its former glory here in Holland. My task was to develop a number of recipes utilizing the grain in its various forms, and I wouldn't be myself, you understand, if I didn't do something with apples. The project didn't sell, but it was a good experience for me anyway. Last week I unearthed this one recipe and tinkered with it some more, and whoa, fully loaded with spelt flour, apples (!), spices, citrus, and oats, these muffins, nutty, and wholesome, and fragrant, and moreish, knocked me off my feet.

Often baked goods with spelt flour have a dry reputation, and I had a fear that completely foregoing conventional wheat flour this time around could put my muffins at great risk, but I shouldn't have worried so much. A few tweaks here and there -- largely, pairing baking powder with baking soda and using vegetable oil in place of butter -- and these little darlings revealed the interior that's tender and moist, and most importantly, it stays so. If you let it to, that is. 

I noticed at my health food store that spelt flour comes in two forms: refined and whole-grain. So you know, for this recipe I used the refined type.

Ok, let's do it.

260 g (9 oz) spelt flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
60 g (2 oz) rolled oats
1/4 teaspoon table salt
130 g (4.5 oz) sugar
zest of 1 medium lemon
zest of 1 lime
2 large eggs
80 ml (1/3 cup) buttermilk
80 ml  (1/3 cup) non-fragrant vegetable oil
300 g (10 oz) peeled and coarsely grated apples (from about 2 1/2 medium apples, such as Elstar)

Warm the oven to 180 C (350 F) and oil a 12-pocket muffin tin.

Sieve together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. In a blender or a clean coffee grinder, coarsely grate the oats. Add to the flour, along with the salt, and mix well.

In a separate mixing bowl, rub the citrus zest into the sugar. Break in the eggs and beat on high speed for two minutes. Mix in the buttermilk and oil.

Incorporate the flour mixture into the egg and sugar mixture. The lot will appear to be somewhat dry, but fear not. Fold in the apples; their juices will bring in more moisture.

Scoop the batter into the muffin tin, a good 1/4 cup per pocket. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the muffins look nice and dark-golden brown. Let cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then twist each one out and remove on a wire rack to cool completely. Stored in an airtight container, these muffins keep well for up to two days, but they are at their best a couple hours after baking. (Storage tip: to prevent the muffin tops from getting 'sweaty' from the emanating moisture, place a piece of paper towel together with the muffins in the container.)

That moment

Dear Reader, I so hope you had a loving Christmas and a lot of good food to go with it. Did you? I made a ham roast with maple syrup bacon crust, there was a lot of it, and it was nice. I didn't know a girl can eat a multi-pound ham joint practically by herself. Anthony caught a stomach bug and spent Christmas Eve squarely sick, poor thing, so I had to do all the eating. No complaints. But quick, quick, 2012 is nearly out of the door, it goes so fast, I can barely believe it, not enough time for a lengthy talk now, no way, the boom-booms of early fireworks can already be heard all over the city. And what did I do with these twelve short months? Well, yes, I finally went to see my family after a hundred, no, two and a half years of apart-ness; I put strawberries in my spaghetti; I got married. There was a crayon of every color in the box, the darkest one included. But digress shall I now not, need to keep it brief, yes sir.

I was on my bicycle pedaling hurriedly to work the other day -- I think Thursday after Christmas that was -- at an ungodly hour of 6 a.m. I dodged however little traffic there was on the roads at the time, whooshing past red-eyed traffic lights like rules are not for me. Running a light at one intersection, I noticed something that caught me in my tracks. The yellow round face of the moon hung so low it seemed to be resting in the crooked arms of the barren trees. The Rijksmuseum's spikes glistened in the inky sky in the distance, the whole building all of a sudden looking like a castle. The soft, golden lights strewn around a towering pine tree ahead of me swayed gently in the wind. I go the same route almost every day, yet I never saw anything like it before. The darkness, the moon, the lights, the trees, all seemed so out of this world for a second, as if an illustration from a fairy tale book came to life -- or I felt like I was in the book. Every year a child in me expects to see a glimpse of magic at Christmas and New Year's, and that moment, in the middle of a city, was that. It enchanted me. It's been days since then, and I'm still thinking about that view and about that feeling. Where am I driving at? Here: I wish us all for the nascent year a swath of breathtaking moments in life's everyday-ness. That and time and insight to notice them all.

Happy New Year, Dear Reader. Happy 2013.

As for today's recipe, well, it's a soup, but a very good soup, worth to be talked about on New Year's Eve. 

 

Roast Pumpkin Soup with Cinnamon

Adapted from Moro East, by Sam and Sam Clark

Yield: (small) 4 servings

It's a little firework of a soup, in that it's exciting and familiar at the same time. There is pumpkin that you roast first to lay upon it more flavor. Then, there are spices: cinnamon and dried chili. And then, there is a whole lot of fresh cilantro (coriander). In between, there are deeply caramelized onions and a swatch of garlic. The ingredients and flavors are all usual kitchen dwellers, but together and in the form of a soup they speak an exotic dialect.

I use much less cinnamon than prescribed in the original, because, in my humble opinion, you don't need as much as half a teaspoon of cinnamon in your soup.
 

I like it served plain, maybe with a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts and a scattering of more fresh cilantro, but you can up the game and drown a dollop of good-quality Greek yogurt (thinned with a bit of milk) in your bowl. Go ahead, suit yourself.

600 g (1 1/3 pounds) peeled and seeded pumpkin or squash (equivalent to about 1 kg/2 pounds unprepared pumpkin), cut into 3-cm (1-inch) cubes
6 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, halved and thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/8 tsp fresh ground cinnamon
a pinch of crushed dried chili
1 medium potato (about 150 g or 1/3 pound), peeled and cut into 2-cm (1-inch) cubes
1 1/4 L (5 cups) vegetable or chicken stock, preferably hot
1 medium bunch (about 30 g/1 ounce) of fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped (stems and all)
Fresh lemon juice, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste

Warm the oven to 200 C (390 F).

Toss the pumpkin with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, a healthy pinch of salt and some black pepper, and spread it out in a roasting tin. Roast for about 20-30 minutes, until very soft and starting to color. Remove out of the oven and set aside.

Heat the remaining 4 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt; cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion begins to turn nice and golden. If the onion browns too fast, scale the heat down a notch. Add the garlic, cinnamon and chili, and fry for another minute to release their flavor. Add the roasted pumpkin, the potato and the stock, and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for about 20 minutes or until the potato is soft. Remove from the heat and throw in the cilantro.

With a handheld mixer or in a food processor, blitz the soup until smooth. Check for seasoning and adjust to taste. You may want to add a tiny spritz of fresh lemon juice to the lot to brighten things up a bit.

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.