In St. Petersburg, Russia in the 1830s, peasant-style was fashionable, literature was becoming more democratic and, somewhat weirdly, the poet of human baseness, Nikolai Gogol was producing some of the best food writing to be found in the Russian canon. His eerie and baroque first collection of short stories, Village Evenings Near Dikanka is a series of narrations by a bee-keeper to the folks gathered in his cottage at night as they’re served snacks: “Delicious beyond description!…Pies you couldn’t imagine in your wildest dreams: they melt in your mouth! And the butter—it just runs down your lips when you bite into them.” Every time I read Gogol, I want to cook like the Ukrainian housewives in his stories . In this post, I try to recreate a spread from this 1959 edition of Gogol’s collected works.
The story “Old World Landowners” is about “solitary owners of a remote village” who are “delightful in their simplicity,” but who are revealed to be lazy and ineffectual managers of their village. Their ceilings are covered with flies; their forests are denuded by theft; and both eventually die a dim, willful and superstitious death involving an ominous little cat. But the lady is a good cook and neat housekeeper, and this may be what matters most. Life in the village degrades even further after the couple’s departure. When her husband wants a mid-morning meal, the woman whips out poppy-seed hand-pies, pickled mushrooms and a silver goblet of vodka at 10am, which sounds delightful—and very Russian.
The following recipes are mishmashed by me from a variety of sources, including my own ways of doing things, Anne Volokh’s The Art of Russian Cuisine, user recipes on good-menu.ru and the sadly Russian-language-only 19th-century culinary bible A Present to the Young Housewife, by Elena Molokhovets. I learned that poppyseeds are difficult to find in quantity in Brooklyn and are smaller, more dry and less aromatic than those found in the Russian countryside. (They’re available at a good price at Sahadi’s on Atlantic Avenue.) Also, they’re very difficult to wash out of a sieve .
The housewife from the story served a type of pickled mushroom wild-foraged in the countryside called ryzhinki (red pine or saffron milk cap in English, possibly) which I’ve never seen in America. The closest I could get to a meaty wild mushroom of its type was a selection of king oyster mushrooms from the Union Square Farmer’s market. But this just in (too late for my own cooking): gourmet markets like Union Market in Brooklyn appear to have fresh chanterelles – a cult mushroom of the Russian countryside – in season now.
Gogol’s heroine made her marinades either with black-currant leaf (in season in August), wild thyme, or cloves and walnuts. I adapted a favorite marinade to include the latter.
The resulting meal, which my husband, children and I ate as a pre-dinner snack, was an unusual but striking combination of honey-drenched poppyseeds wrapped in soft bread, and toothsome and bracing bites of mushroom.
The writer’s daughter: “The Russian child does not smile for photos.”
I served it with shots of homemade blackcurrant-infused vodka, but any vodka will do, and the more the merrier. As Ginger Panko, the beekeeper says, “Heavens above, the number of tasty dishes there are in the world! Whenever you sit down to a meal you stuff yourself and that’s the truth!”
Poppy Seed Pieroshki (little pies); makes about 15 – 20
Preheat the oven to 400
For the Dough:
1 package of active dry yeast
1/2 cup half and half, warmed
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 stick butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups King Arthur flour, or up to 2.5 cups of other brands (King Arthur tends to be more absorbent)
– prove the yeast by mixing it in a bowl with the warm half and half and 1/2 tsp sugar, and 1/2 tsp flour, and then placing it in a bowl containing hot water for 10-15 minutes, until it starts to puff up
– add the eggs, butter, salt and sugar; beat or stir to combine for a few minutes.
– add the flour gradually, a half cup at a time, until the dough is dry enough to handle, then turn out on a floured surface to knead. The finished dough should be smooth and elastic.
– set the dough in a greased pan and let it rise until it has doubled in bulk (1.5 to 2 hours)
For the filling:
2 cups poppyseeds
2 tbs sugar
1 tbs honey
milk
-boil the poppyseeds in milk for 5 min, let the mixture cool, then drain and dry completely with paper towels
-optional step: pound in a mortar and pestle or give it a whirl in a food processor to break down the seeds a bit
-add sugar and honey
To form the pieroshki:
– whisk together one egg and a few tbs hot water to make an egg-wash (milk also works)
-shape the dough into a long sausage, about 1.5-inches thick and then chop into 1-inch pieces.
-roll the pieces out to an oval shape about 1/4 inch thick on a well-floured surface, one at a time
-dab in a tbs of filling each, then fold short sides together, and pinch the seam until it sticks
-place on a cookie sheet and give the formed pieroshki 20-30 minutes to rise again
-brush with egg- or milk-wash and bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until cooked.
Quick-pickled mushrooms
for the marinade:
1/2 cup vinegar
1 cup water
1 bay leaf
4 allspice berries
4 black peppercorns
1 whole clove
1 tbs sugar
1/4 tsp salt
Ingredients–other
About 4 cups of fresh mushrooms, cleaned and chopped
half a cup of walnuts, chopped
chopped parsley for garnish
1 tablespoon olive oil
-In a small saucepan, combine all the marinade ingredients, bring to a boil, remove from the heat, and cool.
-Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil, add mushrooms, wait till water returns to a boil and then taste for doneness. You want the mushrooms to be cooked but firm, around 3 to 5 minutes; drain and cool
-Combine nuts, mushrooms and marinade, at least two hours before serving and preferably overnight. Chill.
-Drain and sprinkle with chopped parsley to serve.
from The Paris Review http://ift.tt/2xPF2N0
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