Lemon Cake with Strawberries

A care package of lemon cakes and strawberries.

Poor old Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones (which is my enduring non-culinary obsession) just can’t catch a break.  Okay, she started out as the sister we weren’t rooting for – a little too addicted to the “happily ever after” scenarios and very mean to her little sister, Arya to say nothing of the long-suffering Septer Mordaine.  And yes, she was responsible for her father, Ned’s untimely death.  But let’s face it; she’s beginning to grow on us. Our sympathies were stirred when whack job King Joffrey subjected her to mental abuse—his mother, evil Queen Cercei told him that Kings don’t hit women – and she proved herself a true daughter of both Winterfell and River Run by being seriously brave during the Battle of the Blackwater and keeping all the other scantily-clad King’s Landing women calm, while Cercei drank herself legless.  I’m sure everyone was sympa/empathetic when poor Sansa had her “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret” moment with only Shea to help her out, and The Hound’s quiet regard for Sansa has to mean something, right?

Lemon Cakes for a Damsel in Distress

Sansa has made a new friend in Margery Tryell who has replaced her as the Kate Middleton of the piece, but wily and slimy Peter Balish, otherwise known as “Little Finger” has his eye on Sansa and I know what Lord Tywin has in mind for her (because I’ve listened to the amazing books on tape) and it isn’t exactly a fairytale ending.   Sansa’s got my sympathies.

As every Game of Thrones fanatic knows, Sansa loves lemon cakes, so in her honor, I thought I would put this recipe up for my favorite lemon cake of them all.  I thought of it when I saw crates of strawberries being sold in a few Moscow underpasses.

Some good news from Greece: the strawberries are in season

“Where are they from?” I asked

“Greece,” shrugged the seller.

“Well, something positive from Greece then,” I said, and bought a few kilos.

It will be a while until the native Russian strawberries hit the vegetable stands, but spring seems to be making its determined way to Moscow after what has been a Westeros-scale winter.  And with that, and poor Sansa in mind, it’s time for something light and fresh and delicious!

This is a wonderful cake and a big favorite in my family.  Special thanks to my Mom, Frances, who first introduced it to me, and, in return, I introduced her to Game of Thrones and she’s hooked.  My daughter Velvet loves this cake – it’s often what she wants for her birthday, and HRH concedes that East 62^nd Street Lemon Cake is not the worst thing he’s ever had for breakfast.

For best results, try to source the best high end versions of these basic ingredients.  Look for delicious lemons from Uzbekistan or Baku at the farmers’ market:

Choose the best lemons you can find!

Buy the “good sugar” at Azbukha Vkusa – a tip that Moscow-based cook, Philippa shared with me.  It’s confusing since in French is says “Sugar in Powder” which I thought must mean icing sugar or confectioner sugar, but Philippa explained that no, it is fine caster sugar.  Who knew?  Well, Philippa did, and thanks to her, now you do too.

For best results, run this French caster sugar to ground.

For the shocking number of eggs, try LavkaLavka’s home delivery, or get fresh eggs from one of the Moscow Markets.  Let them come to room temperature before you use them and they will help give your cake a lovely hoist.   I always get my butter from the wonderful Italian kiosk at Dorogomilovsky Market – # 858.  While you are there, you can pick up some proper flour as well – the kind that is self-rising.  If not, add an additional tsp of baking powder to the flour in the recipe.

East 62nd Street Lemon Cake

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Serves	8
Prep time	1 hour, 30 minutes
Cook time	1 hour, 10 minutes
Total time	2 hours, 40 minutes
Allergy	Egg, Milk
Meal type	Dessert
Misc	Child Friendly, Gourmet
Occasion	Birthday Party, Casual Party
By author	Maida Heatter

This lemon cake is fresh and zesty, with a satisfying texture. It pairs beautifully with berries of all kinds and is a wonderful alternative to an iced cake.

Ingredients

• (3 cups) 709ml flour (see note above on self-rising flour)
• 2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• (1/2 lb) 236g best quality butter (see note above on finding this in Moscow)
• (2 cups) 500 50ml fine caster sugar (see note above on finding the best sugar to work with in Moscow)
• 4 eggs (at room temperature)
• (1 cup) 250ml whole milk (at room temperature)
• 2 lemons (zested, then juiced. Never the other way around)

For the Glaze

• (1/3-cup) 75ml fresh lemon juice
• (3/4-cup) 175ml fine caster sugar (see note above on finding the best sugar to work with in Moscow)

Directions

1.	Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Adjust the rack to the middle of the oven.
2.	Butter a 9” tube pan and coat it with flour or fine breadcrumbs. You can also line the tube pan with parchment paper to ensure easy extraction.
3.	Zest, then juice the lemons. Take care to avoid zesting the white pith of the lemon. You want to use only the yellow outer skin.
4.	Sift flour, baking powder and salt together.
5.	In a standing mixer, cream together the butter until it shifts color from yellow to a paler shade of cream. Add the sugar and beat on medium heat for 2 to 3 more minutes.
6.	Beat in the eggs, one at a time, scraping the bowl between additions.
7.	On a low speed, add the dry ingredients in three equal batches alternatively with a corresponding amount of milk, beating as little as possible to do this.
8.	Add the lemon zest and pour into the buttered and floured tube pan. Rotate briskly to make level.
9.	Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes until a toothpick comes out dry.
10.	Let the cake cool in the pan for ten minutes.
11.	Make the glaze by boiling together the lemon juice and sugar together until it creates a syrup.
12.	Ease the cake from the pan and place on a wide sheet of parchment paper or cooling rack over a cookie sheet. Glaze the exterior of the cake with the lemon syrup.

Note that this is not the official lemon cake recipe from the official Game of Thrones cookbook, a publication that proves, if nothing else, that literally anyone can write a cookbook!

Any Game of Thrones fans out there?  What do you think will happen to Sansa next?

Substitute quinoa for rice for a healthy, hearty version of risotto, or “quinotto!”

Quinoa has been on my mind for two reasons lately.  The first, as I’ve written about here, is that HRH, (my “Handsome Russian Husband”) decided we should go on Orthodox Lent, thereby cutting out meat, fish, dairy, oils, and alcohol.   His mother tried to convince me it isn’t about the food, but if you’d spent the week trying to come up with creative ways to use avocado and applesauce where any right-thinking person would use cream, eggs, and olive oil, you could be forgiven for focusing a bit on the food side of things.

I decided to take my need to beef up (no pun intended, but God I could murder a burger) the grain side of my repertoire to some of you loyal readers.   So, we’ve had a few quinoa classes over at LavkaLavka’s gastro studio, and I think we’ve all become converts!

What is Quinoa?

Packed with more protein and minerals than almost all other foods, quinoa (pronounced “keen-woh”) is an ancient grass, and its seeds were a primary food group in the diet of the ancient Mayans and Azetcs.  Quinoa has an impressive 6,000 year history and today, quinoa is enjoying a roaring return to popularity amongst foodies on at least four continents.  It’s a staple of healthy living and vegetarian lifestyles, as it is wheat and gluten free.

How to Cook Quinoa:

The best way to cook quinoa is to rinse the grains in a sieve, then add 1 1/4-cup of water for each 1 cup of quinoa.  Bring to a rolling boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently until all the liquid is absorbed.  Use a fork to fluff it up.  You will find that the yield for quinoa is 3 cups of cooked quinoa for one cup of uncooked quinoa.  You can keep quinoa in this state for about 4-6 days in a covered container in the fridge.  Add it to vegetable soups or to bulk up a salad.

Recipe for Quinoa:

We’ve talked about this before on the Moscovore: quinoa is seriously bland.  One of our participants described it as “eating cardboard,” which is a fairly accurate portrayal of what just plain quinoa tastes like.  The trick is to infuse it with flavor, as we’ve done before with Orange Sesame Quinoa with Dried Cherries.   I wanted to create a reliable side dish that could stand up on its own for the vegan crowd, but also pair nicely with a chicken, pork or beef.  The obvious choice was what the foodie world is now calling “quinotto,” fusing the idea of risotto with quinoa.

To be honest, there’s not much “otto” about quinotto.  I tried it several ways before I hit the right method.  Adding a little bit of liquid at a time to the grain produced a mushy sticky substance, so instead, I cooked the quinoa and then added it to sautéed onions and mushrooms, and then added more liquid, and finished it with a little cream and some parmesan.   Gone was the cardboard taste!

To add color, texture, and flavor to the quinotto, as well as making it into a one-meal dish, I topped the quinotto with roasted eggplant, peppers, and zucchini. The danger here is that the vegetables can get soggy and float away on a lake of their own juices.  To prevent this, I seeded and cored the eggplant, then salted the  and let it “leech” its bitter juices.   I cored the center of the zucchini where a lot of the water is stored, but I reserved this for the stock bag or Green Soup.  I added peppers for color and crunch, roasted the vegetables, then topped the entire thing with fresh tomatoes and basil.

Prevent vegetables from becoming soggy by removing their core and flash roasting them

The result is a hearty and healthy dish that pairs well with most meat, and can stand stalwartly alone as a one-meal dish!  So, give it a try!

Mushroom Quinotto with Roasted Vegetables

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Serves	8-10
Prep time	45 minutes
Cook time	15 minutes
Total time	1 hour
Dietary	Gluten Free, Vegan
Meal type	Main Dish
Misc	Child Friendly, Pre-preparable, Serve Hot
Occasion	Casual Party
By author	The Moscovore

A healthy twist on traditional risotto, using quinoa, the South American superfood. Lightly roasted vegetables and fresh tomatoes make this a full meal, or hearty side to accompany chicken, fish, beef, or pork, which can be stacked in elegant single portions, or heaped in a bowl for a casual Sunday night or potluck supper.

Ingredients

• (2 cups) 500ml quinoa
• (1-1/4 lbs) 500g dried mushrooms
• (1 cup) 250ml Madiera or Marsala wine
• (3 Tbl) 45ml olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion (finely diced)
• 2 large zucchini (seeded, cored, and sliced into 1/2-inch cubes)
• 2 large eggplant (seeded, cored, and sliced into 1/2-inch cubes)
• 2 large red or orange peppers (seeded, cored, and sliced into 1/2-inch cubes)
• (3 cups) 375ml fresh cherry or plum tomatoes (seeded and cored and chopped into 1/2-inch cubes)
• (1 Tbl) 15ml fresh lemon juice
• 5 cloves garlic (peeled and finely minced with 1/2-tsp of salt)
• 1 bunch fresh basil (chopped)
• salt and pepper
• (1/2-cup) 125ml heavy cream (33%)
• (3/4-cup_ 375ml shaved parmesan cheese

Directions

Prepare the Vegetables
1.	Preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C. If your oven has a “roast” function, this is the option you should choose.
2.	Place the dried mushrooms in a shallow, non-reactive bowl. Add the wine and top up with boiling water until the mushrooms are completely covered. Use the back of a wooden spoon to force the mushrooms under the liquid. Cover and set aside for 45 minutes.
3.	Top and tail the eggplant, then cut it into thin strips, removing all of the pulpy, seeded inner part of the eggplant. Slice the eggplant strips into ½- inch cubes. Toss with 1 tsp of table salt, then place in a colander and prop up at a slant over a mixing bowl. Leave the eggplant to “sweat” for at least 1 hour.
4.	Top and tail the zucchini as you did the eggplant, removing the softer inner core and retaining for use in pureed soup or smoothie. Toss with 1 tsp of oil, 1 tsp of sea salt and a few grinds of fresh pepper. Spread on a shallow baking dish covered with parchment paper.
5.	Core and cube the red pepper and dice into small ½-inch cubes. Toss with 1 tsp of olive oil and spread on the baking dish with the zucchini.
6.	When it has finished sweating, pat the eggplant dry with paper towel, then toss with 1 tsp of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Arrange the eggplant in the shallow baking dish with the zucchini and peppers, and roast in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the vegetables are soft. Stir a few times during roasting to ensure the vegetables cook evenly. Set aside.
Prepare the Quinotto
7.	Use a slotted spoon to remove the mushrooms from the water/wine mix, reserving the liquid. Pat dry with paper towels, then chop roughly. Pour the reserved liquid through a clean cloth to eliminate the grit from the mushrooms, then pour into a measuring cup. Top the liquid up with hot water, vegetable or chicken stock until you have 1-1/2 cups.
8.	Rinse the quinoa in cold water. Place in a heavy-bottomed Dutch oven with 2-1/2 cups of cold water and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, until the water is completely absorbed. Remove the lid and let sit until the quinoa comes to room temperature. Fork to separate
9.	Heat 1 Tbl of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed Dutch Oven. Sweat the onions until they are translucent. Add the quinoa and toss to combine.
10.	Reduce heat and begin to add the mushroom/stock combination, allowing the quinoa to absorb the liquid. When the quinoa has absorbed as much liquid as possible, fold in the chopped mushrooms. Taste and adjust seasoning, paying particular attention to salt. Add the cream and parmesan and adjust seasoning. Remove to a warm oven while you finish the roasted vegetables.
Finishing the Dish
11.	Heat 1 tsp of olive oil in a shallow skillet. Add the chopped garlic and sauté until it turns golden. Add the roasted vegetables and toss until the vegetables are warmed through. Salt and pepper to taste. Remove to a warm oven
12.	Chop the cherry tomatoes into quarters and place in a non-reactive mixing bowl. Add the lemon juice and the remaining olive oil and toss with a pinch of sea salt and freshly-ground pepper. Shred the basil leaves and toss to combine.
13.	Assemble the dish for immediate serving, either heaped in layers in one large serving dish, or stacked in individual portions: quinotto, topped with roasted vegetables, then the fresh tomatoes.

If you would like to sign up for a cooking workshop, check the listings on the home page of The Moscovore!

Readers, what is your favorite way to serve quinoa?  Have you tried Quinotto?

For more quinoa recipes here on the Moscovore, try:

Orange Sesame Quinoa Salad with Dried Cherries

Lemon Garlic Quinoa with Fresh Asparagus

For more great quinoa recipes from around the web, try some of these:

Related articles

• Quinoa Salad with Pesto Vinaigrette
• Give Quinoa An Italian Accent
• Ginger Chicken & Quinoa Stirfry
• Quinoa Salad with Roasted Vegetables, Feta and Pastrami

Welcome to Great Lent, brought to you by the buckwheat lobby!

HRH (my “Horrible Russian Husband”) and I are on Day 10 of Orthodox Lent, and before you scratch your head and ask me why only ten days, when Easter is just hours away, I’ll remind you that this is the Eastern Orthodox Christian calendar, which calculates Easter differently, and this year there is more than a month separating the holidays.  Eastern Orthodox Easter falls on May 6^th.  We have a ways to go yet.

I’ve written before about the origins and traditions of the Lenten Season in Russia, which is sort of the opposite of the Dukan Diet but I’m actually following it for the first time ever this year.   HRH surprised me by saying he wanted to go on the fast this year, more as a physical cleanse than for religious reasons, he explained.  Unlike Catholic Lent, where you commit to giving up one thing you love more than any other, in Orthodox Christianity, you are asked to give up basically everything that makes life worth living:  alcohol, meat, fish with backbones (seriously), eggs, olive oil and dairy products.  You can have shellfish, and if I’m up and about at the moment, it is only because I lunch on raw shrimp.

“Okay,” I said, “I’m game, but you realize that are going to seriously re-think your menu.”

“I know, I know,” he said, with all the confidence of one who has at least two weeks before the start of the ascetic journey.  “No meat and no beer – I can cope.”

“Or dairy,” I reminded him, “and oil, fish and eggs.”

“Really?”  asked HRH.

“Really.” I said.

HRH is not always clear on which ingredients go into what  food, which is the main reason I thought I would go on the fast with him, figuring he would innocently scarf down something like crème caramel without realizing that it is made completely of egg yolks and cream.  HRH is still a bit confused by the restrictions, particularly when he goes outside the protected circle of my kitchen and his VIP Stolovaya at work, where, like many Moscow restaurants, they have a Lenten Menu.

“I’m going to have the chocolate mousse,” he announced as we dined with his parents at a local restaurant Saturday.

“I don’t think that’s what Jesus wants,” I said, shaking my head. “Chocolate mousse has butter and eggs in it.”

“What’s Jesus got to do with it – Jesus isn’t Lent?”

“Isn’t he?” I asked, delighted, as I always am, to catch HRH out on scriptural and doctrinal matters.   Like most Russians today, he talks the good Orthodox talk, but he’s fuzzy on things like the exact definition of Immaculate Conception or the guest list at the Wedding at Cana.  Our conversation about transubstantiation remains my favorite clash, but the forty days in the wilderness was almost as good.

HRH looked in wild confusion at his mother, who purports to be deeply religious.  She, too, looked confused, but deftly shunted the conversation into another topical siding:  “It’s not about the foo-hoooood…” she wailed up and down the musical scale.

“It’s not?” I wondered, regretting all those hours scouring Anne Somerville’s Greens and Maria Speck’s Ancient Grains for Modern Times for inspiration.

“Nooooo,” she wailed, moving into the particularly annoying minor keys of the musical scale, “it’s a spiritual journey.  It’s about cleansing your soul.”

The Disturbing Results of Lenten Fasting:

“Creamy” and “Smooth” during Lent come from avocados.

As I feared, this spiritual diet of ours, consisting primarily of freshly squeezed juice, avocado smoothies and buckwheat, is making us feel wonderful.  HRH and are both sleeping like tanks, our skin is glowing, the dial of the scale is moving in the right direction, and I’m even contemplating leaving dairy off them menu permanently – except of course for triple crème cheese, which I consider to be a separate food group.   Don’t get me wrong, I could murder a rib-eye steak and a gin & tonic most evenings, but the essentially vegan diet is actually manageable.  Who knew?

On weekends and saints day, wine and oil are permitted.

The thing that makes forty days of Lenten Fasting bearable, however, is that you do get some days off from the regimen.

Most weekends and a number of saints days, both wine and oil are permitted, and, really, what more do you need?   A friend and I are considering pushing out the boat this weekend with a meal of McDonald’s French Fries and a bottle of mediocre chardonnay.  Because we can.   These important reprieves, however, seem to be the cause of great confusion, particularly amongst my expat friends who follow the Lenten regime.

“Well, look on the bright side,” I Facebooked one chum dealing with the Cyrprus bank thingy, “you can have wine on Saturday.”

“Don’t tempt me!” he messaged right back.

I’m not tempting him; I’m doing what good culinary columnists do; I’m gently pointing him towards the spiritual loopholes.  Because, clearly,  that’s what Jesus wants.

The Lenten Season Calendar:

Lenten Recipes:

• Journey Into Great Lent (First Saturday): A Foundation for a Lenten Lifestyle
• Levada Centre sez More and More Russians Embrace the Meaning of Lent, But Only 2 Percent Intend to Follow It Strictly
• Lent and Fasting.
• “Giving Up Something” for Lent

I never set out to be a domestic goddess…I was going to be Ambassador to Russia

Here’s one of the great unsolved mysteries of the universe: Why does the Alumni Magazine get through the floundering Russian postal system with a regularity you can set your clock by, but The New Yorker almost never appears?  
Still, I give the Class Notes a summary glance before I consign the magazine to the trash. The Class of 1984 seems to be doing well. Many of my classmates are approaching the zeniths of their professional lives — or at least those who write in are. Some are doctors, some are lawyers, and an overwhelming number are in the financial world. Most are married by now and have a matched set of tow-headed children with androgynous names like Madison or Brooks, who screw up their eyes against the late summer sun of Nantucket, strategically splayed in their parents’ laps to mask any middle-age spread.

I’m not a great one for sending in regular contributions to the Class Notes. The last time I submitted anything to the Alumni Magazine was back in my banking days: a picture of me “enjoying a joke at the Russian Economic Forum” with the Duke of York. I consider how I might update it without suggesting entropy:

“Jennifer (Buttenheim) Eremeeva ’84 is still living Moscow, Russia with her husband, HRH (Leningrad Officers’ Cadet School # 401, class of ’86) who is the Deputy CEO at A Difficult Start Up he’s asked her never to write about, and daughter, Velvet, 12. Jennifer has abandoned attempts at working in Russia’s formal economy and is currently employed full-time as a domestic goddess.”

I never set out to be a domestic goddess. I cannot even remember wanting to learn to cook, and I certainly never intended to become an expert on Russian food. Recently, like good domestic goddesses do, I held a massive clutter-bust and gave away all my corporate gear. Today my wardrobe consists of a different pair of yoga pants for each day of the week. Suddenly, I know how to make kvas — kvas of all things! I write a popular food blog about culinary adventures in the Russian capital. I photograph blini. Magazine editors from the United Arab Emirates inexplicably want my borscht recipe.

Katya, my Russian emigre friend from New York, sent out an urgent all-points bulletin the other day on Facebook.

“Friends,” she urged in two languages, “what is the correct culinary translation for ‘salo’?” I didn’t miss a beat.

“Salt pork or lard,” I typed back automatically.

No, I never planned to become a domestic goddess, but in two decades, Russia, it seems, has turned me into just that.

The Domestic Goddess Incubator

In 1992, I moved to Moscow to live my boyfriend, whom I later married. I call him HRH, which I tell him stands for Handsome Russian Husband, but I sometimes alter it to mean Horrible Russian Husband. He calls me Petrovna, since my father’s name is Peter. Everyone should have a patronymic.

“Marrying a Russian man,” people comment with surprise, “that’s unusual — normally it’s the other way round.”

It is unusual. And here’s the other thing: It isn’t the same thing as when a foreign man marries a Russian woman. In fact, the only thing we have in common is that we name our daughters Sophia and our sons Alexander. Apart from that — it’s like comparing apples and gasoline stations. One crowd is legion: You can find a Natasha Smith in one out of five Starlite Diner booths, but running a Jennifer Eremeeva to ground is increasingly more of a challenge, as divorce and separation decimate our numbers at an alarming rate.

The foreign man — let’s call him Bill — who marries Natasha is welcomed into her family enthusiastically with open arms no matter what his age or circumstances. As long as Bill can chew gum and walk a straight line — a straight line to the embassy that is — to fill out the paperwork for a fiance visa, he’s a member of the family now. “Molodets,” Natasha! (Atta girl!). Natasha moves into Bill’s well-appointed flat on the Pond, lowers her heels and tones down her fingernails. When Bill’s contract is up and he whisks Natasha off to Connecticut or Cumbria, that’s considered the logical next step, and a step up at that. Bill and Natasha have made an equitable exchange of commodities and look likely to live happily ever after.

When we meet and fall in love with our HRH — let’s call him Boris — matters do not unfold quite so smoothly. We may be Bill’s equal on paper or in the boardroom, but we are leagues below him in the Russian marriage stakes. We tend to speak better Russian than Bill does, but never quite well enough for our Russian mothers-in-law. These tough-cookie Russian ladies, who are happy to grin idiotically at Bill, find it harder to discuss politics with us. Foreign daughters-in-law are suspicious creatures. We work. We eschew potatoes. We expect their sons — men brought up to believe they actually are the scions of some royal house — to help us unload the dishwasher. We are reckless with our health: We put ice in our drinks and air conditioning in our apartments. We sit on stone walls or metal chairs, thereby rotting our reproductive plumbing. We marry woefully late (around 28), which means that by the time we do get around to having children (30-35) we are way past any expectation of normal gestation or pregnancies. We expect Boris to be with us in the delivery room, rather than boozing it up at home with his friends. When we miraculously do give birth to Sophia and Alexander, we don’t automatically hand them off to the older generation. If career advancement isn’t obvious, we have to think strategically about whisking Boris back to Boston or Brixton, because it might not be a win-win.

How have HRH and I have managed to avoid these pitfalls?  Well, for one thing, he is the one who works in the cutthroat Russian formal economy while I stay at home and battle writer’s block in yoga pants. I can’t see it working the other way around. And, despite my mother-in-law’s worst fears, I have become a domestic goddess: exactly what most Russian men expect from their wives.

When I moved to Russia, I didn’t know how to cook, but as I was female, the task naturally fell to me, just as gassing up the car did to him. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, right? My first culinary laboratory was a modest affair, located in Northern Butova (Southern Butova being then only a vague sketch on a drawing board), a charmless environ most expats only glimpse fleetingly on the way to Domodedovo Airport. HRH had his apartment and “propiska” (registration) there, so that is where we lived.

Now I am glad we did. When Russians or those funny expats who have gone native start talking about overprivileged foreigners, I reel out a few well-honed anecdotes about our happy years in Northern Butova and that tends to shut them up. Northern Butova was — and still is — a scale model of hell: an inelegant, sloppily thrown together sprawl of pre-fab buildings, painted in depressingly dingy versions of garish pastels. It was miles from the end of the metro line and accessible only by cramming into Bus # 813 and rattling down a pot-holed street for forty five minutes.

The domestic goddess incubator in Northern Butova had a sink along one wall, a stove suspended in limbo on the other, with a fridge strategically placed to impede entry to and from the kitchen. No cabinets and not a single millimeter of counter space.  I think of the kitchen in Northern Butova often these days, as I cram paella pans, shrimp deveiners and melon ballers into my oversized duffle bags for a trip back to Moscow. Back then, we had two ugly enameled metal cooking pots and three or four mismatched Czechoslovakian plates with way too much gold leaf. We had a lot of barware of course, complete sets of shot glasses, champagne flutes and tumblers, all in hideous smoky glass. It was appropriate that our glasses outnumbered our plates, since there wasn’t much food in the mid-1990s: We lived on pasta alla carbonara, which I improvised using Rossiisky cheese and tinny-flavored faux ham. This was the first of many culinary revelations for HRH, who had hitherto only eaten pasta in “makaroni po flotsky,” a military staple. His mother, up from Kiev for an awkward weekend, was appalled.

“My son has forgotten what a potato is,” she wailed up and down the musical scale. She and I will never see eye to eye on matters culinary.

Those were the roller coaster years, about which my contemporaries are starting to write books that are disturbingly shelved in the history section of the library.

“Gosh, you must have seen lots of changes,” people in the West say when I rattle off my CV.

I nod and say, “Yes, amazing changes.”

They were amazing, those changes: the second coup; the currency reforms, and Yeltsin growing less steady on his feet. I remember them all, but in my mind’s eye, it is all soft-focus background. In the foreground, in sharp focus, are domestic goddess milestones, like the time I found fresh ginger in the market for the first time, and felt as if the horizon had suddenly expanded five-fold.

As we geared up to become parents, HRH and I agreed that it was time to leave the Orange Line. I lobbied hard for the Green Line, to which I retain an affectionate affinity to this day. A big part of that was the Leningradsky farmers’ market, and once we moved within walking distance, Velvet and I became regulars. The market was full of sights, sounds, and smells that cut through the gray gloom of a Moscow winter. More Mediterranean than Slavic in their outlook, the market vendors seemed glad to see us, or at least did a credible imitation of being so. Slowly but steadily, with fresh meat, produce, herbs, and eggcups of pungent spices from the one-armed Uzbek spice merchant, I gained confidence in the kitchen. Recipes with unavailable or hard-to-find ingredients became irresistible puzzles to solve. Interest became passion. I made “plov” (pilaf), I made pesto, and I made apricot baby food for Velvet. I did a turkey. I contemplated attempting a whole suckling pig. I still do.

Cooking gradually became therapy. There was so much I could not control about my life in Russia: the messy politics, the volatile economy, the traffic snarls, and the disturbing rise of anti-foreign feeling. But in the kitchen, the food did exactly what I told it to. Without a “prikaz” (decree), a combination of eggs, flour, butter and salt rose obediently into a lofty souffle. I needed no “spravka” (certificate) to fit the right blade in the food processor and mix lemon juice, mustard, vinegar and oil into vinaigrette. Things were straightforward in the kitchen: A recipe for chicken Marbella never left me with the uneasy sense that someone had insinuated something menacing in a subtle Slavic way I was too dense and too American to understand. Corruption, when it happens in the kitchen, is easily dispatched down the disposal, its lingering smell eliminated with a few sprays of vinegar and water and a firm swipe of the counter.

Becoming a domestic goddess is largely a question of trial and error, and my journey was full of both: the duck that a shifty poultry salesperson sold me without removing the quills, the strawberry sorbet that refused to freeze (strategically repurposed into daiquiris at the very last moment), and the Thanksgiving I tried to go to the St. Andrew’s Ball the night before and cook a meal for nine the next day. You can do one or the other, but not, I learned, both.

Cultural Obstacle Course

Domestic goddesses must also be exemplary mothers to their offspring, surrounding them with love, appropriate reading material, creative outlets and regular, healthy well-balanced meals. Raising a bicultural child presents its own special challenges. When she grows up, I imagine that Velvet will say to her therapist, “Yeah, well, Mom and Dad didn’t really speak the same language,” at which point I hope that she will qualify the statement by explaining that I speak English to HRH and he lobs back a reply to me in Russian. It’s a trifle odd, but Velvet is bilingual and neither of us ends up sounding Ricky Ricardo or Gloria from “Modern Family.”

I’ve worked hard to balance Velvet’s exposure to her two cultures Geographically based in Russia, I scoured the expatriate community for American experiences, going in for things I would never have considered if I had been living in the U.K. or U.S. We joined a renegade Girl Scout troop run by some of my working mom friends that met at the massively inconvenient hour of 5 p.m. on Sunday nights. I sat with fellow mom Liz at the back of the room for the first session as Linda, our zealous leader, took the girls through the Girl Scout pledge.

“Does this strike you as, well, a little fascist?” I whispered to Liz.

“A little?” she responded, raising her well-manicured brows.

“Do you think there will be cookies?” I asked hopefully.

“Never,” affirmed Liz, who worked for a large FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) company, “even Linda couldn’t get Girl Scout cookies through customs.”

Halloween candy and costumes, on the other hand, were easily stashed in suitcases winging their way back to Moscow after summers in the U.S. Each October, I ignored Babushka’s grunts of disapproval as Velvet, dressed up as a bumblebee, a fairy princess or Hermione Granger headed off to Rosinka to trick-or-treat in the late autumn snow. I shocked the neighbors by placing carved pumpkins in the windows overlooking Leningradsky Prospekt.

Domestic goddesses must also be exemplary pillars of the Parent-Teacher Association of their children’s school. Velvet’s school was a disaster.  Lessons were in English, a language almost none of the students spoke with any degree of fluency.  The local management was indifferent and the imported staff out of their depth. Repeated attempts to change schools failed.  Still, I tried to make the best of a very bad proposition.

Events at Velvet’s school were rare and lukewarm affairs. Each September, they staged a half-hearted attempt to invite parents to meet the teachers. This lasted for about 20 minutes and included a cup of substandard Turkish Nescafe — Russia’s national airline has better service than Velvet’s school. The British teachers stood in a wary clump on one side of the multipurpose room, braced for impact, while the parents arranged themselves in equally wary ethnic groups at the other end. I huddled together with my friend Claudia, whose own HRH was equally disinclined to attend anything at school. Together, we formed a tiny American island in an ocean of earnest Korean women, and cast nervous looks at the leather-trouser clad, sleek 27-year-old Russian moms who teetered on four-inch heels, and flicked their hair extensions back from their collagen-sculpted faces as they air-kissed each other.

I tried hard to up my domestic goddess game at these events, but as I was not from Scotland, there was little scope. The Scottish moms had a death grip on parent participation at Velvet’s school. They organized sports days, afternoon discos, and the annual bacchanalia of International Day, the school’s lackluster attempt to celebrate the diversity of its student body. The children wore their national costumes for a little concert, followed by a communal lunch of everyone’s national dish. As always on such occasions, I tried hard to achieve an equitable division of Velvet’s two cultures. She dressed Russian, in a lovely traditional red “sarafan,” and elaborately beaded “kokoshnik,” which I felt altogether more flattering than any Annie Oakley, Laura Ingalls Wilder, or Pocahontas get-up. I cooked American: a large plate of chocolate chip cookies, which is a bit of a domestic goddess rabbit out of the hat, since there are no chocolate chips in Russia. I cleverly substituted M&Ms. To underscore our ethnic origins and get into the spirit of International Day, I stuck little American flags into the cookies. I found the effect festive and was pleased until I overheard one Scotswoman, who had brought (store-bought) shortbread say to another, who had sent her three sons to school in plaid skirts with what looked like very sharp knives dangling over their genitalia, “Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you ever saw?” I did not love the Scots mafia.

One International Day stands out clearly in my memory. Claudia and I perched on the undersized chairs at the back of the multipurpose room, and noted with interest that the 27-year-old Russian moms were out in fuller force than usual. In a bold move, they had occupied the first rows of chairs, which was normally the unspoken territory of Scots mafia. These stalwart, tartan-clad highlanders had retreated slightly, to the right side of the audience, and both groups were casting each other killer looks. It was exactly like a very awkward wedding where the bride and groom are from two distinctly different ethnic and religious groups.

The head teacher loped somewhat unevenly on to the platform. Claudia and I dug our elbows into each other. We both found him a deeply unsatisfactory head teacher. We were never completely convinced he was sober at school events, and we found his lengthy speeches borderline offensive. I often wondered what the training program for Head Teacher in Schools Abroad consisted of, but I was pretty sure that the syllabus had been formulated during the heyday of the British Raj, since his speeches had one theme: how Great Britain (still) ruled the world. This pissed everyone off. It annoyed us Americans because we knew we ruled the world. It ticked off the Russians, who were getting an increasingly urgent message from the Kremlin that Russia actually ran the world. It frustrated the Korean crowd because it took up too much camcorder battery time, and it even irritated the Scots, who made a distinction between Scotland and Great Britain. The only constituents who seemed to enjoy it were the three Bangladeshi families, who considered themselves very much part of Britain through their membership in the Commonwealth. There were no actual Britons to appreciate the head teacher’s patriotic ranting, of course, since they all went to the Other School.

But there was the head teacher, in his objectionable, grubby, mustard-colored corduroy suit, revving up for another diatribe in his flat, distinctly down-market Birmingham accent.

“Good afternoon, pay-rents,” he cooed, “Announcements first: We will be having two after-school clubs,” he continued with a supreme effort. “Mr. Pillock-Downes will be offering Morris Dancing on Tuesdays—”

There was a commotion as the ringleader of the 27-year-olds rose on her four-inch heels in one fluid, enviable gesture.

“I veesh to kuh-no,” she began in heavily accented English, “Vat you will be doing with zuh … “kak skazat ‘ploshchadka’?” She fumbled for the word.

“Playground.” I sang out loudly, realizing where she was going, and this earned me a few nods and even the occasional flash of expensively whitewashed teeth from the 27-year-olds.

“Zank you: playground,” said Four-Inch Heels. “Zis playground is terrible—”

“Yes,” said another 27-year-old, leaping to her feet in another fluid gesture that reminded me it was high time to visit the new Pilates studio on Tverskaya-Yamskaya. She joined the three-inch purple talons of her forefinger and middle finger together against her thumb and waggled her wrist up and down in the classic Russian gesture of emphasis.

“And, you know, this kindergarten next door which is—” here she looked at her friend for help, “’gosudarstvinnaya’?”

“State?” Claudia offered.

“State’s good,” I agreed, and gave a nod to Purple Talons and Four-Inch Heels, “State.”

“State,” said Purple Talons nodding her hennaed head vigorously. “Zank you very much. Zis playground is much nicer. But we pay?” Purple Talons heaved a massive Slavic shrug, meant to convey that the school had visited upon her the cumulative suffering of the Tartar-Mongol Yoke, the Napoleonic Invasion and the years 1917-1945. “Vhy?” Both women sat down, crossed their arms defensively, and looked at the head teacher.

What did they expect him to say? His pasty face turned the color of his grubby mustard suit, and he moved rubbery lips up and down, but no sound came out. He cast his eyes wildly around the room, and then finally looked in abject panic to the Scots contingent. Fiona MacQuihrr sighed, moved her bottom into a leveraging position, and hauled herself awkwardly up on to her hindquarters.

“She’s the one who thought my American flags were ridiculous,” I whispered to Claudia.

“Wench,” Claudia said.

In a thick Glaswegian brogue I felt was going to be impossible for Russian moms, the Koreans, or indeed even Claudia or me to decipher, Fiona wrested control of the meeting:

“We will be orrrrrganizing a Brrrringg and Buy in April of outgrrrrrroooan clothes and used boooooks to rrrraise funds for the new playground equipment,” she began.

“Sorry … sorry,” said Purple Talons standing again, shaking her hair extensions vigorously. “I kuh-no zis Bring and zis Buy. No more. Vee will bring, and we will be buying. Vee have decided … and I vant to say you zat my husband is sending his … ‘oborudovaniye’?” she looked back at Claudia and myself questioningly.

“Holy cow,” breathed Claudia softly.

I fixed Fiona MacQuihrr with a revengeful gaze before enunciating clearly for the benefit of the room. “Equipment.”

The head teacher turned a deeper shade of mustard.

“Yes, zank you, hees ekvipment, and vee vill make the playground, because I don’t zink othervise you get it done.” She sat down and crossed her whippet-thin thighs defensively.

The Koreans looked baffled.

“Which one is her husband?” whispered Claudia to me, “The one with three chase cars and the bodyguard?”

“No,” I said, trying to summon a visual, “I think he’s the one with the square jaw who lives in Triumph Palace on the 54th floor. Didn’t your kids go to the birthday party they had for the entire school last year? The one with the caviar and t.A.T.u.?”

“Right,” said Claudia.

“I dinna think—” began Fiona MacQuihrr in an effort to wrest control back to her side of the multipurpose room.

“Vat don’t you kuh-no?” demanded Purple Talons, extending her open palm upward toward Fiona. “Vat you vill sell? Old cloh-thes? In Raaaaasia, we do not buy the old cloth-thes.”

Here we go, I thought: cultural collision course.

“Yes,” said Four-Inch Heels, rising again, “you think what? You think we cannot afford the new cloh-thes? Our childs is not the orphans to need the dirty old cloh-thes of the foreign childs!”

“Sveta,” murmured Purple Talons, “’spokoino’ … calm, please.” She turned around to the auditorium, “Sorry, I don’t mean to say your childs are dirty, but how do we kuh-no from where comes these old cloh-thes?”

“Yes,” insisted Four-Inch Heels, “they will have … ‘mikroby’?” she looked back at me.

“Germs,” I said with a tight-lipped apologetic glance at the Koreans.

“Germs … zank you very much. OK, I no say your childs have zee germs but …,” she tilted her head vaguely in the direction of the three Bangladeshi moms, “how do we kuh-no?”

“Uh oh,” I said to Claudia, “this is getting out of hand.” She nodded. I signaled that it was time to leave.

Racial slurs aside, I drove away with a new appreciation of the 27-year-olds. I had always considered them somewhat vapid — at best decorative — but I was happy to revise my opinion. Four-Inch Heels and Purple Talons were domestic goddesses of their own kind, and they had provided me with a mother lode of material to blog about.

Doing It Like Downton

The Dowager Countess’s squelching remarks don’t translate into Russian

Highly successful domestic goddesses must publish. With this in mind, I started to blog in 2009, and I only wish there had been blogging back in the Northern Butova days. My blog attracted a fairly attentive and appreciative audience in Moscow and abroad, and I went in search of other opportunities to earn enough to keep myself in yoga pants. After careful research, I pitched a regular cooking column to an editor of one English-language publication.

“Yeah … well,” he drawled, when he arrived at Starbucks 40 minutes after our agreed meeting time, “your writing doesn’t hold much relevance for our readers.”

I was seriously taken aback. Doesn’t everyone want to know the history of kvas?

“How not relevant?” I pressed.

“Well,” he drawled, “I mean, all you seem to do jet-set about and complain about your domestic staff … that’s not really relevant for our readers. What I’d really like is for you to spy on the people you have dinner with and write about that.”

I didn’t follow up with Snarky Editor Guy, but I think about our exchange a lot. I mainly think about it when I am up to my arms in Fairy dish-washing liquid, hand-washing the component parts of sharp-bladed kitchen appliances.

When she left Russia several years ago, Claudia bequeathed me her Italian espresso machine and housekeeper, Lena. Both proved excellent additions to the household, except for the fact that Lena is afraid of the espresso machine, so I have to dismantle it and clean it every day. For a domestic goddess, this is but the work of a minute, but the problem is that Lena’s fear extends beyond the espresso machine to include the blender, the juice maker, the rice cooker and the food processor. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t mind doing all of the scary dishwashing by hand, but it does cut into my jet-setting time.

HRH informs me that dealing with domestic staff, like cooking, should be the provenance of the lady of the house, so I try my best to deal with it efficiently and effectively. I fear, however, that I will never master this aspect of being a domestic goddess. I wonder sometimes if a domestic goddess should need so much help around the house, but Russia is a human-resources rich country, so like most families, we have a cleaning lady and a driver. OK, full disclosure: We have two drivers, but one is for HRH’s work and the other is for everything else. The latter, Tolya, also serves as the token man around the house. When he isn’t driving my in-laws to Auchan or me to Dorogomilovsky Market, Tolya changes the light bulbs, fixes the garbage disposal and calls the plumber. He deals with that surly crowd who fixes things, he pays the cable bill and does a host of other tiny jobs that would bring our household to a screeching halt if he didn’t do them. Tolya is the only person who truly understands how the Italian espresso machine works. He’s around a lot. We have Lena who cleans everything but the sharp-bladed appliances and often wants to settle down for a lengthy chat about the rising cost of buckwheat. We used to have a nanny, who was super while Velvet was a toddler, but who got a little odd as Velvet got older. Lena and my mother-in-law were united in opposition to Nanny, but after I worked up the courage to let her go (a three-martini job), Lena and Mother-in-Law have fallen out over what should go into the dishwasher and how often it should be run. No one cares what I think.

Three people who aren’t related to you hanging out in your house — especially when that house doubles as your office — is a lot of people, no matter how much scut work they are doing for you. There are times when my living room feels like O’Hare Airport. I deal with this not by creating clear boundaries and enforcing them, but by hiding. I plan my days strategically, rising early to pack a bag of essentials and slip out the door before the Help arrives. I don’t go far: just next door to Starbucks — you may have seen me there — to eke out two venti lattes and tap on my computer until I am sure everyone has gone for the day.

HRH says this is crazy. I respond that I am certainly not the only expat to adopt this tactic. HRH doesn’t understand what the problem is. When he arrives in the apartment, Lena scurries out of his way, Tolya retreats down to the lobby, and suddenly we have the place to ourselves. I wish I knew how he does it. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing — being despotic just seems to come naturally to Russians. They’ve always been hierarchical, despite that unsuccessful 74-year experiment last century.

Unlike me, HRH’s DNA is encoded with the human resources principles laid down by Ivan the Terrible, honed by Josef Stalin and currently back in vogue thanks to Vladimir Putin. He is a total tyrant, and guess what? It works! They all worship him! They call him “Vy” (formal “You”) and use his patronymic, scurrying like underfed rats to do his bidding. Tolya waits in freezing temperatures all night for HRH to come out of his business saunas. Me? I let him go after he takes me to Scandinavia restaurant because I would hate for Tolya to see me when I emerge four hours later. Lena bestirs herself to wash the windows when HRH barks at her that they are long-overdo for a clean. But for me, even contemplating bringing the windows up with Lena makes me break out in hives.

At the end of the day, I would rather be a domestic goddess than a despot. I don’t plan to learn how to bark. I would like to find a way to be more assertive with Lena and Tolya. Sitting in my Starbucks refuge, I search the Kindle store on Amazon.com for a book on modern household staff management, but to date there isn’t one. So, instead, I screen “Downton Abbey” on iTunes for clues. I watch carefully, hoping to pick up that noble, magnanimous but essentially totally in-charge thing Lord Grantham has going on; or master one of those withering rejoinders the Dowager Countess delivers each episode.

Alas, they don’t sound the same in Russian.

This personal essay first appeared in The Moscow Time’s 20th Anniversary anthology, Russia For Experts, which is a trilogy:

Foreigner’s Guide to Russia trilogy:

Moscovore’s Creator & Curator, Jennifer Eremeeva

Welcome to The Moscovore!

This site is dedicated to exploring, cooking, and celebrating great food in Moscow.   It is the site that didn’t exist (neither did the Internet) when I first came to live in Russia in 1991 with HRH, my “handsome Russian husband.”  I did not set out to be a cook, but living in Russia turned me into a passionate one.  Maybe it was the ongoing challenge of having to adjust to the metric system or the fact that Russia in the early 90s was no culinary Mecca.  The currency was all over the place and food imports consisted of “Bush Legs” (dark meat of chicken) and Amaretto from Italy, which, trust me, do not work well together.    Local food stores had sketchy supplies and surly service.   The first year, in the run up to a dinner party, I would flip through the pages of Julia Child’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking for inspiration, only to slam it shut with frustration when she cheerfully enjoined me to “ask your butcher to butterfly your lamb leg, removing the bone.”  What butcher?   The only meat I could find was frozen, and sold by scary looking women in shops that were always about to close.

Good food, however, is universal.   Slowly, but surely, I ran it to ground in Russia.  I scoped outrageously expensive dollar stores for diplomats and businessmen, hoarding my money to splurge on French cornishons and Modena balsamic vinegar.   I discovered Moscow’s magnificent farmers’ markets, full of aromatic herbs, fresh meat and delectable produce and the culinary adventure continued!

I became a food writer by accident as well when stumbled in to writing a column about Russian food in Russia Beyond The Headlines, for whom I was already writing a monthly humor column and feature articles.   I found that researching, writing and photographing food was incredibly interesting and rewarding.     Instead of just writing about Russian cooking, I hypothesized, what if I started writing about cooking in Russia?

I launched the Moscovore in October 2011 with the goal to share my 20 years of cooking gaffes, market trawls, discoveries, and total nightmares with readers.   Mindful of the confusion many cooks encounter in dealing with foreign measurements, I have created handy conversion tables for volumes, liquids, oven temperature, butter (always confusing,) and pan sizes.  These are located under the “Cooking Resources” section at the top of the menu.  You will also find guides to Moscow’s supermarkets, how to navigate the food markets, how to make a Russian language shopping list, and how to ask for cinnamon at the market.

The Fine Print:

I’m not a trained chef, and I don’t consider myself a recipe developer or a cookbook writer.  I am, however, a passionate recipe and cookbook reader and collector.  Most of the recipes you will find here have been adapted from and are based on other people’s recipes and techniques, and I will always credit them for their work.   The content and photographs, unless indicated otherwise, are the property of the author and all rights are reserved.  Each recipe on The Moscovore has been tested by the author(s) and all of the ingredients and equipment are available in Moscow.

The Moscovore is a community, and I hope you’ll join in actively by using the comment section of each post to add your thoughts about what you’ve read, cooked, and what you’d like to see on the site going forward!

So, are you ready to become a Moscovore as well?!  Roll up your sleeves, and let’s get cooking!

Jennifer

A mid week quickie

I’m lamenting the loss of my favorite vegetable kiosk a lot lately.  It was on my way home from almost everything and they were very nice about getting me hard-to-find things.  But it disappeared in the Great Vegetable Kiosk Purge of 2010.   I had high hopes for another kiosk that was also shut down during the Purge, but not removed by men in black leather in the middle of the night.  Hope soared when I saw a crew fitting it with slanted shelves – which often feature in Fruit and Vegetable kiosks.  Hopes were dashed this week when those slanted shelves began to fill up with those really sub par cookies you see in kiosks around town.  You know the kind of thing – perfectly rendered and tastes like sawdust.  Who eats that stuff anyway?

Really, what can Mr. Sobyanin be thinking?

So these days, I have to go a little farther in a vegetable emergency like the one that happened this week.   HRH (my “Handsome Russian Husband”) phoned to say he was coming home early, which for him means before 10:30 pm.  This is highly unusual for a midweek evening, so after I picked myself up from the floor whence I had fallen out of the sheer shock of it, I had to club together something for dinner in quick order. On hand was a stack of plum tomatoes and some mushrooms and these pointed me in the right direction.  I ran to the closest vegetable stand and grabbed a yellow onion, a lemon, some garlic, and an eggplant.  I happened to have some ground veal on hand, but beef or pork would work easily well.  So, of course would no meat at all if your tastes run to that kind of thing.   I got to work and had dinner on the table within 45 minutes.

Because this is a mid week quickie – it’s important to take the great Jacques Pepin’s advice and re-use your pots and pans so you don’t have a mountain of dishes to do when you’re done!

Any kind of pasta would work with this – I used standard sized spaghetti but when you are faced with a midweek quickie – beggers can’t be choosers.  But what you should do is that final fussy step that seems like a lot of trouble with the pasta water.  Makes a huge difference!!

Tomato Pasta with Eggplant and Mushrooms

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Serves	6
Prep time	30 minutes
Cook time	40 minutes
Total time	1 hours, 10 minutes
Meal type	Lunch, Main Dish
Region	Italian
By author	The Moscovore

A quick and easy pasta combining fresh plum tomatoes, mushrooms, eggplant and meat. Throw it together quickly on a weekday for a satisfying dinner.

Ingredients

• (1 lb) 500 g plum tomatoes (cored, seeded, and roughly chopped)
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon sweet butter
• 4 tablespoons olive oil (divided into two equal portions of 2 Tbl each)
• 1 yellow onion (peeled and chopped)
• 4 cloves garlic (peeled and minced)
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh lemon zest
• 1 eggplant (cubed)
• (10 oz) 300 g mushrooms (topped, tailed, and roughly chopped)
• (10 oz) 300 g ground meat (beef, pork, or veal or a combination)
• 3 tablespoons fresh oregano or basil (roughly chopped)
• 1 packet spaghetti, linguine, or any long pasta
• (1/3 cup) 75 ml Parmesan cheese (grated)

Directions

1.	Core and seed the plum tomatoes. Place them with the sugar in a saucepan with a lid. Simmer over medium heat for 10-15 minutes until the tomatoes have lost their shape. Puree the tomatoes with a handheld mixer or in a blender. Set aside.
2.	If you have a lot of lead time, salt the cubed eggplant and set in a colendar to drain. If you don’t, just skip that step and proceed with the next one: arrange the cubed eggplant on a wide plate and cover with a piece of paper towel. Microwave them for 2 minutes at high heat. Set aside.
3.	Melt the butter in a deep-sided skillet until it begins to bubble. Add the mushrooms and sauté gently for 10 minutes. Watch carefully – the mushrooms will initially absorb all the butter, but then they begin to leech liquid. Continue to sauté until they begin to re-absorb their liquid. Tip them into a bowl and set aside. Wipe out the skillet.
4.	Fill a stock or pasta pot with cold water. Add 2 Tbl of the olive oil and a generous pinch of salt. Bring to a boil as you prepare the sauce.
5.	Heat the remaining olive oil in the clean skillet. Sweat the onions and garlic until soft. Add the ground meat and the dried oregano and brown until the meat is cooked through (4-5 minutes.) Add the tomato paste and stir to combine. Cook for an additional 2 minutes, then fold in the eggplant and mushrooms, the lemon zest, and the tomato puree. Bring to a gentle simmer, then reduce the heat to low and let the sauce simmer gently for an additional 5- 7 minutes. Remove the sauce to a bowl and set aside. Wipe out the skillet to prepare it for one more go.
6.	When the sauce is done, bring the pasta water to a roiling, violent boil. Add the pasta, reduce the heat to medium, and cook according to package instructions until al dente. If the package instructions are in a language you don’t speak or read (as they so often are here in Russia) then cook for about 6-7 minutes before you begin to test it. The pasta should be just underdone slightly – a little chewy. Sure, you can throw it at a wall if you want…
7.	Reserve ½-cup of the pasta water, then drain the pasta in a colander, but don’t rinse it under the tap!
8.	Heat the pasta water in the clean skillet until it is simmering. Add the pasta to it and cook on medium heat for 1-2 minutes until almost all of the liquid is gone. Add the sauce and the parmesan cheese and toss vigorously to combine.
9.	Serve immediately topped with the fresh chopped basil and oregano!

Dear Readers,

What’s your favorite weeknight special?   Are you good at quickies?  Do you have a vegetable kiosk that closed down?  Let us know the answers to all these questions by hitting the comment below.

Did you try this recipe?  If so, rate it by clicking on the matriyoshkas below.

Try More Recipes Like This One from The Moscovore:

Asian Sesame Noodles

Beef Stroganoff

Ragu Bolognese

Explore Recipes that Use These Ingredients:

• Pesto to the Rescue – Hearty Minestrone
• Pasta Recipes Made Healthy
• Eggplant Sauce
• Eggplant Bake

Do you ever feel like you are the last person in the galaxy who eats wheat products? I know I do.    I’m all for pulses and grains and healthy eating and everything, but I do occasionally hanker for the occasional pasta dish, particularly at a time of year when the plum tomatoes and eggplant are in season and they are practically giving them away in the markets.   This wonderful recipe from Williams Sonoma solves the problem beautifully – it’s like pasta-free lasagna if you can imagine such a thing.   All the flavor, most of the texture – and none of the guilt!

This recipe has many steps but much of it can be made ahead of time and assembled at the last minute for the final quick 20 minute cooking time.  It is also quite flexible.  You can use tinned tomatoes for this or a jar of sauce if tomatoes are out of season.  You can also substitute veal, pork, or beef for the sausage meat, or go vegetarian if you prefer, in which case I suggest adding 1-1/2 cups of sautéed mushrooms for both the flavor and the texture.

Ricotta and mozzarella are readily available in most Moscow supermarkets.  On a recent trip to Danilovsky Rynok, we unearthed both on offer at the dairy section of the market – wonderfully fresh.    You can also substitute soft Russian tvorog in a pinch.

This dish looks lovely coming to the table and a crusty baguette and crisp green salad makes it a meal.

Eggplant and Ricotta Rolls with Tomato Sauce

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Serves	6
Prep time	1 hour
Cook time	20 minutes
Total time	1 hour, 20 minutes
Meal type	Main Dish
Misc	Pre-preparable, Serve Hot
Region	Italian
Website	Williams Sonoma

Everything but the carbs in this delightful riff on lasagna that combines eggplant, ricotta, mozzarella and a hearty tomato sauce with or without Italian sausage. A perfect Sunday night family dinner!

Ingredients

• 3 medium sized eggplants (topped, tailed and sliced lengthwise into 1/4-inch (1/2 centimeter) slices)
• (1/4 cup) 60 ml olive oil
• (2 Tbl) 30 ml olive oil
• (5 oz) 200 g sweet Italian Sausage (casings removed and crumbled)
• 1 yellow onion (peeled and chopped)
• 2 cloves garlic (mashed with 1 tsp of sea salt)
• (1 lb) 500 g plum tomatoes (seeded, cored and roughly chopped)
• (2 Tbl) 30 ml tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• (1 cup) 250 ml ricotta cheese
• (1/2 cup) 125 ml mozzarella cheese (cut into small pieces)
• (4 Tbl) 60 ml Parmesan cheese (grated)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• (1 Tbl) 15 ml flat Italian parsley (finely minced)
• salt (to taste)

Directions

1.	Preheat the oven to 450° F (232°C).
2.	Prepare the eggplant: arrange the slices on a baking sheet lined with paper towel. Sprinkle the eggplant with salt and set aside for 1-2 hours.
3.	Pat dry and brush with ¼ cup of olive oil on each side and arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 10 minutes until the eggplant is lightly browned. Turn the slices and bake for an additional 5 – 7 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside.
4.	Adjust the oven temperature to 350°F (180°C).
5.	Place the plum tomatoes in a saucepan with the sugar and cook on medium heat for 15 minutes, until the tomatoes begin to break up. Puree the tomatoes in a food processor fitted with a steel blade or with a hand held processor until smooth.
6.	Heat the remaining 2 Tbl of olive oil in a deep-sided skillet or Dutch Oven. Add the onion and garlic and sauté until the onions begin to soften. Add the sausage and brown for 4-5 minutes until thoroughly cooked – make sure the sausage has lost its pink color. Add the tomato paste and cook an additional 2-3 minutes.
7.	Add the tomato puree and stir to combine. Cover and cook the sauce for 4-5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
8.	Combine the ricotta, mozzarella, parsley, and nutmeg in a mixing bowl, using the back of a fork to mash the two cheeses together.
9.	Place one teaspoon of the cheese mixture on the wide end of the eggplant slice and roll the eggplant around the cheese. Repeat with the rest of the mixture.
10.	Spread half of the sauce on the bottom of a shallow baking dish, then arrange the eggplant and cheese rolls over them. Use the remaining sauce to fill in the space between the rolls. Sprinkle the Parmesan cheese over the top of the dish.
11.	Bake in the oven until the sauce begins to bubble lightly.

Try Other Recipes like this one on The Moscovore:

Ragu Bolognese

Hearty Minestrone

Tomato and Ginger Chutney

Explore Other Recipes using these Ingredients:

• Spinach & Eggplant Lasagna Roll-ups with Rosemary Balsamic-Reduction Sauce
• Roasted eggplant stuffed with ricotta, mushrooms, anchovies.
• Three Tomato Pasta
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I’ve always passed minestrone by, until someone told me about the pesto.  Now I am addicted!Minestrone is a hearty vegetable soup from the Romagna, of which Marcella Hazan, author of The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking,  says, “very little is put into the minestrone beyond a variety of seasonal vegetables, whose separate characteristics give way and intermingle through very slow cooking in broth.  The result is a soup of mellow, dense flavor that recalls no vegetable in particular but all of them at once.”

I don’t know what it is about minestrone that always made me pass it over on menus or in the tinned soup aisle at the supermarket.  Somehow, it was never appealing to me, until my friend Susan served it this summer as part of a wonderful meal she made from her farmers market share.  Bursting with fresh flavors, the soup was already set to win me over, but what really converted me to minestrone was the fresh pesto Susan served with it.  I’m a big pesto fan, as is the entire Moscovore family, and that infusion of flavor turned a good vegetable soup into a great dish!

Minestrone Recipes:

With plum tomatoes, zucchini, and carrots at their peak, autumn is the perfect time to try some minestrone.  I turned to my cookbook collection for technique and interpretation.   Marcella Hazan, ever my first stop for all things Italian, reminded me to cook the vegetables in order of their water content, which makes for a more balanced texture.   The geniuses at Cook’s Illustrated in their authoritative Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook suggested the pancetta, which gives the soup a wonderful underpinning of flavor.  Pancetta is available in the more upscale supermarkets of Moscow, but don’t stress if you can’t find it – a good quality bacon will do just as well.   The Cook’s Illustrated recipe also makes the point that the starch from the cannellini beans helps to thicken the soup, rescuing it from being too thin and watery.  They recommend using dried beans and rehydrating them, but I found that tinned beans and their liquid addressed the problem adequately.   The addition of the pasta is my own, and can certainly be eliminated.   To make this soup vegetarian, substitute vegetable stock for chicken stock and don’t add the pancetta.

You can make and store both the pesto and the soup for up to 5 days in the fridge, but I recommend storing them separately so that you can add the pesto just at the moment you serve the soup for maximum impact.  The soup freezes adequately.  If you want to make a large batch to freeze, I recommend making it up to the addition of the beans and pasta and then finish the soup when you de-frost it.

Hearty Minestrone

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Serves	8
Prep time	40 minutes
Cook time	1 hour
Total time	1 hour, 40 minutes
Dietary	Gluten Free
Meal type	Lunch, Soup
Misc	Pre-preparable, Serve Hot
Region	Italian

A hearty vegetable soup with a fusion of flavors, in a rich tomato-based broth and topped with vibrant green pesto.

Ingredients

• 1 tin white cannellini beans
• (4 oz) 110 g pancetta or bacon
• (1 Tbl) 15 ml olive oil
• 2 ribs celery
• 2 carrots
• 1 zucchini
• 1 large yellow onions
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 pinch coarse sea salt
• (1 pound) 500 g plum tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• (1 quart) 1 l chicken broth
• (1 cup) 250 ml small shaped pasta
• 1 Parmesan Rind
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 thin slice fresh ground black pepper

For the Pesto

• (1 Tbl) 15 ml pine nuts
• 1 bunch fresh green basil
• (1/4 cup) 60 ml best quality olive oil
• (1 tsp) 5 ml salt

Directions

1.	Place the tomatoes in a saucepan with the sugar and cook for 15 minutes until the tomatoes begin to loose their shape. Puree the mixture in a food processor fitted with a steel blade or with a hand-held mixer. Set aside.
2.	Heat the olive oil and pancetta in a heavy-bottomed Dutch oven or soup pot. Stir frequently while the pancetta browns and begins to render grease.
3.	Add the garlic and onions and sauté until the onions begin to soften. Add the carrots and cook for 2 minutes, then the pepper, cook for 1 minute. Add the celery and cook for 1 minute, then the zucchini, and cook for 5-8 minutes until the vegetables begin to soften. Add the pinch of salt and cook for an additional minute.
4.	Add the tomato mixture, the Parmesan rind, the bay leaf, the pepper, and the stock to the vegetables and stir to combine. Cook, covered for 45 minutes.
5.	Add the tin of beans, with their liquid. Bring the mixture to a simmer, then reduce heat, cover, and cook over low heat for 20 minutes. Add the pasta and cook for 10 minutes until the pasta cooked.
6.	Toast the pine nuts in a saucepan until they are lightly browned, then combine the pine nuts, basil, salt and oil in a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Combine until smooth.
7.	Serve the minestrone with a spoonful of fresh pesto on top.

Dear Readers:

Are you a minestrone fan?  A pesto fan?  Are you already missing the plum tomatoes?

Did you try this recipe?  Weigh in by rating this recipe on the Moscovore Matriyoshka scale and leave your comments below!

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Green Soup

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• Cauliflower Pesto Soup
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Black Beluga Lentils in Tangy Dressing with Fresh Vegetables

This lentil salad reminds me of my favorite grey cashmere cardigan – I can dress it up, I can dress it down, I can wear it anywhere, and it fits me just right.  It never ever lets me down.  So, too this lentil salad, which has evolved over almost three decades, tweaked by my mother and my sister and finally me.  The origins are a similar dish served by a good friend of the family named Louise.  Louise was a lentil zealot – I believe she would have served them over vanilla ice cream if pressed, and I think most of the people at her table would have ate them without putting up a fuss.

About Black Beluga Lentils:

My choice of lentil for this salad is the black “beluga” lentils, called so because they resemble grains of black caviar.  I think they are almost as good.   Beluga lentils are a better choice in a salad than red lentils, used in Red Lentil and Carrot Soup because they hold their shape and have a less gummy flavor that the conventional green lentil.   You can find them easily in Moscow at most supermarkets, or if you are not in Moscow, at better food stores or online.

Black Beluga Lentils and Red Football Lentils

Black Beluga Lentil Salad pairs incredibly well with lamb and game – I don’t think lamb has made one single appearance on my table without them.   When I have them in the fridge, they make a great lunch, topped with poached chicken, roasted vegetables, or goat cheese.   If you want to bulk this salad up, try adding some steamed potatoes and carrots.   They are served at room temperature, so they are one of those reliable dishes you can make ahead of time and whisk to the table without a lot of fuss.

Dear Readers:

What are your favorite ways to eat lentils?  Do you have a favorite dal recipe?  I’m in the market for one!  Let us know by hitting the comment button below.  If you’ve made this recipe — or if you just think it is a great idea, give us a little matriyoshka love below, won’t you?

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• Red Lentil and Carrot Soup
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Lentil soup is one of those things that can go horribly wrong.   It doesn’t have to.

Tweaking Red Lentil Soup

Unappetizing, grey, watery, and tasteless is the verdict most often hurled at lentil soup.    This is a shame because with just a few extra steps, lentil soup can be a bowl of pure magic.

Choose your lentils carefully:

Bad lentil soup often begins with bad lentils.  Instead of the larger  tough and rubbery green lentils, try the smaller and tastier black or red lentils.  My top choice for a winning lentil soup is always red “football” lentils, which are happily readily available in Moscow at most supermarkets.

Black Beluga Lentils and Red Football Lentils

I’ve developed this recipe over a few years after being very inspired by fellow food blogger Sarah Melamed from the mouthwatering blog Food Bridge.    The success of Sarah’s red lentil soup recipe is not only a great balance of flavor, but attention to the aesthetics of the soup.   She rightly points out that when red lentils cook, they lose their brilliant orange hue and become sludgy beige.  Carrots, red peppers, tomatoes, and tomato paste do stellar work in re-introducing vibrant orange back into the mix.

Puree Half of the Lentil Soup:

Lentil soup to my mind should never be watery, but nor should it be a smooth puree.  There needs to be a balance and a bite.   This is achieved by the use of tomato paste, which helps to bind the ingredients together and by pureeing half of the soup and combining it with the remainder.

Many lentil eaters are committed vegetarians.  This soup can easily be made vegetarian by substituting vegetable stock for chicken stock, though if you are a meat eater, using homemade chicken stock gives Red Lentil Soup a great flavor layer that adds to its success.

If you are a curry fan, by all means, introduce that spice into the mix by the addition of two tablespoons of curry powder with the dried lentils.

To bulk up this soup, add half a cup of cooked quinoa or bulgur.

Red Lentil Soup

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A hearty red lentil soup boosted in color and flavor by carrots, tomatoes and peppers and spiced with coriander, cinnamon and ginger!

Ingredients

• 1 large red onion (peeled and chopped)
• 3 medium sized carrots (peeled and chopped)
• (1 pound) 500 g plum tomatoes (cored, seeded, and chopped)
• (1-1/2 cups) 375 ml red lentils
• 3 cloves garlic (peeled and minced)
• 1 knob ginger (peeled and minced)
• (2 Tbl) 30 ml tomato paste
• (2 tsp) 10 ml cinnamon
• (1 Tbl) 15 ml whole coriander seeds (crushed with a mortar and pestle)
• (1 tsp) 5 ml paprika
• 1 pinch red chili pepper
• 2 red peppers, (cored and chopped)
• (2 Tbl) 30 mlml grated orange zest
• (2 Tbl) 30 ml coarse sea salt
• (2 tsp) 10 ml cracked black pepper
• (1 cup) 250 ml white wine
• (1 quart) 1 l chicken or vegetable stock
• (1/4 cup) 60 ml fresh cilantro and mint (roughly chopped)
• 1 lemon (sliced into wedges)
• (2 Tbl) 30 ml caster sugar

Directions

1.	Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed soup pot or Dutch Oven. Saute the onions and garlic gently for five or six minutes. As the onion and garlic begins to soften, sprinkle one tablespoon of the salt over them.
2.	When the onion and garlic are soft and translucent, add the dried lentils and tomato paste and the sugar and stir to combine. Cook gently for three minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon to coat the lentils with the tomato paste.
3.	Pour the white wine over the mixture and bring to a light simmer. Cook for two minutes, allowing the lentils to absorb the liquid.
4.	Add the carrots, tomatoes, ginger, orange zest, and all of the spices. Cook covered for ten minutes.
5.	Add the chicken broth, bring to a boil then cover and cook for 30 minutes or until the lentils are soft.
6.	Divide the soup into two batches. Puree one batch in a blender or with a hand-held mixture until smooth. Combine the two batches and heat though gently.
7.	Serve garnished with fresh cilantro (coriander) and lemon wedges.

Dear Readers,

Are you a lentil fan?  What’s your favorite dish?  Have you endured watery lentil soup?

If you’ve tried and liked this recipe, give it a few matriyoshkas, won’t you?

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