1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. with the rack set in the center. In a large bowl, thoroughly stir together the first four ingredients. In another bowl sift together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda. Whisk the dry ingredients into the egg mixture until smooth. Add the feta and whisk to blend thoroughly. Let the batter stand for 10 minutes.
2. Butter a 9 by 9 by 2-inch baking pan. Pour the batter into the pan and tap to even it out. Bake the cornbread until light golden and firm to the touch, 35 to 40 minutes. Serve warm, with roasted peppers, if desired.
1970s
SALAT OLIVIER
Russian Potato Salad with Pickles
Sine qua non of socialist celebrations, this salady Soviet icon actually has a fancy, bourgeois past. The name? Derived from one Lucien Olivier, a French chef who wowed 1860s Moscow with his swank L’Hermitage restaurant. The Gaul’s original creation, of course, had almost nothing in common with our Soviet classic. His was an extravagant still life of grouse, tongue, and crayfish tails encircling a mound of potatoes and cornichons, all doused with le chef’s secret Provençal sauce. To Olivier’s horror, Russian clients vulgarized his precious arrangement by mixing up all the ingredients on their plates. And so he retooled his dish as a salad. Then came 1917. L’Hermitage was shuttered, its recipes scorned. All Soviet children knew Mayakovsky’s jingle: “Eat your pineapples, gobble your grouse / Your last day is coming, you bourgeois louse!”
The salad gained a second life in the mid-1930s when Olivier’s old apprentice, a chef known as Comrade Ivanov, revived it at the Stalin-era Moskva Hotel. Revived it in Soviet form. Chicken replaced the class-enemy grouse, proletarian carrots stood in for the original pink of the crayfish, and potatoes and canned peas took center stage—the whole drenched in our own tangy, mass-produced Provansal mayo.
Meanwhile, variations of the salad traveled the world with White Russian émigrés. To this day, I’m amazed to encounter it under its generic name, “Russian salad,” at steakhouses in Buenos Aires, railway stations in Istanbul, or as part of Korean or Spanish or Iranian appetizer spreads. Amazed and just a little bit proud.
At our own table, Mom gives this Soviet staple an arty, nonconformist twist by adding fresh cucumbers and apple, and substituting crabmeat for chicken (feel free to stay with the latter). The ultimate key to success, though, she insists: chopping everything into a very fine dice. She also obsessively doctors Hellmann’s mayo with various zesty additions. I think Lucien Olivier would approve.
3 large boiling potatoes, peeled, cooked, and diced
2 medium carrots, peeled, cooked, and diced
1 large Granny Smith apple, peeled and diced
2 medium dill pickles, diced
1 medium seedless cucumber, peeled and finely diced
3 large hard-cooked eggs, chopped
One 16-ounce can peas, well-drained
¼ cup finely chopped scallions (with 3 inches of the green tops)
¼ cup finely chopped dill
12 ounces lump crabmeat, flaked; or surimi crab legs, chopped (or substitute chopped poached chicken or beef)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 cup Hellmann’s mayonnaise, or more to taste
⅓ cup sour cream
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon white vinegar Kosher salt to taste
1. In a large mixing bowl combine all the salad ingredients and season with salt and pepper to taste.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together all the dressing ingredients, season with salt, and taste: it should be tangy and zesty. Toss the salad thoroughly with the dressing, adding a little more mayo if it doesn’t look moist enough. Adjust the seasoning to taste. Serve in a cut-crystal or glass bowl.
1980s
DAD’S UBER-BORSHCH
Borscht with Beef, Mushrooms, Apples, and Beans
To my childhood palate, borshch (as Russians spell borscht) was less a soup than a kind of Soviet quotidian destiny: something to be endured along with Moscow tap water and the endless grayness of socialist winter. Our Soviet borshch took on various guises. There was the private borshch, such as Mom’s frugal vegetarian version, endearing in its monotony. There was the vile institutional soup of canteens, afloat with reddish circles of fat. In winter we warmed our bones with limp, hot borshch, the culinary equivalent of tired February snow. In summer we chilled out with svekolnik, the cold, thin borshch popularized here in America by Eastern European Jews.
Parallel to all these but ever out of reach was another soup: the mythical “real” Ukrainian borshch we knew from descriptions in State-approved recipe booklets authored by hack “gastronomic historians.” Apparently that borshch was everything ours wasn’t. Thick enough to stand a spoon in, concocted in myriad regional permutations, and brimming with all manner of meats. Meats! That borshch represented the folkloric propaganda Ukraine, our wholesome Soviet breadbasket and sugarbeet bowl, envisioned as though never clouded by the horrors of famine and collectivization. Not once during my childhood did I taste anything like this chimerical “real” Ukrainian borshch. Neither was I that interested, really.
It was the dinner my dad, Sergei, prepared to impress Mom during our 1987 Moscow reunion that changed my mind. Convinced me that borshch could be something exciting. Never in my life had I tasted anything like Dad’s masterpiece, with its rich meaty broth, the deep garnet color achieved by juicing the beets, the unconventional addition of mushrooms and beans, the final savory flourish of pork cracklings. Even after sampling many authentic regional versions on my subsequent trips to Ukraine, I still hold up Dad’s borshch as the Platonic ideal.
Here’s his recipe. My only tweak is to replace fresh beet juice with baked beets, which deliver the same depth of color. A rich homemade stock makes the soup special, but if the effort seems like too much, omit the first step, use about 11 cups of store-bought chicken stock in Step 3, and instead of boiled beef, add about a pound of diced kielbasa or good smoky ham. Like most peasant soups, borshch improves mightily on standing, so make it a day ahead. A thick slice of pumpernickel or rye is a must. Ditto a dollop of sour cream.
2 pounds beef chuck, shin, or brisket in one piece, trimmed of excess fat
14 cups water
2 medium onions, left whole, plus 1 large onion, chopped
2 medium carrots, left whole, plus 1 large carrot, peeled and diced
1 bay leaf
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 medium beets, washed and stemmed
1 ounce dried porcini mushrooms, rinsed of grit, and soaked in 1 cup hot water for 1 hour
2 slices good smoky bacon, finely chopped
1 large green pepper, cored, seeded, and diced
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more as needed
2 cups chopped green cabbage 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
3 medium boiling potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 16-ounce can diced tomatoes, with about half of their liquid
1 small Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and diced