Culinary Memories of a Happy Childhood

Alice Danshoch

Description

Culinary Memories of a Happy Childhood is a memoir consisting of 14 stories related to food. Together, they comprise an intimate collage of a Soviet family in the 20th century whose members live in Moscow, Caucus, Crimea and even London (the majority of the story takes place on Arbat Street). As we all know, families are unique, with their own idiosyncrasies. In Russia, some recipes are passed down from generation to generation and are rarely shared. However, this book allows readers to feel related and uncover some secrets of the mysterious Russian soul and kitchen.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 29 mars 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528949828
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Culinary Memories of a Happy Childhood
Alice Danshoch
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-03-29
Culinary Memories of a Happy Childhood About the Author Dedication Copyright Information Acknowledgement Foreword Chapter I The First Dacha Season Chapter II The Passion of Anna Chapter III In the City of Shipbuilders and White Acacias Chapter IV ‘In Koktebel, in Koktebel, Beside the Azure Cradle…’ Chapter V Natalya Frantsevna’s Tomato Soup Chapter VI The Best ‘Kisses’ in the World Chapter VII ‘How a Fellow Pinched a Lass’s Tittie’ (A Folk Tale from the Tersky Coast) Chapter VIII A Foreign Novelty Chapter IX Grandpa’s Candied Peel Chapter X Easter Sunday Chapter XI The Bogomolets House on Sivtsev Vrazhek Lane Chapter XII ‘I Love You, Life, in Your Edible Manifestations’ Chapter XIII Asya or First Love Chapter XIV The Ninth of May Chapter XV (Bonus Chapter) Alisa’s Spécialités De La Maison
About the Author
Alice Danshoch is an extraordinary writer and journalist. She is a regular contributor to Literaturnaya Gazeta (Russia’s oldest weekly newspaper, founded in 1830 by the great Russian poet Pushkin) and was a winner in the literary fiction and non-fiction category of the 2015 National Awards for Best Books and Publications. She manages to captivate even the most demanding reader with her unique style and voice.
Culinary Memories of a Happy Childhood was translated from the Russian by the British translator Paul Leathley.
Dedication
In memory of my grandmother and grandfather
Copyright Information
Copyright © Alice Danshoch (2019)
The right of Alice Danshoch to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788782722 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781788782739 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781788782746 (Kindle e-book)
ISBN 9781528949828 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
Thanks go to my family for their help and support
Foreword
Some time ago, we decided to hold a literary dinner party to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol.
The literary element of the party in fact boiled down to two things. Firstly, there were readings of eccentric stories and jokes attributed to Daniil Kharms about famous writers and poets. For example, Gogol dressed up as Pushkin and paid a visit to the poet Derzhavin. Convinced that it really was Pushkin, the old man blessed him as he slid to his grave. Another went like this: it was only at the end of his life that Gogol spared a thought for his soul, whereas in his youth he had no shame at all. Once, he lost a fiancée of his in a game of cards but refused to hand her over!
Secondly, the guests were offered a menu based on the titles of, and quotations from, Gogol’s works. For instance, the starters consisted of ‘Khlestakov’s monologue’ (boiled tongue with horseradish), ‘Overcoat’ (dressed herring), ‘Diary of a Madman’ (meat and cabbage pies), ‘Letters from Afar’ (Italian cold cuts), ‘And what have you there, incomparable Solokha?’ (mixed pickles), and so on. Hot dishes included ‘It’s a rare bird that flies to the middle of the Dnieper’ (roasted chicken legs) and ‘Podgy Patsyuk’ (stuffed peppers and cabbage rolls). There was a wide choice of drinks: ‘Christmas Eve’ (champagne), ‘Marvellous proportion, I must say’ (gin and tonic), ‘A pleasant lady’ (red wine), ‘A lady pleasant in all respects’ (white wine), ‘Dead Souls’ (vodka), ‘A May Night, or the Drowned Maiden’ (whisky) and ‘Lift up my eyelids’ (a digestif, particularly important after everything else). For dessert, the guests found out what it was that Ivan Ivanovich had quarrelled over with Ivan Nikiforovich: why, cherry dumplings, of course!
All the guests left the dinner with satisfied bellies and gifts in their hands: a little bag of roasted sunflower seeds for the ladies and a packet of snuff for the gentlemen. Many of them asked for the name of my caterer. When I told them that all the food, with the exception of the Italian cold cuts, had been prepared by me and my assistant, compliments quickly gave way to recipe requests for dishes they had particularly liked. It was on that evening that the idea of publishing a collection of my recipes was first brought up.
I promised to think about it. And I did think about it… Every hostess has her own culinary secrets, her own spécialités de la maison , as the French say, her own preferences and favourite cookery books. Each one of them could, if they were so inclined, pen their own version of Elena Molokhovets’s Gift to Young Housewives .
There are a great many television shows in which various celebrities enthusiastically share their culinary achievements with the viewers. Much the same is found in every other glossy magazine, and in any bookshop or kiosk you can count on finding a wide choice of books about food and diets.
A certain vivid tableau kept forming in my mind of a plump woman sitting in front of the television with a hamburger and a packet of French fries from McDonalds. Spread open on her lap is a self-help guide, Eat and Get Slim , while the hand not occupied by fast food holds a remote control, which she uses to hop from Smak (‘Relish’) or some other such cookery show to a programme where dieticians give advice on the best way to shed a few kilograms. I feel quite sure that this woman would have little interest in my version of a modest diet. And who, indeed, would be interested, other than relatives, friends and acquaintances? It’s true that I enjoy cooking, and I enjoy feeding people with interesting dishes of my own making. When I find it hard to sleep, apart from forty-six drops of Valocordin and a few pages of Gozenpud’s Dictionary of Opera , I pick up books about soups, lunches and salads. Occasionally, if I feel sufficiently inspired, I will get up, go to the kitchen and turn some new recipe idea into reality – assuming, of course, that I have the necessary ingredients.
Quite often, when my body feels in need of nourishment, rather like the character in Chekhov’s story The Siren , I begin telling whomever I happen to be with about the wonderful things various grandmothers and aunts of mine used to cook, vividly describing some dish or other from my distant childhood of which I was especially fond. On one such occasion, after hearing out a tale about a roast goose that had turned out a treat for my maternal grandmother, my husband said to me: “Why don’t you write down all these food-related memories from your childhood?”
It was an idea that appealed to me. Why not, indeed, reminisce about not so distant times and all the dear, cherished people who raised me, took care of me and spoiled me? What better way to thank them for all those happy moments I had as a child! And so it was that I embarked upon the writing of my Culinary Memories of a Happy Childhood .
Chapter I

The First Dacha Season
It was at the Grauerman Maternity Hospital that I made my entry into this world. Dr Grauerman’s name has remained to this day a sort of password and calling card for a whole fraternity of people who inhabited the side streets and lanes around the Old Arbat. From the moment it issued its first cry, a Grauerman baby became a privileged resident of the capital. The Kremlin and Red Square were at arm’s reach, and sources of spiritual nourishment abounded wherever you looked. The Conservatory was a stone’s throw away, the Lenin Library barely any further. You could go to the Vakhtangov theatre and the Pushkin Museum as often as the fancy took you, and I haven’t even mentioned the three cinemas: one for feature films, one for the young and one for re-runs. Tucked away in little streets were countless little house-museums of literary greats – Lermontov, Tolstoy, another Tolstoy, Herzen, Gorky… And if you were hungry, the Praga restaurant and the Orion kebab house beckoned, or you could go shopping at the Dieta, Smolensky and ‘Preserves’ grocery stores. The best bread rings in town were to be had at the bakery next to the ‘Angler and Hunter’ store. We had everything here – our own ‘Igrushki’ toy shop, our own ‘Children’s World’ department store, two pharmacies, stationery shops, a pet shop and those seductive second-hand antique stores, with their eye-catching curiosities in the windows and inside. We even had our own military tribunal.
It was not until later that I would come to appreciate all the advantages conferred by that Grauerman tag around my ankle. For now, I was content to lie in my wicker pram and enjoy the fresh air in the courtyard of Building No. 8, Serebryany Lane. I was the first member of my family to be born in Moscow. My father and his parents had moved here from Saratov in the 1920s, and my mother from Ukraine before the war. Exactly how the family came to occupy a twenty-square metre room in a communalised house, complete with attic storey, which until 1917 had been the private property of Prince Obolensky, I will never know for sure. Most likely, my grandfather was assigned the living space by the Ministry of Light Industry, where he worked at the time.
Grandpa had moved to the capital together with his mother – my great-grandmother. Born in Saint Petersburg, she had lived there until my great-grandfather, a railway engineer and a devotee of Leo Tolstoy, snatched her away to his little estate in the Penza Province. Just sixteen at the time,