The Soviet Diet Cookbook: exploring life, culture and history – one recipe at a time

3. After this lunch, who needs dinner. Stuffed eggplant, mushrooms in sour cream, creamed chicken soup and kompot

I remember when I took on this project hoping that all the meals I was going to make would be quick and easy. After all, one of the clearly stated reasons for creating the Book was to let women spend their time on self-education and family.

I guess the authors’ definition of “quick and easy” is different from mine – in part, no doubt, due to general laziness and the ease with which we are used to cooking these days.

The Book has recommended lists of lunch options for winter, spring, summer and fall. The Book’s introduction specifically notes that “you have to keep in mind the influence of the season.”

I chose an autumnal suggestion, as it was fall, and then a Sunday, since this was likely the only I would have time to make four – yes, four! – courses for lunch. I know that traditionally Sunday lunch in many countries was a big meal, but to me, it’s a sandwich, leftovers, or a brunch invitation from friends.

The Book instructs housewives: “before starting to make lunch, breakfast or dinner, one must estimate by what hour they should be ready, and count how long the meal will take to prepare.”

In contrast to my typical lunch, the Soviet lunch took just under two hours to make and included baked mushrooms with cheese, baked eggplant with vegetable stuffing, cream of chicken soup and the omnipresent apple kompot, which is a drink made out of fruit, berries or dried fruit, and served as juice, with some fruit at the bottom of the glass.

Here it also should be noted that my cooking time was no doubt helped by my well-equipped, enormous 9.5-square-meter kitchen. For comparison, Granny’s Soviet-era kitchen is about 4.5 square meters.

Nevertheless, in this space, she manages to cook for any number of people and also seat and feed three. The kitchen still feels palatial to her since until the 1960s she shared a kitchen with four other families in a communal apartment, a kommunalka.

“The house belonged to a merchant before the revolution,” Granny said, remembering the apartment where she lived for 27 years. “It had one-and-a-half floors, and each was turned into a separate kommunalka. There were five families in ours, including a former countess who lived in the entryway, sharing one kitchen, no fridge, one toilet and one sink. Before World War II, we used a primus stove [a kind of burner heated by compressed kerosene], and after the war we had gas stoves, which were fabulous. Our neighbor, an old lady from a village, would gasp each time she walked into the kitchen: ‘Thank you Comrade Stalin for providing us with gas!’ When we wanted to keep something cold, we would get a big bowl, fill it with cold water (the only kind there was), place a pot in it with a little bit of butter, or salami, or soup, or whatever, cover it with a cloth and put the ends of the cloth into the cold water.”

I don’t think the kind of lunch described in the book was a typical one for my grandmother. When I described the feast-like lunch to her, she said: “Wow! Amazing! We never had cream soups though – didn’t have the equipment to make them.”

Fortunately I did have the equipment to make everything and it all turned out more or less ok. I followed the Book’s recipes to the letter for the mushrooms and eggplant, and I was pleased with both of them.

The recipe for the cream of chicken soup comes from the “healthy” section of the book, which is recommended for people “malnourished after difficult diseases and surgeries.” It doesn’t specify that in the menu though, which is a shame. My recommendation: unless malnourished, don’t make it. The consistency is really strange, I don’t think chicken is meant to be turned into cream. It looks like it’s already been eaten and the flavor is pretty dull.

The recipe for kompot is also pretty standard. It’s still made frequently for schoolchildren in Russia, except that now, some moms sneak in some ginger and cinnamon to add a little extra flavor.

I enjoyed the mushrooms, eggplant and kompot, and felt like a proud Soviet housewife having made it all. But not enough to give up my regular Sunday brunch spot!

Recipes:

Stuffed eggplant:

Wash eggplants, take ends off, cut open (not to the bottom), and take seeds out with a teaspoon. After that, put eggplant into salted boiling water for five minutes, stuff with chopped vegetables or mushrooms. Put in a greased, oven-proof baking dish, cover with sour cream and bake approximately 1 hour.

Mushrooms in sour cream:

For 500 grams (about 1 lb) fresh mushrooms, use 1/2 cup sour cream, 120 grams (1/4 lb) cheese, 1 teaspoon flour, 2 tablespoons oil

Clean, wash and pour boiling water over mushrooms. Drain, chop up, salt and fry in oil. When almost fried, add a teaspoon of flour and mix, then add sour cream, boil, add grated cheese and bake.

Before serving, sprinkle mushrooms with parsley or dill. You can also bake pickled mushrooms. In this case, drain the marinade, wash and chop up the mushrooms and fry.

Continue as with fresh mushrooms.

Apple or pear kompot:

Peel apples, remove the core and cut into 6—8 pieces each. So that the apples don’t go brown, before boiling, put them into cold water with a little lemon juice. Put sugar and 2 cups hot water into a pot, then add the apples and boil on low heat for 10—15 minutes until apples are soft.

Creamed chicken soup:

100 grams chicken meat; 15 grams butter; 10 grams onion; 10 grams white root vegetables; 10 grams flour; 50 grams cream; 1/2 egg yolk; 750 grams water

Boil chicken until ready. Fry onions and root vegetables in oil with flour until yellow, add broth and boil 15—20 minutes, then strain.

Mince the chicken meat twice then add it to the broth. Mix well. Add cream mixed with egg yolk.

You can serve with white bread croutons or meat pies (pirozhki).

4. Real food and realistic expectations. Fried eggs with tomatoes and croutons

After working my way through Book of Healthy and Tasty food for a month, I was pretty familiar with most of its main myths. It’s clear that propaganda was as strong in the fields of soups and stews as it was in art, labor and politics.

The main surprise for me was the quantities of food a Soviet citizen was meant to procure and consume: starting with a protein-heavy breakfast of fried meat or fish with boiled eggs, bread, cheese and milk, tea or coffee. This was followed in just a few hours by a second breakfast consisting of a vegetable bake or sandwiches. Then after work was “lunch” or the main meal of the day, which involved an appetizer, soup and a main meal with fruit kompot or dessert.

After all that, you’re supposed to have dinner, about two hours before bed. This should consist of prostokvasha (a kind of dairy drink like buttermilk), and an omelet or a salad.

The Book also reminds housewives of the importance of a balanced and diverse selection of dishes: “One must vary the menu. A housewife has the habit of making 10—12 meals… that get repeated throughout the year. As a result, members of the family get monotonous food.”

Russian, and especially Soviet food, has never known much variety, but this was mostly the result of a lack of available ingredients, rather than a lack of desire to feed a family well.

My childhood memories of “monotonous food” are confirmed by my grandmother.

“There was no food. What we ate was very much the same, no variety whatsoever,” Granny said. “There wasn’t a cult of food, like there is now. Today I think of what I want to cook, then go to the shop and get the ingredients for it. Back in the Soviet times, I went to the shop to try and find anything, and then cooked with whatever I found. There was never a fuss about food – you just cooked and ate what you could find, that’s it.”

Then she added: “Don’t forget, the Book was an ad for the happy Soviet life. Sure, some recipes were realistic, but a big part of the Book is just for show.”

And what a show it is! The variety of recipes is truly endless. Time has worked in its favor, too. Now that you can get the ingredients, the Book of Healthy and Tasty Food can be ranked up there with some of the best cookbooks I’ve seen. Although it could be more user-friendly. Of the overall lack of instructions, I can only assume the authors thought: “Why write it all out if no one’s going to be able to make it anyway?”

For this “light” dinner, I chose to cook fried eggs with a side dish – a meal that didn’t really suffer from a lack of instructions. The meal was pretty simple and quick and, I must say, absolutely delicious! I cut up dark bread and fried it in a pan, and then added tomatoes, which I stewed for a bit before pouring the eggs on top. If you have a lot of “base” and add other vegetables, it will be a little bit like Israeli shakshuka, in which eggs are poached in a tomato base. I had never before thought to fry eggs right on top of tomatoes and fried dark bread, and that was clearly my loss. Eating breakfast for dinner makes sense, too, when you’ve had meat for breakfast.

Recipe:

To make fried eggs with a side dish you need to first fry pieces of dark bread, lard, ham, sausages, salami, zucchini etc..

Then put eggs on top, salt and keep on the stove for 1—2 minutes and then bake for 3—4 minutes. As soon as the egg white is the color of milk, serve it on the frying pan or a warm plate.

If you don’t have an oven, the frying pan with eggs should be covered with a lid or plate.

5. In praise of grechka. Buckwheat

My second Soviet breakfast was a meal with which I was very well acquainted. Every Russian kid I knew grew up on it, and I’m pretty certain all Russians have loved it at some point in their lives. It’s grechka, the ubiquitous buckwheat porridge that is served not only for breakfast but also appears as a side dish at lunch or dinner.

Buckwheat has to be sorted before cooking, and as a kid, I always had the task of picking out all the bad grains. I remember sitting at a table filled with uncooked buckwheat, talking to my mother, grandmother and brother while sifting through it – it was a bonding experience for every Soviet family.

There are many different ways of cooking buckwheat, and someone adept at a particular method will insist religiously that his or her is the only way. The Book seems to take this into consideration, suggesting several options for additions to buckwheat, including cooking it with butter, eggs, liver, mushrooms and onion or even brains.

After the buckwheat is fully cooked, you’re supposed to wrap it with blankets and leave it in a warm place for a few hours. My grandmother would often disappear into the bedroom before serving breakfast or lunch, where she would unwrap a pot of porridge that had been lovingly tucked in her bed. I remember as a child learning that it was important to check the bed for pots before settling in for a nap – it was a mistake you only made once.

In preparing my buckwheat porridge, I went for the simplest version: grechka with butter. It seems like all the ingredients for it should have easily been available in the Soviet era and yes, they were, but mainly in Moscow.

As a typical Muscovite, I tend to forget about the existence of the rest of Russia (of which I am not proud), but while my mother and grandmother are from Moscow, my dad is from Kursk, a city about 525 kilometers (325 miles) south of Moscow, reachable by overnight train.

His mother was born in Moscow, but was evacuated from the city during World War II and wasn’t able to move back, as it was very difficult to get permission to live in Moscow after the war.

The life of my dad’s parents in Kursk was quite different from that of my mom’s parents in Moscow. My Kursk grandparents couldn’t even get such basics as butter, sour cream or salami. So, my Moscow grandparents would go to the train station and bring a package of food to give to the train conductor, which the Kursk grandparents would collect on the other end.

Trains between Moscow and Kursk would leave around midnight and arrive early in the morning, so this transfer of goods naturally required quite an effort from both sides to put that piece of butter on their morning buckwheat porridge.

I can imagine my paternal grandfather on a dark winter morning taking the bus to the train station to pick up the food before going to the local university, where he taught medicine. He probably kept his butter in a fridge at work before he could take it home.

Overall, the distribution of food across the Soviet Union was appalling.

“There were tour buses full of people from other cities pretending to be interested in the Kremlin and Red Square,“Granny said. “They all came to Moscow to shop for food – salami, sausages, tea, everything. All the things they couldn’t get at home. We locals would always be annoyed at the out-of-towners snatching up the last piece of bone with a trace of meat on it in the shop.”

There was even a joke that U.S. President Jimmy Carter asked Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, “How do you distribute food in such a big country?” Brezhnev supposedly replied, “That’s easy. We just bring it all to Moscow and then the people come here and distribute it themselves.”

Another famous Soviet-era joke is about the forbidden books secretly reprinted at home – “samizdat” (which just means self-published in Russian). “Samizdat books would go around town pretty quickly. When you got your copy, you’d read it overnight,” Granny said. She remembers a friend calling her to say he had read the book and was ready to pass it on to her – but of course he couldn’t name the book, so instead he used the code word “grechka.” The conversation went something like: “Hi, so I ate the buckwheat and am now ready to give it to you.”

The grechka I made turned out nicely – although not as good as my grandmother’s: I didn’t have the time to let it steep in warm sheets. It does need a lot of butter, as otherwise it’s very dry. But it doesn’t need stirring – you can just put it in the pot with some water, close the lid and let it simmer on low heat for 15—20 minutes and use the time to read some forbidden (or not) literature.

Recipe:

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add buckwheat and cook, stirring, until thick – about 15—20 minutes. When the porridge is thick, cover tightly with a lid and remove from heat. Let sit in a warm place 3—4 hours. Add butter before serving.

For 2 cups of uncooked buckwheat, use 3 cups of water, 1 teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoons butter.

Granny’s method:

1 cup buckwheat

2—2.5 cups water (depending on how soft you want it)

30gr butter, or more to taste

Salt to taste

Sift out any bad grains by spreading the kernels evenly on a table. Heat kernels in a pan for 2—3 minutes, stirring to make sure they don’t burn. Add water, bring to boil and reduce to medium to low heat, salt and cover with a lid and leave for about 15 minutes or until all water is absorbed. Add butter. Wrap in your best blankets and leave for a few hours, or at least 30 minutes.

6. A Ukrainian dish no Russian will turn down. Borscht

The week after I made a Soviet classic – grechka – I decided to follow up with another all-time favorite: borscht. Although known as an iconic Russian dish and widely consumed and loved in Russia, borscht is actually Ukrainian – an interesting thing to point out given that I was cooking it about six months into the conflict in eastern Ukraine when tensions between Ukrainians and Russians were extremely high. The Book has two versions of the recipe: “borscht” and “Ukrainian borscht” – the latter distinguished by the inclusion of lard and garlic.

Part of the purpose of the Book was to create a unified cuisine for the Soviet Union, so it incorporated dishes from a number of the republics. I think it would be fair to say that Uzbekistan and Georgia were the main contributors (outside of Russia) to the Soviet diet. Uzbekistan added plov, a dish of rice and meat, and Georgia – shashliki (meat kebabs) and kharcho soup. Cafeterias also played an important role in popularizing these non-Russian dishes across the country, but in slightly “Russified” versions.

Granny remembers discovering the difference between the local recipe for a dish and the Russian one on a visit to Georgia.

“I liked kharcho, so when I went to Georgia I ordered it at a restaurant,” she said. “But when I took one spoonful, it felt like my mouth was on fire – I couldn’t swallow it. When the waiter realized what the problem was he said: ‘ahhh, from Moscow! Then go to the Intourist cafeteria – they have some Moscow-style kharcho without the pepper.’”

“Russifying” meals is still very big in Moscow, especially with regard to Asian food – our palettes are not used to hot spices. Foreigners always smile condescendingly when told to “beware, the dish is spicy,” as they know that it will have some flavor!

The version of borscht I grew up with definitely wasn’t Ukrainian, although my great-grandmother came from Kiev. Granny always put all the ingredients in fresh, not pre-fried, as is commonly done in Russia, which made her borscht quite different from all the others. To me there were always two types of borscht: the one at home, which I liked, and all the other ones I didn’t.

The recipe from the Book turned out close to Granny’s, although of course not as good! It’s definitely much closer to the homemade borscht I’m used to than what you might find in a restaurant. Since my grandmother’s recipe is clearly the best out there (ask any Russian and you will likely hear them say the same about their own grandmothers), I am happy to share it here, and you can compare it with the one from the Book.

I went past a Ukrainian restaurant recently and an employee out front handed me a flyer with both the Russian and Ukrainian flags on it, inviting people to be friends and eat borsch. Perhaps they were afraid people would stop going to Ukrainian restaurants, given the tensions between the two formerly close neighbors. But even if Russians do stop going to Ukrainian restaurants, I’m sure nothing can put Russians off borscht, and I for one am very grateful to Ukraine for it.

Recipe:

500 g meat

300 g beets

200 g fresh cabbage, shredded

200 g onions

2 tbsp tomato paste or 100 g tomatoes

1 tbsp vinegar

1 tbsp sugar

Boil the meat to make some broth.

Cut the beets, carrots, and onion into strips and add them to a soup pot along with some parsley.

Add tomatoes, vinegar, sugar and a little broth and a little fat (1—2 tbsp oil).

Close the lid and let the vegetables cook.

After 15—20 minutes, add the cabbage. Stir and let simmer another 15—20 minutes.

Add the broth to the vegetables along with some pepper, salt and vinegar to taste.

Serve with sour cream.

It’s possible to add potatoes, fresh tomatoes or sausage to the borscht. Cut these additions into cubes and add to the soup 5—10 minutes before serving.

Beet infusion can also be added. To make this, slice one beet; add the slices to a pot with a cup of broth; add a teaspoon of vinegar and cook on low for 10—15 minutes. Strain, then add to the borsch.

Granny’s borscht recipe:

(serves 6)

2 liters water (or meat broth)

4 medium potatoes (soak for 15—20mins prior to boiling) cut up into small cubes

1 stick celery – cut into 2 pieces and then cut in small bits or grate

Small onion (or half a medium onion), finely chopped

2 fist-sized beets – pre-boil in unsalted water for 40—50 minutes. After boiling, immerse in cold water for 3—4 mins. Grate into a dedicated bowl

4 leaves of cabbage. It is important to use whole leaves, then slice them very thinly.

3 hard-boiled eggs (reserve and add half an egg to the bowl before serving)

1 large carrot (soak for 15—20 mins prior to boiling) use largest holes to grate

Sugar – 1 tsp or a little more

½ or 1 can of green peas or 1 can red beans in their own juice

1—2 small tomatoes (better skinless) – cut up into small pieces

Salt – 1.5 or 2 tsp

Dill and parsley – 1 sprig of each to boil, to taste to serve

1 tsp apple vinegar

Sour cream to serve

1. Bring unsalted water to boil, add unpeeled beets and boil for 40—50min until soft.

2. Peel, cut up and grate all the vegetables. Boil 2 liters of water (or meat broth) in a pot, while the water is boiling, cut the potatoes in half and let them sit in cold water, then dice one and leave the other in halves.

3. When the water is boiling, put in the potatoes first and then the carrots and boil for 10—15min. Add a tablespoon of oil and a pinch of salt. Add the dill and parsley while potatoes are boiling and remove after 10—15min.

4. In 10—15 min add onion, celery stalk (grated or chopped) and tomatoes, add 1 or 2 full teaspoons of salt – boil for 5 min. Then add cabbage (it’s important to salt the water before adding the cabbage as it has to be put into salted water. Boil cabbage for 3—4 minutes.

5. Add green peas. After 3 min, add the beets and sugar. Turn off the heat and add a teaspoon of cider vinegar. Let sit for 15—20 min.

6. Serve with part of a boiled egg in each bowl and add sour cream to taste. If you are making meat borscht, distribute the meat evenly into the bowls as you serve.