Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love

Roundup of Recipes

1. SALAD OLIVIER

Salad Olivier is the Russian’s Thanksgiving turkey. I can’t think of any other holiday dish that would come close to Salad Olivier in popularity. The biggest, most cherished, and most important holiday in Russia is New Year’s Eve, and Salad Olivier has always been the centerpiece of that holiday meal. There are so many childhood memories and nostalgic cravings centered around Olivier that it’s hard to say what really makes it so important, the dish itself or the complicated emotions that arise with it. There are many stories of its origins and just as many versions of an original recipe, so I don’t trust any of them. The core ingredients are boiled potatoes, eggs, pickles, and some kind of chopped meat; the rest is open to interpretation. Here, I’m including two of the traditional class-oriented versions and a third one I created especially for health-conscious Americans, with the vague hope of persuading them that Salad Olivier is well worth eating and can be quite delicious.

PLEBEIAN VERSION

Bologna from a Russian food store

Boiled potatoes

Pickles

Boiled egg

Canned peas

Boiled carrots

Mayonnaise dressing

Lots of mayonnaise is essential; add more and more until the salad makes a wet slurping sound while you mix it, similar to the sound of the snow slush on the streets of Manhattan when you step in it. There is not enough mayonnaise until the salad makes that sucking sound.

The plebeian version is usually served in a two-gallon enameled bowl. The important thing is to pile up the salad so high that it forms a sloppy mound in the middle of the bowl.

ARISTOCRATIC VERSION

Boiled chicken breast

Boiled potatoes

Pickles

Boiled egg

Canned peas

Possibly a peeled green apple

Half mayonnaise/half sour cream dressing

(the same slurping sound is expected)

The aristocratic version — absolutely no carrots — is served in an elegant cut-crystal bowl. There should be the same mound in the center, but a neatly formed one. The mound is shaped with the back of a mixing spoon and smoothed down along the sides as you would do when icing a cake. Most people also decorate their salads. You will find a really nice outlet for your aristocratism and creativity in adorning the salad. There are many elegant ways to lay slices of eggs and/or pickles on top of your salad mound.

SOMETHING-AMERICANS-MIGHT-EAT VERSION

Grilled chicken or turkey breast

(excellent way to use leftover Thanksgiving turkey)

Boiled potatoes

Pickles (very firm and not too sweet)

Boiled egg (or maybe not)

Canned peas (well, you can skip them too)

Possibly a peeled green apple

Mayonnaise dressing

Use just a little mayonnaise, so the salad won’t be so damn high in fat content (don’t even go near the slurping sound), but not low-fat mayonnaise. If you use low-fat mayonnaise, you might as well throw the whole dish out. It will taste a little dry, yes, but your weight won’t go up as dramatically as with the two previous versions. Serving on lettuce leaves will help create the illusion that this is a healthy dish.

For all versions, potatoes should be boiled in their skins, then peeled and diced. Everything else should be diced as well into tiny little cubes (14 inch), although the plebeian version might allow larger and sloppier cubes.

The ratio of ingredients is as follows: for every two cups of diced potatoes, use one cup of diced meat, one cup of diced egg, one cup of diced pickles, one cup of peas, half a cup of carrots, and half a cup of apple. Or it could be whatever you want.

Oh, writing about this made me so hungry. I have a craving for some Olivier. But I’m at a trailer park in Moscow, Pennsylvania. I don’t know why it’s called Moscow, for there are no Russians and no Russian delis here. I have hardly any ingredients at hand. We’re out of eggs, let alone canned peas or pickles, and my car is in the city in my husband’s care, and shopping in rural America without a car is a rough sport. So I’m making myself an extra-simple and extra-plebeian version of Olivier, using what I have in the fridge: two boiled potatoes, three slices of nice bologna, and half a tablespoon of mayonnaise. I know this doesn’t sound too appetizing, but it is, it is, just trust me!

2. SPINACH

This one is going to be easy. We didn’t have spinach in Russia, except the kind that came in jars as baby food, so there is no family recipe for spinach. I tried making some of the spinach dishes I mention in “Slicing Sautéed Spinach,” based on recipes I found in cookbooks, but none of them came out very well. Below is the only spinach recipe I mastered, but since I learned it only recently, it didn’t make it into the collection of spinach dishes that my characters eat.

Baby spinach

Finely sliced red onion

Sun-dried tomatoes

Goat cheese

Balsamic vinegar

Extra-virgin olive oil

Take a pile of baby spinach, put it in a bowl, and add as much of the other ingredients as are needed for desired balance.

3. MEATBALLS

Since two of the stories have meatballs in them, it was particularly important to find an ultimate meatball recipe. I had never cooked meatballs myself, and I wasn’t particularly happy with the family recipe, because it seemed like the main goal of my mother’s and grandmother’s version was to make the meatballs as dry and hard as rye-bread croutons. “Why waste meat?” I would ask them. “Why not just buy croutons and serve them with pasta or mashed potatoes?”

They didn’t answer; perhaps they were perfectly satisfied with crouton meatballs. But I wasn’t. Now and then, at some family dinner or at a restaurant, I would happen upon a real meatball — large and juicy and perfect.

Russian meatballs are very different from what Americans call meatballs. First of all, they are not shaped like balls; they are shaped like a flattened egg, and they are never buried under spaghetti or smothered in tomato sauce but are usually served hot and crispy with mashed potatoes.

I like Russian meatballs so much that I always thought if I ever wrote a story about two women trying to seduce a man with a certain dish, meatballs would be the dish. But where would I find a perfect recipe? Now I have actually written a story about two women trying to seduce a man with Russian meatballs. Neither of my characters is a professional chef, so I searched among families and family recipes. I managed to collect countless versions, but none of them satisfied me. They were all too complicated, too fussy. Meatballs is a very simple dish. I simply couldn’t trust a recipe that required more than twenty ingredients.

And then suddenly found the right one. I knew it was the right one the second I heard it (actually, I read it in a friend’s e-mail). Surprisingly, this recipe came not from a seasoned grandma but from a single father who didn’t know how to cook and who learned to cook meatballs so he could feed his daughter. This is his recipe:

“Take a pound of regular ground turkey, put it in a bowl, add one egg, some bread soaked in milk (three or four thick slices of white bread, half a cup of milk), lots of garlic and salt and pepper, and mix it. Then pour a little olive oil onto a hot skillet and do this: form the meatball-shaped thing with your hands and throw it onto the skillet, keep the water running, rinse your hands from time to time. [I think it’s better to keep a basin of water nearby, so as not to waste water.] Fry meatballs five minutes on each side.”

I tried it and it worked. The meatballs came out crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside. The only problem was that they weren’t ruinous enough for one’s health, and I needed a killer recipe. After some consideration, I simply took my friend’s recipe, substituted extravagant red meat for mild ground turkey, and added mind-blowing amounts of fat. Actually, the character in “Luda and Milena” dies after eating these meatballs, but not as a result of eating them. I can’t guarantee that meatballs based on the recipe I used in the story can actually kill a person. The recipe has never been properly tested to determine that. However, it contains such an extravagant quantity of red meat and fat, most doctors I know swear that consistent consumption of this dish will cause if not immediate death than eventual clogging of the arteries. So if you need to kill yourself or another person and don’t mind that the process will be slow and painful, here is the recipe.

1/2 pound fat ground lamb

1/2 pound fat ground beef

1 cup white bread soaked in heavy cream

1 finely grated medium onion

2 or 3 finely chopped garlic cloves

1 egg

1/4 pound butter, lard, bacon, or any other spectacular animal-fat product to use for frying

4. COLD BORSCHT

I’m sitting on the deck, leaning against the wall of the trailer we rent in Moscow, Pennsylvania. My kids are splashing in the lake, and I feel so jealous. It’s 88 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and about 130 inside. Plus there’s the smell of fried lard and garlic. I’ve just cooked several batches of meatballs to make sure I got the recipe right. I did get it right, by the way — it’s a killer recipe. You can easily have a heart attack simply by cooking those meatballs; you don’t even have to eat them.

The last thing I want to do right now is to think about borscht.

The characters in my story are eating rich, hot borscht, which is a wonderful dish when there is a February snowstorm outside, or at least a chilly November rain. But right now, what I really want to eat is cold borscht. It is probably my favorite summer food, being that rare combination of very healthy, cheap, extremely easy to make, and amazingly delicious. Here is the recipe.

One 24 oz. jar of borscht from the Jewish section of a supermarket (in Moscow, Pennsylvania, it’s right next to the Mexican and Italian foods)

3 hard-boiled eggs (or just egg whites)

1 medium seedless cucumber, or three or four kirbys, peeled

1 scallion

Half a bunch of fresh dill (or a pinch of dry dill)

Sour cream

Lemon slices

Dijon mustard (optional)

What you do is this: Let the jar of borscht chill in the fridge for at least an hour before opening it. The soup is best when it is very cold. Finely chop the eggs, cucumber (chopped cucumber smells amazing!), scallions, and dill, put them in a bowl, add a pinch of salt, and let them stay in the fridge for half an hour, so they can both chill and adjust to one another’s company. Then divide them between four bowls (this recipe should yield four portions, although I could easily eat it all alone), and pour the borscht over, shaking the jar before pouring, to lift the beet slices off the bottom. Sometimes I add a teaspoon of Dijon mustard; I mix it with a little borscht liquid, pour it back in the jar, and shake it well.

Serve with sour cream and slices of lemon; I like to squeeze my lemon slice with a spoon to add a tangy taste to the soup.

5. HOT BORSCHT

Today, it’s a different picture. It’s been raining nonstop, and it’s suddenly cold outside. I’m wearing jeans and a sweater and my husband’s thick socks — I can’t believe I was sweating in a tank top and shorts just a few days ago. The gas heater in our trailer has been broken for years, and the owners won’t bother fixing it. They never live here themselves, and summer renters apparently don’t need heat. “It’s a rundown trailer,” my husband says. “What do you expect?” We rent it for seven weeks for the price of what you’d typically pay for two, and I’m usually happy with the bargain. Not on a day like today, though. We tried an electric heater, but it was expensive and seemed to warm only the ten-inch area around it. What we do is this: We turn all four stove burners on and put four large pots of water on to boil. (We could try baking pies, but there are mice living in the oven, and I really don’t want to go there.) While the water is boiling on the stove, we cuddle with the kids under a huge blanket that the neighbors lent us and watch Young Frankenstein on my computer. (We never get tired of watching Young Frankenstein.) Well, I think, since we need to keep four large pots on the stove, why not cook borscht in one of them? I can cook and still keep an eye on Young Frankenstein.

3 or 4 fresh beets

3 or 4 potatoes

1 medium carrot

1 medium onion

3 stalks of celery

Olive oil

2 tablespoons tomato sauce

2 quarts beef broth

Salt and pepper

1 or 2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon white vinegar

Sour cream

Chopped parsley and garlic (optional)

Chop vegetables and sauté them right in the soup pot, in a little olive oil and the tomato sauce, for 15 to 20 minutes. Pour the store-brought beef broth over the mixture. When it starts to boil, add salt, pepper, a bay leaf or two, and vinegar, and let the soup simmer until everything is tender, which sometimes takes so long that Young Frankenstein ends before my borscht is ready.

Hot borscht is served with sour cream just like cold borscht. I like to chop some parsley and garlic, smash the two together with a pinch of salt, and sprinkle this over a little island of sour cream in the bowls.

For some reason, it always seems warmer in the trailer when you make borscht than when you simply boil water. And there is another advantage. We don’t have enough space at the table, so we eat balancing our hot bowls in our laps. And the laps get warm too.

Too bad my son won’t eat borscht; he won’t eat any cooked vegetable. But he will eat some vegetables raw, which brings me to the broccoli recipe.

6. BROCCOLI

I haven’t found a way to make cooked broccoli delicious, so we mostly eat it raw. Every Monday, we go to the farmers’ market in Scranton to buy some. The trip itself is an adventure: first up and down on hilly Route 307, then into the maze of Scranton’s streets, where run-down wooden buildings alternate with Gothic churches and Masonic temples. Once we make it to the market, the kids get a dollar each to stuff themselves with cider, doughnuts, and cookies (Scranton’s market is so cheap you can really gorge on a dollar), and I don’t feel guilty because I’m buying a lot of vegetables. The broccoli is wonderful there. The bunches are a bright, sunny shade of green, they are firm but tender, and they taste fresh but not too grassy. My son’s favorite part (and mine too) is the stalk. I just cut it off, removing the tough part on the very bottom, and peel the rest with a potato peeler. My daughter loves florets, but only with a dip, which we make like this:

1 cup low-fat plain yogurt

1 clove of garlic (finely chopped)

Chopped parley

Lemon juice

Salt to taste

Look, both kids are eating broccoli! How I love them!

— L.V.