That we are all excited

Last Friday I had a little chat with Olivia the Cat Lady -- remember her? I was locking my bike in front of my work when she appeared from around the corner, her pink hat and sweat pants tucked into the knee-length off-white socks all in place, as ever.

"Be aware", she said putting her two tightly-packed supermarket plastic bags on the ground, "there will be a lot of cats on the streets today. It's Friday the thirteenth and it's twelve days before Christmas."

The dawn hadn't even broken out yet.

When I asked her, naively, which cats and how many of them to expect, she wasn't economical with her truth of how she feels about me. "I've been in Amsterdam for twenty years now, and I've had enough of you," said Olivia, wagging her swollen finger at me, in a pitch that sounded like a mosquito drone. I wanted to object, but her round face was already starting to deform into a frown, and may I remind you that Olivia can frown. So instead I nodded and affirmed that yes, it was Friday the thirteenth and it was twelve days before Christmas. "Exciting," I rounded my cadence off. 

The moment the word slipped off my lips the gloom on Olivia's face started to melt -- not unlike a knob of butter on a heated pan -- into a toothless but knowing smile. I was bewildered, even thought that maybe exciting was a code word for a change of heart. But then she leaned forward, encircled her mouth with her hands, and whispered: "It is internationally understood not to mention this."

"Mention what?", I whispered back.

"That we are all excited."

Merry Christmas, dear Reader!

Christmas Cake
Adapted from The Kitchen Diaries, by Nigel Slater
Yield: 12 generous servings

To make this Christmas cake has become my new annual tradition, and although it's new to me, I feel I've known it since long ago. Ideally it's a project for the start of December when there is still plenty of room to weekly nourish the cake with brandy, but this time, my second, I left it till exactly twelve days before Christmas. I'm not worried, though. Nigel Slater writes it will be almost as good, and his word has never failed me before. Which brings me to say if you haven't yet decided on your Christmas sweets, make this one, perhaps? Or bookmark it for next year?

It's a big-hearted cake - one kilo of dried fruits alone goes into making the lot -- so enjoy it by a thin wedge over the next few weeks, those empty, silent weeks after holidays. Or invite twelve people for dinner to tackle it on the spot. By the way, it's not cloying as it may seem, it's sweet just enough. Besides that, it doesn't reek of booze, it's moist, chewy and crunchy in all the right places, and above all, it's moreish. You have been warned.

600 g in total of prunes, apricots and figs
50 g candied citrus peel, roughly chopped
250 g butter, slightly softened
125 g light brown (or muscovado) sugar
125 g dark brown (or muscovado) sugar
3 large eggs, ideally free-range
65 g ground almonds
100 g shelled hazelnuts
350 g in total of raisins, sultanas, currants and cranberries
3 Tbsp brandy, plus more to 'feed' the cake
zest and juice of 1 medium orange
zest of 1 medium lemon
1/2 tsp baking powder
250 g flour

Set the oven to 160 C (320 F). Line a 20-cm (8-inch) cake tin with a double layer of lightly buttered greaseproof paper or baking parchment, which should come at least 5 cm (2 inches) above the top of the tin.

Cut the the prunes, apricots and figs into small pieces, removing the hard stalks from the figs.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugars to a cappuccino--coloured fluff, pushing the mixture down the sides of the bowl from time to time with a spoon or a spatula. Add the eggs, one at a time. Then slowly mix in the ground almonds, hazelnuts, all the dried fruit, the brandy and the citrus zest and juice. 

In a separate bowl, sieve the flour and baking powder together. Fold them lightly into the mix. Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin, smooth the top gently, and send it in the oven. Bake for an hour, then, without opening the oven door, turn the heat down to 150 C (300 F) and bake for one and a half hours before.

Check the cake for doneness by inserting a skewer or a toothpick into the centre. It should come out with just a few crumbs attached but no trace of raw cake mixture. Take the cake out of the oven and leave to cool before removing it from the tin.

Spike the cake with a skewer or a toothpick and drizzle in from two to three tablespoons of brandy. Continue feeding the cake by pouring brandy into it every week before Christmas. Cover tightly and leave in a cake tin till needed. It will keep for several weeks. When ready to serve, powder with some icing sugar (optional).

What day it is

I open up my eyes, thick with sleep, to the half-moon in my window. Abruptly it seemed, it took the place of a crescent, thinner than a clipped thumb nail, overnight. I spend the next minute struggling to remember where I am, what day it is, and if I have to hurry to be somewhere. It's like waiting for a Polaroid picture to develop, unimprovable blankness at first, followed by thin traces of objects captured -- a stack of books on the floor, blue unblinking stare of the TV screen on Anthony's face, he is deep asleep on the couch, his head nestled in his folded arms, his lips parted, unaware. It's quiet, except the clacking of the clock in the other room. I reach for my phone. 6.43 am. Then it hits me: I have overslept for work by an hour. 

I cut up an apple, its skin crisp and alert, and scoop a spoon of peanut butter out of the glass jar. No time left for anything else. A carton box of oatmeal and a measuring cup I set next to the stove the night before to make myself porridge for breakfast remain untouched, later they will be a reminder of the morning's haste. I stifle my cough not to wake Anthony. The skin under my nose feels raw, scalded by a cold. 

The air grips the skin on my face the moment I start off on my bike, the temperature out looks to be close to zero. It will take another hour before the day gets lighted, but the darkness is starting to kneel as the strip of dawn on the horizon unweaves itself forward. 

Later that day I'm in a chiropractor's office, on the table that looks like a gym apparatus for back extension, only this one is flat.

"Breathe out," he says. My arms crossed, I feel his weight on my chest.

"You have to breathe out," he pushes down. I hear cracks in my spine, but they seem so muffled that it feels we both eavesdrop on what occurs behind the closed doors. I breathe out again, my face, sticky from the day's work, is close to his muscled neck. I forgot to put on deodorant, and I'm convinced I smell of leeks. Another twist and push, and then another one in the opposite direction. I stand up and walk around -- my back still hurts. 

"Is it a burning pain?"

"Not quite. It feels simililar to when a dentist's drill brushes against a nerve ending, you know."

"I've never had a cavity, but I now what you mean," and then he adds, "You probably wouldn't tell I'm forty-five, would you?"

I'm on the table again. It's as if I'm receiving cardio-resuscitation, but on my back. I hear more cracks. Also, my stomach growls. I realize I haven't had much else since breakfast, except for two boiled eggs for lunch at work. 

"You should be straight now. Give it a few days to heal. You want to hear something funny? I had this patient the other day, gay, he had complaints about his back. So I said, "Alright, let's make you straight", and he turned around and said, "I don't think so, it aint gonna happen."

On my way back home it starts to drizzle, but soon wind pulverizes it into the cold spray. It feels clean; the air smells of fresh pencil shavings. Sea gulls in the canals look like crumpled sheets of white paper scattered about the water that's under the cement of the clouds turned into the undiluated ink.

I step through the doorway, and the half-moon is already in my window again.

Mujadara (moo-jha-dra)
Adapted from Orangette
Yield: 4-6 servings

Officially this is an ancient dish of green lentils, rice and caramelized onions highly regarded throughout the Arab world, unofficially -- one-pot miracle. It's such low maintanence to make, and it pays back tenfold. One, it's not costly to assemble; two, it gets better as it sits (so make it the day before if you can); three, it's nourishing to no end. It may not please the eye, but it will please the mouth. It absolutely will. You just really need to caramelize the life out of those onions; the flavor of the dish hinges on them and them alone. It's a slow process -- the time may vary depending on your stove and the pan's size -- but at least thirty minutes, ideally an hour, should pass until the onions are ready, amber and sweet. 

60 ml (1/4 cup) olive oil
500 g (1 pound) onions, peeled and sliced lengthwise
200 g (1 cup) green lentils (such as de Puy), picked over for debris
100 g (1/2 cup) basmati rice
Water
1 tsp salt, or more to taste
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

In a large skillet or sauté pan warm the oil over medium heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are caramelized through and through (once they start taking on color, scale the heat down to lowest to avoid scorching). This process should take from 30 to 60 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the lentils in a medium pot, cover with plenty of water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook, undisturbed, for twenty minutes. Then drain the lentils and set them aside. 

Once the onions are ready, stir in the rice, along with the cooked lentils, the salt and pepper, and two cups of water. Mix very well and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a lazy simmer, cover, and cook. Depending on the size and shape of your pan, this step can take from 20 to 40 minutes. 

After 20 minutes, remove the lid and give the lot a careful stir. If there is still liquid visible, replace the lid, and cook more until it's fully absorbed. If there is no visible liquid, check the rice for doneness. If it's tender, the dish is ready. If it's not, add a splash of water, cover, and cook until the rice is done and the liquid is absorbed. Add more salt and pepper, if needed. Garnish with fresh flat-leaf parsley (optional).

October 28th

October 28th: the scene on my balcony begs a description. Two wooden chairs and a table lie overturned, a plate with a bottle oil lamp on it are smashed into smithereens, an unused metal ashtray with LAS VEGAS and the four kings molded around the rim is thrown on the floor, face down among the glass shards. It's easy to think it's been a scene of a seething brawl, this. Perhaps, even, a fight of a kind where deadly threats eschew, and veins in the throat get swollen with anguish and anger and look like electric cords.

A single pigeon is trying its hardest to cross the gusts of wind, his wings flapping faster than a heart on speed. A determined bird, gone now. One minute tree leaves, frail dots of rust and amber, are kicked skywards, the other they are slapped against the rattling windows, a sudden place of rest. The trees below, many are still fully clad in leaf, shake and kneel in trance, an act of exorcism. The bathroom door, left ajar, sways back and forth; the window curtains are apprehensive of the draft. A storm has come, its force is non-negotiable. The wind regurgitates and an occasional wall of rain suddenly looks like a screen of smoke.

Coffee has grown cold in my mug, a thin layer of silt formed on the bottom. A few hours before, rather naively I got on my bike to get groceries, but I could't keep the wheel. Dislodged branches crackled under my feet like aging vertebra and knuckles as I walked to the store. Ambulance screamed past, and after it a police car.

The sun comes out on and off, but amidst the roars of the wind there is no comfort in its glow. In fact, it looks rather menacing, like that waiter whose white-teethed smile makes one of his eyebrows arch and his washed-blue eyes harden somehow.

Dusk. Lights come on. Trapped in the sky for hours, one plane after another bores its way forth out of the heavy clouds and down for landing. The smell of heated metal fills up the kitchen -- the oven is ready. I'm roasting chicken with two lemons for dinner.

Roast Chicken with Two Lemons
Adapted from The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, by Marcella Hazan, via The New York Times
Yield: 4 servings

Storm or no storm, this one is the easiest and certainly one of the tastiest ways to roasted chicken.There is nothing more to it than a chicken that gets seasoned with salt and pepper inside and out, fortified with two lemons, and then sent into the oven for an hour and a half. The way different cooking times for dark and white meat are reconciled here is so simple it's genius: lemons. It's all good that they subtly perfume the chicken breast, but the best is their moisture that wafts from them and into the meat keeping the breast from drying out while the legs are roasted through and through. And then there is the skin; at the end it browns and crisps up like a layer of goldel, lacquered filo pastry. A genius recipe.

1 * 1.2 to 1.5 kg (3 to 4 pounds) free-range chicken
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 small lemons

Warm the oven to 180 C (350 F).

Rinse the chicken well inside and out. Remove any bits of fat hanging loose. Pat the bird thoroughly dry all over with paper towels.

Rub a generous amount of salt and black pepper over the chicken's body and into its cavity.
Wash the lemons and pat them dry. Puncture the lemons in at least twenty places each, using a toothpick, a trussing needle, a sharp-pointed fork, or similar tool.

Put both lemons into the bird's cavity and close up the opening loosely with a few toothpicks or a trussing needle and string. Don't make it airtight, otherwise the chicken may burst.

Place the chicken into a roasting pan, breast side down. Do not add fat of any kind. This is a self-basting bird, it won't stick to the pan. Put it on the upper third of the prepared oven. After the first 30 minutes, turn the chicken breast side up. Doing so, try not to puncture the skin. Cook for another 30 minutes. Then scale the heat up to 200 C (400 F) and cook for 20 minutes more. Allow for 20-25 minutes of cooking time for each 500 g (1 pound). There is no need to turn the chicken again. 

Bring the chicken to the table whole -- if desired, garnish it with a few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley -- and leave the lemons inside until it's carved and opened. Don't tiptoe around the juices that run out; they are delicious and ought to be spooned over the chicken slices or mopped with a chunk of good bread. The lemons may have shrunk, but they still contain juices. Don't squeeze them; they may squirt. 

But it happened in Paris

Last Wednesday I ground my heels to a pulp and exhausted my hamstrings on my visit to Paris, which was my first. 

Paris intimidates me. I mean, it overwhelms me. I could have gone sooner, but I postponed because I always felt there should be a purpose for me to go to Paris for the first time, a vector that would define my direction amidst the streets laid out with millions of stories and more crumbs and keep me grounded in the constant flow of bon jour, oh la la and oui oui mixed up with the scent of yeast every other block and expensive perfume.

My good friend Morgane was going to hold her art jewelry exhibition in La Ville-Lumière.

I woke up in the depth of morning to catch the 6.34am train to Paris. The darkness seemed unfriendly. My brain and body weakened by the soft pillow and blanket, I felt against the trip. Anthony was supposed to go with me, but had gotten sick. I was at an arm's length from telling Morgane that I, too, won't be coming, but she cleared her schedule to wander with me, and her show was the main motive for my little grand tour. Still, I got out of bed at a quarter past five, half an hour later. I secretly wished to miss the train. Slowly I got ready, as if daring the clock. I poured myself a bowl of honey granola, the rustle of the grains against the porcelain, but left it undisturbed. I tucked the remnants of a chocolate bar in my handbag and made my way outside. The roads and sidewalks kept quiet, the stillness calmed me. I arrived at the train station early and gave Anthony a call. How are you feeling -- any better? I'm still not sure if I should go alone, I'll decide the last moment when I see the train. Try and get some sleep. 

The train pulled in on time, my carriage right in front of me. I stood there tormented by uncertainty when a conductor reached out to see my ticket. I stepped in. The bar carriage was next to mine, it pleasantly smelled of coffee inside. At 9.40am I was in Paris, and I had nine and a half hours till my train back.

I took few pictures and didn't see the Eiffel Tower. The famous Rose Bakery's (46 rue des Martyrs) carrot cake -- plus a carrot salad and a muffin with fresh figs and blackberries -- check. Admittedly the best falafel sandwich -- eaten on the street (L'As de Falafel, 34 rue de Rosiers); cool infrequent rain drops on our faces in contrast with the fiery sauce on our tongues -- in Paris, check. Six hours of pure walking, check. Gold, Butter & Ripe Lemons -- thoughtful and stylish -- check. I saw necklaces, brooches and penchants by six different artists, and a lemon-shaped brooch that Morgane made out of plastic and that had more bubbles in it than the most sparkling water in Paris. 

It was a hot day. Apart from a pack of stray rain clouds in the late afternoon, the sun showed confidence. Those with jackets and coats on had to take them off. Walking down the hilly roads away from Montmartre, we were about to cross over when a shuttle bus slowed down at a stop and obstructed our way. As we walked around it I felt the heat of its exhaust fumes around my bare ankles. No smell, it felt soft and pleasant, like a human breath. I thought, it could have happened anywhere, but it happened in Paris. I liked it.

They have arrived

1979. My mother is a music student (piano). There is a tour to Bulgaria organized by her conservatory, and she applies to go. The application process involves an evaluation talk with a Komsomol commission, the members of which will have to decide if she is trustworthy enough to leave the country's borders. (To Bulgaria! So pro-communist then that it was known in the internal circles as an unofficial Soviet republic at the time!) In the end, it's a no. It's all unspoken, but she is dressed in clothes that look too Western (where does she get those from?); her last (maiden) name ends with -ovich and is therefore Jewish?

1989. My mother, now thirty one, is on a plane to Vilnius, Lithuania. Together with my late grandmother she is going to buy a luggage-ful of men's and women's clothes and maybe some footware to be sold among friends and acquaintances. Those goods are as close to Western as one can get. They are one of a kind in Shakhty and go fast. (From this trip I, then five, saw two summer dresses with short lantern sleeves -- one dress with butterflies and the other with chamomile flowers -- and a pack of Donuld Duck bubble gum.)  There followed two more Vilnius-bound trips, now alone. It would be alright but for one thing. My mother kept bringing the nicest looking attire as opposed to the better-priced one, and convinced that such approach disserved the "business", and besides, a mucisian would never know how to negotiate numbers, my late grandmother, a natural enterpreneur, "dismissed" my mother off her duties as a buyer. And so, Vilnius was as far abroad as my mother ever got to, and considering that back then Lithuania was still a part of the USSR, technically it wasn't even abroad.

The furthest my father went was Eastern Russia. No enteprenueral venture, this was his latest month-long work trip, in the grasp of winter, and the most memorable part of the month for him was seeing the endless Siberian taiga from the plane on his way back home.

This afternoon my parents flew in to Amsterdam for a ten-day visit. We were on the phone last night to iron out all the details -- what's English for this and that, what to say to a customs officers, and other such things -- and I could hear they were excited, a little proud even. I understand why. They are both in their fifties now. For two thirds of their lives a possibility to go abroad had been unimaginable because of the ideology and politics, then for another third because of the poor economy. For a change, I'm on the receiving end today and they have arrived. (Big thanks to the airport staffer who kindly walked them to the passport control after they had wandered off into transit zone and with an intention to collect the luggage stood in line for a flight to Mexico City.)
  
There will be important museums and the glimmer of canals and interesting faces and tall, tilted houses to look at and around. They will probably see Olivia the Cat Lady, and, with a little bit of luck, catch a glimpse of The Butt-Naked Man (I haven't seen him in a long while.) But so far, I cooked an Indian meal and baked banana bread for them tonight. They didn't have a banana bread like this before, I don't think. Heck, I didn't have a banana bread like this before either.

Here is what's unusual about it. First: instead of banana mush there is banana mash inside this one. Nigel Slater -- whose recipe it is and whose latest book, Kitchen Diaries II, in vein with his others, is magic! -- doesn't crush bananas into a smooth puree. He mashes them, ripe, almost sickly, with a fork to a lumpy state. This is smart, because later, when the bread is baked, these lumps will be those pleasant chunks of the moist and fragrant fruit that I always miss in a banana bread. (O how I'm upset with those banana breads whose only ties to a banana is in the title.) Then, there is chocolate, and its amount here is so right that it doesn't overpower banana flavor one bit. What it does is mingle with those banana lumps mid-mouthful and excite the palate. What's good for banana besides chocolate? Caramel. Its notes are here too, thanks to muscovado sugar.

Nigel Slater's Chocolate Muscovado Banana Cake (Bread) 

Adapted from Kitchen Diaries II, by Nigel Slater

Yield: 1 loaf

I will avoid the discussion of whether it's bread or cake, this. It's all in the baking vessel, isn't it? Commonly, cake comes from a baking tin and bread from a loaf pan. But seeing that Slater christens it as chocolate muscovado cake and bakes it as a loaf, I'll go ahead and say this: no matter. To me, banana bread rolls off the tongue, and banana cake does not. But never mind.

If you have the book, you will notice I upped vanilla extract to two teaspoons here. For me, a teaspoon is somewhat unnoticed amongst such heavy weights.

250 g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder
125 g butter, softened
235 g muscovado or dark brown sugar
3-4 very ripe bananas (400 g peeled weight)
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
100 g dark chocolate

Line a standard-size loaf tin (24cm*12cm*7cm) with baking paper, leaving a little overhang throughout. Heat the oven to 180 C (350 F). Sift the flour and baking powder together.

In a bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. The mixture should be lumpy. Stir in the vanilla extract. Chop the chocolate into small pieces the size of fine gravel.

Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs until incorporated. Stir in the bananas and chocolate. Gently fold the flour and baking powder into the banana batter. Pour the mixture into the lined baking tin and bake, rotating the tin halfway through, for about fifty minutes. Check for doneness by inserting a metal skewer into the centre. If the skewer comes out moist but clean the bread (cake) is ready. If not, put the bread (cake) back in the oven for a few more minutes and cover the surface with foil.

  
Leave the bread (cake) in the tin to settle and cool for 15 minutes, then remove from the tin by lifting the baking paper up and out. Cool some more before carefully peeling off the paper. Serve cool, in thick (!) slices. Wrapped in foil, keeps for up to a week.

From Russia with food

It's been very warm here lately, so warm. You would instantly pick up on my surprise if you had any idea about the average Dutch summer, about what it's like. If you don't know, let me tell you what the average Dutch summer is like. A rainless week is rare here, successive rainless weeks and the ones that requite no coat or jacket are unimaginable. That's all you need to know, really, to ascertain how unusual it is that the sun's been out for two weeks and counting now.

The sun's been out, and how! Despite an occasional breeze and a number of benign thunderstorm clouds today, there hasn't been much disagreement between the day and night temperatures, and although it did get ugly and sticky and nervous and sweaty earlier this week when the temperatures soared up and pulled oxigen out of the air (so it seemed), these days are my favourite. Have you seen the light lately? Operatic! Under its intese glaze tree leaves and roof tops and canals and cars and bicycles turn into well-polished crystals whose sparkle is so untamed it hurts the eyes, no pair of sun glasses being able to aid. I can't get enought of it. And the sky! Have you noticed how it shucked off an early summer whitewashed tog and now takes on an urgent deep blue, more and more so as time marshals the days forth? It's hard to believe it in the midst of a heat wave and with the ever-cheerful summer fruit amongst us, but the earth is slowly, unnoticably still, peeling away from the sun towards...the next season. I don't want to think about it.

Look at that, two paragraphs on weather, la di da di da. I could have just said that due to the reigning meteorological conditions there hasn't been much cooking, I'm afraid, but all the better because I've been meaning to tell you, finally, about a few edibles I crammed into my suitcase on my recent trip to the motherland.

I grew up on buckwheat, a Russian grain staple that looses in importance only to bread.  A latchkey child, I couldn't wait to rush home after classes, my stomach rambling like an engine, swing the refrigerator door open and pile kasha on a rimmed plate, douse it in an inordinate amount of ketchup (I had a protracted infatuation with the stuff) and wolf it down in a jiffy. Not for once I didn't head back to the kitchen for seconds. I never grew bored of it. I took buckwheat for granted, if you will. It never occurred to me that when I go abroad buckwheat could be hard to find -- my encounter with buckwheat in Amsterdam happened in an establishment named Ecotic Foods -- and that it would taste awful, too. For a while I thought the fault lay with my method, which is this: cook 1 part rinsed buckwheat groats in 2 parts water until the liquid is absorbed. Was it what made my buckwheat groats turn to mush when hot and form a brick once cool? I tweaked the proportions, tried different brands, but to no avail. It tasted chalky, off. Last Thanksgiving I used it as stuffing for a turkey, as my late grandmother would stuff with it a Christmas goose, hoping that it each kernel would stand on its own and not cling to the rest, or at least that it would swell up under the cooking juices and get, perhaps, tastier. No such thing happened. I stopped to bother.

Then came a realization. One night during our trip my mother served (with a view to impress Anthony, no doubt) a traditional buckwheat porridge (kasha), steamy and aromatic, with aptly sauteed mushrooms (in sour cream), and it dawned on me that, as far as I'm concerned, Russian buckwheat is the best. It's not chalky. It's nutty, and with an aftertaste that comfortably lingers on the palate between mouthfuls. Even more important: cooked, the groats still stay shapely. I brought two packages with me, and when my parents come for a visit soon I'll have them bring more.

I have an image in my mind of eating caviar -- salty, briny, elegant, bursting on the tongue under the slightest pressure from the teeth -- by the spoonful from a canning jar. Unfortunately I can't say with certainty now if it's a product of my imagination or a fact, but I'm fairly confident that if it did happen it must have before or at the dawn of the 90s.

For us, as for everybody else I suppose, it had always been a celebratory treat, served on somebody's anniversary or at an expansive family gathering at my grandmother's between New Year's and Orthodox Christmas. A triangular of soft white bread coated thinly with butter and crowned with a teaspoon of black caviar, one a pop and no seconds. There would be none anaway. A number of caviar finger sandwiches stricly matched a number of mouths at the table. If my memory is no illusion, I must, then, have sneaked in the kitchen to appropriate a few spoonfuls.

My grandmother always bought caviar, ossetra or beluga, by weight from "her" fish guy, a friend of a friend of a friend, at a local market. The caviar was non-pasturized, so you had to go with a trusted source. When perestroika stroke and then the shock of the 1991 rippled through the newly born Russian economy there was little affordable luxury left. Prices grew by the day. My family struggled through the whole decade and then some. We never starved, but there was no more caviar, or rather, no more legal caviar.

Searing prices for the delicacy drove to overfishing which drove the wild sturgeon population in the Black and Caspian seas to endangerment. Subsequently, a ban was laid to protect the fish, but it  didn't -- what does? - stop smugglers. You could go to a market and discreetly ask around, and in a while a man -- usually shady-looking, always in tracky bottoms -- would come up and offer the product at a "good" price, almost for "nothing". It was a dangerous bargain. For obvious reasons, the quality of caviar was very poor and food poisoning was not uncommon.

I got this 58-gram can in Moscow for the equivalent of around 60 euros in roubles. My cousin pointed us to a certified store that sells ossetra caviar -- extracted from the farmed sturgeon -- directly from and at the prices determined by a manufacturer. I got the smallest can. I haven't opened it yet, but when I do it will be for the first time in twenty years. What!

I don't like vodka. Please believe me I never had it straight. I'm thankful that vodka exists, if only because it's key to Moscow Mule, my favorite cocktail, crisp and refreshing. I'm also happy to use vodka as a natural disinfectant, but that's all. As I said, I never had it straight. Largely, because I think I won't like it, that it will probably go down my gullet the way a handful of pebbles would, painfully. Plus, those stereoptypes -- Russian babies are fed vodka; and on and on and on -- they take my goat, and I rebel.

Belaya Berezka ("White Birch") is Russia's best-kept secret. My family swears by it, and now Anthony does too. It contains birch sap, and I'm told it's the softest, smoothest vodka with a unique (birch?) aftertaste. I can't vouch for its taste for lack of knowledge of it (read above), but I witnessed firsthand that, downed in volumes, this vodka specimen does, indeed, spare the head from pains and aches the next day. And as such, a few bottles were wrapped in tube socks and squeezed in the suitcase.

During our every march through a local Shakhty supermarket, Anthony scoured the shelves for unusual packaging design. The looks of this yeast pass the muster and do what yeast should do: leaven the mood. As do these chocolate-hazelnut candies.

From Russia with food.

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.