Savage Feast Read online

  “Kolis’,” Nadia said. “Puncture,” like a balloon. As in: give up the truth.

  “There’s a man Nadia knew,” Oksana said to me and my grandfather. “A million years ago. They worked together. They got married to other people.”

  “So?” Nadia said.

  “So his wife passed two years ago. I don’t remember who told me—maybe when I was on home leave last year. And I didn’t even think of it. But now I thought of it.”

  “Thought of what?” Nadia said.

  “I got into your Facebook account. I blame Arkady—it’s because he keeps pouring and saying these things that make your heart seize up. I found his daughter . . . I wrote her to ask if she would give me—I mean you—permission to call her father.”

  Nadia’s eyes enlarged significantly.

  “She answered one minute after I sent it,” Oksana said. “She sent her phone number. And his phone number. His birthday is in a week. She said please call him.”

  Now Nadia’s hand went over her mouth. “You criminal,” she said.

  “We drink again,” my grandfather said.

  It was after midnight by the time the subway dragged me home. It was unseasonably humid, and the train felt as sluggish as the whole city. It crawled half-heartedly for several minutes, then gave out a long sigh and fell silent, the kind of definitive silence you don’t want to hear from machinery you’re relying on to get home. Somewhere in the station, voices droned from the intercom. There was a lazy, distant blare from a maintenance train.

  Before me sat a giant bag stenciled with Ukrainian lettering and loaded with Tupperwares full of pork-shoulder soup, bliny stuffed with chicken and onion, the liver pie, and wafer torte. I was so slow with drink I didn’t remember to feel self-conscious about the foreign alphabet on my bag. I wondered vaguely whether the man across from me could smell what was in it.

  When I got home, I pulled out a small book of poems by Mandelstam, the poet the Intellectual had been talking about. It wasn’t until twelfth grade that I’d become curious about what we’d left behind instead of how to make it work where we’d gotten. A book did it. From the category that specializes in forcing a hard look at things: nineteenth-century Russian novels. Well, not all—the frenzied cold light of Crime and Punishment, earlier in the school year, had felt like reading a foreigner. No, it was Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, with its love, hand-wringing, and sentiment. At university, I majored in Russian literature. I felt for Russian books even if I didn’t feel for Russian people; that happened sometimes, didn’t it? But since then it had all somehow mixed together. It had been many years since I’d read a Russian novel, even in translation.

  In the Mandelstam volume, I tried to find a poem about the informer who smelled of onion after his “interrogation,” but nothing seemed close. I flipped to the famous execration of Stalin that eventually sent Mandelstam to his death and tried to translate what I could. My Russian had almost vanished during my years of trying to pass as an American, then revived to near fluency at university, then nearly vanished again. I managed to speak more or less comprehensibly with my family, but, I was now sadly discovering, I was no longer up to poetry. I went ahead anyway. Eight shots of Metaxa had loosened things up. You didn’t have to be exactly right.

  We live not feeling the ground beneath us,

  We speak so that, ten steps out, our speech is unheard,

  something, something, and something,

  They’ll remember the mountain man in the Kremlin.

  The fat, greasy fingers like worms,

  The words, like ton weights, something-something . . .

  It was like trying to sprint for the first time after a decade of gluttony. Though it was late now, I turned to the previous poem—“The apartment is as silent as paper”—but beyond the first line, I foundered. I flipped to the one before, about Crimea, but even less success there. I couldn’t grasp even the general meaning. And the Stalin poem I could understand only because it had entered general knowledge, enough of which had dripped down, over the years, into my drunk, not quite Russian and not quite American brain. My excitement turned doleful. I tried one more poem, then fell asleep in my armchair, the light still on above me.

  Oksana’s Liver Pie

  Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

  Serves: 8

  It’s good, but you won’t kiss anyone after.

  —Oksana

  1 pound chicken livers

  1 medium onion, chopped

  4 eggs

  3 heaping tablespoons flour (or less, if you like very thin crepes)

  6 tablespoons corn or sunflower oil, plus additional for cooking the crepes

  Kosher salt and pepper, to taste

  4 heaping tablespoons mayonnaise

  3 cloves garlic, put through a garlic press

  1 bunch dill, finely chopped

  Clean the livers—rinse, and cut off any film stuck to them—and pass the liver and onion through a meat grinder set to a fine grind, or pulse in a food processor until the mixture turns liquid.

  Combine the liver mixture with the eggs, flour, oil, and salt and pepper. You’re making batter for bliny, or crepes. “The first blin always comes out sideways,” as Ukrainians say about far more than bliny.

  A little batter hides all our sins.

  —Oksana

  Warm a small (8- to 9-inch) crepe pan or nonstick skillet over medium-low heat. Add a tiny amount of oil (or cooking spray), give it a little time to warm up, and roll it around so it covers the whole pan.

  Lift the pan off direct heat—otherwise the batter sticks too quickly—and add enough batter that it expands to the edges of the pan, swirling the batter until it forms as perfect a circle as possible. You want a thin crepe, so try to add as little batter as necessary to reach the edges of the pan after swirling. Return to direct heat.

  After 3 minutes or so (2 if the crepe is thinner), the crepe should be sufficiently browned underneath and crisp around the edges for you to be able to use a spatula or a fine-tipped wooden skewer to lift it up. Now you have to flip to the other side; the difficult truth is that there’s no better instrument than your fingers, if they can withstand the heat. If the crepe is a bit thicker, a spatula will do the job. (As in the recipe for whole chicken stuffed with crepes, don’t worry if you tear the crepe: You can “darn” the hole—“reanimating,” Oksana calls it, as if the crepe is a flatlined patient—by pouring a little new batter to fill it). After 2 minutes or so on the other side, flip again for a final 30 seconds, and set aside.

  While the crepes are cooking, mix the mayonnaise, garlic, and most of the dill. (Save a little for garnish.) The creaminess of the mayonnaise works well with the tang of the garlic, the earthiness of the dill, and the taste of liver in the batter, but of course, the filling can include, or exclude, whatever you like.

  Spread each liver pancake with the mayonnaise mix, layering the pancakes on top of one another until you have a stack you can cut into like a pie. (You may wish to make sure you have enough filling by laying out all the crepes and dolloping even amounts of filling onto each before proceeding with the stacking.) Decorate the uppermost layer generously with dill. Consistency and flavor are best after two hours in the fridge. Good both cold and warmed up.

  Wafer Torte with Condensed Milk and Rum or Vanilla Extract (v)

  Time: 40 minutes

  Serves: 8–12

  It’s the torte that never makes it to the fridge.

  —Oksana

  2/3 cup golden raisins

  2 14-ounce cans 8.5-percent-fat sweetened condensed milk or dulce de leche (or a mixture)

  2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

  Pure rum extract, to taste (if you can’t find one free of artificial flavors, substitute vanilla extract)

  Juice of 1 lemon

  8 tort wafers

  Sources: You can find 8.5 percent condensed milk at RussianFoodDirect.com. (American condensed milk tends to have a lower fat content, but you need thi
ckness here so the frosting doesn’t run.) If wafer sheets prove hard to find, Amazon can help.

  1. Cover the raisins with boiling water and soak for about 20 minutes to soften them.

  2. Meanwhile, using a whisk or an immersion blender, mix the condensed milk with the softened butter and rum extract. Proceed gingerly with the rum extract—too much will make the torte bitter. This means you have to taste the filling after every addition. You’re welcome.

  3. Drain and add the raisins and the lemon juice.

  Note: Acid like lemon juice can cause dairy to separate, but it’s more of an issue with milk than butter, and it’s less likely to occur here if you’re using the immersion blender, as opposed to hand-whisking. But if you see modest clumping, don’t worry—it won’t affect the taste, and it will not be very visible in the result. That indelible kislinka (hint of sourness) in a sweet dish is a Ukrainian cook’s first priority in such matters.

  4. Brush the bottom of a wafer round with water so that it stays in place. (Don’t run the bottom of the wafer round under water, as that’ll get it too wet and begin to ruin its shape. Just brush it.) Place it on a plate wide enough to clear the wafer round by about two inches. Spread the remaining rounds out on a counter.

  5. Reserve a scoop of the filling for covering the sides of the assembled torte. Divide the remaining filling among the 8 wafers. Spread the filling close to but not all the way to the edges of the wafer rounds. Make sure to get some raisins, which will have sunk to the bottom of the mixture, into every dollop.

  6. Stack the rounds on top of one another and work your last scoop around the sides.

  Refrigerate overnight to help the torte set. Decorate the top layer with your fruit of choice—strawberry halves add nicely to both the taste and the color.

  Chapter 10

  2008

  What to cook when the fusion is Argentina-Ukraine

  What to cook if you’re stuck in the Soviet Navy

  What to cook when the cook can no longer cook

  What to cook to unlock a man’s secrets

  Families that make soup every day fall apart last.

  —Genis and Vail, Russian Cooking in Exile

  He was twirling her in the street. Only a moment before, I had been holding his arm as he toed his way down Fifth Avenue, every sidewalk square a precipice—he’d seen Manhattan all of three times in twenty years. Then suddenly he let go of me and twirled Oksana.

  They were going to see tango at City Center. Someone had been smart enough to advertise in the Russian papers—nothing more romantic to a Russian than tango. I imagined old Russian men, fumigated from their corners of Brooklyn and converging on Midtown, their home attendants on their arms. Oksana was wearing her Fancy Outfit—the black pants and square-heeled pumps—and I was their chaperone from the subway stop to City Center. I would wait while they watched, then escort them back to the subway. It was December and looking ready to rain, but this pair was not going to be splurging on a taxi, and the generosity of the ambulette driver who gave them free rides ended at the borders of Brooklyn.

  The ad for the tango had sent him to the middle of the living room: He showed me the bulba (Belarusian), the khapak (Ukrainian), and the tsyganochka (Gypsy), the dull-blue navy tattoos on his arms flying this way and that. He had to stop—he didn’t have the wind for it anymore. “I could have been a dancer,” he heaved out.

  You had to give it to him. “You could have,” I said. “Maybe without the tattoos. They gave tattoos out in the navy?”

  “They grabbed me,” he said. “I had no choice.”

  “What do you mean they grabbed you?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  The streets were slick by the time I found them in the crowd streaming out of the concert. I had made him confirm twice that he would turn his cell phone on after the show, but it remained off, and I found them . . . well, former Soviet people are easy to spot. They were giggly, rehearsing what had gone on inside. He kept making percussive sounds and playing air accordion. Oksana just sighed at the romance of it all—it was her first time in Manhattan. Feeling like a very sober designated driver, I pushed them toward the train.

  The next day, Oksana went on the Internet and found Argentinean recipes that were sort of like Ukrainian recipes. Beef empanadas with raisins were sort of like dumplings with cabbage or pork, so she’d try dumplings with beef and raisins, why not. The Argentineans had lentil stew with chorizo—she’d use kidney beans and rib tips. But they were out of rib tips. The temperature had plummeted overnight, and the previous night’s rain was now a thin coat of ice. Oksana wasn’t supposed to leave Arkady at home alone, but she couldn’t take him out into that kind of weather. So she ran out by herself. By the time she was rolling the dough for the dumplings, she could feel the fever. She had gone down ill, and now my grandfather—he relayed in a trembling, forlorn voice on the telephone—was all alone. She was in the next room, of course, but he could have been preparing to fend for himself on a cold, faraway planet.

  “If she’s sick, she has to take off,” I said. “Imagine if a home aide gets an old person ill.”

  “Where’s she going to go?” he said. The cot Oksana rented from a friend was not so much a cot as the space for one—in all her time in Brooklyn, she’d not had to use it.

  “A hypochondriac like you is willing to have a sick person in the apartment?” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

  “Fine, fine, I’ll come.”

  When I arrived, I couldn’t find him. He wasn’t in the living room, the only place I ever saw him. He couldn’t be in the bedroom—Oksana was convalescing there, on the hospital bed he had somehow procured, the type with all the levers. One was courting bad luck by lying down in a hospital bed, but the alternative was to have her sneezing and coughing near him. (One was also courting bad luck by procuring a hospital bed, but a get is a get.) Even the television was silent. I’d never seen it shut off. That television would keep going after the End.

  He was . . . at the stove. The kitchen was the smallest room in the apartment. I had measured once: two feet of floor space and fourteen feet long, so that from the doorway it looked like the galley kitchen of a submarine, especially because the small, frosted window at the far end, by the stove, always turned the outside light into a submerged grayish blue. So I had to squint. But it was him. With a spatula in his hand. I’d never seen my grandfather in front of a stove. Oksana must have cooked enough in advance and now he was reheating. But no—he was cooking. It was like seeing the pope at the batting cages.

  He was making ukha (oo-HA)—salmon soup; he had the salmon steak cubed and ready to go. Everyone thinks Russians eat borshch, but borshch is the Ukrainian mother soup. Russians eat it, too, but a Russian’s home soup is ukha. Root vegetables are all good, but without freshwater fish—pike, carp, sturgeon—Russia isn’t Russia. (Literally: Siberia survives on pike. There’s so much pike there, it’s dog food.) I had tried to explain to the lox lovers of the Upper West Side and the cedar-plank salmon eaters of the Northwest just what a thing ukha was, but they heard “boiled salmon” and tuned out. It was my mother soup. On a cold night, a bowl of ukha made things right for five minutes. We ate quickly.

  Ukha always got many pages in Russian food books, because there was that much to say about how exactly to make it. “The age-old rules of preparing this traditional dish must be strictly observed to produce the right effect,” as William Pokhlebkin, the epically named dean of Russian food writing, wrote. (Pokhlebkin translates to “Slurpkin”; he wrote a book about vodka, too.) The word “may” appears only once in his instructions; mostly they say “should.” Or “must.”

  The man at the stove was ignoring the age-old rules, which said the broth had to be transparent. Oksana’s ukha was “clear as a tear,” but he would thicken his by mashing cooked potatoes that Pokhlebkin explicitly warned should not disintegrate into the liquid.

  I kept staring silently down the long tunnel of t
he kitchen. “You can cook?” I said.

  “Why not,” he said.

  “I’ve never seen you anything but served,” I said. “Do you . . . need help?”

  “You know how to peel and quarter potatoes?”

  “Who doesn’t know how to peel potatoes?”

  “Drop them in water so they don’t discolor.” He wanted everything to be perfect for her.

  “Yes, I know. How do you know?”

  “The navy, how,” he said. “I watched my mother, too.”

  “What did she make?” I said. I was handling the potatoes like newborn kittens. I wanted everything to be perfect for him.

  “Same as all the mothers: tsimmes, latkes, potato babka, chicken soup. Everyone had pigs and cows, everyone had a garden. I spent a lot of time in other people’s gardens. This one old man had everything: cherries, gooseberries, red currants. We’d pick him clean. He knew it, too, but he liked having kids in his garden. When he was coming home, he banged his cane extra loud on the sidewalk so we’d scatter before he had a chance to catch us.”

  “And the navy?” I said. “How many potatoes you want?”

  “Two. No, three. The navy what?”

  “Cooking. Or—in general.”

  “In the navy, you take a tin of American beef and spread it around a whole pot of macaroni—that way it looks like the meat’s everywhere, but you’ve used up only one tin. But you can use half a tin, and the rest . . .” He looked up: “You want to see the navy?” He plopped down the spatula and went into the living room. Then suddenly he was dancing the yablochko, the Little Apple, a sailor dance.

  Oh, little apple,

  You’re rolling away.

  Roll into my mouth

  And you’ll never get out!

  “Look at you,” I said. “You were half-dead on the phone.” The words were out before I could think better—you didn’t reference death for the same reason you didn’t lie in a hospital bed unless things were bad enough to be in a hospital.