Book 11 - Chapter 22 - Piroshki, Yablonchna Babka, and A Few More Words About War

Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes: Culinaria: Russia by Marian Trutter

Music:  War and Peace - Prokofiev

Piroshki

Russian Yeast Dough


1 1/2 oz dry yeast
1 cup milk
2 tsp sugar
Generous 1 lb flour (the internet claims this is about 3 1/2 cups)
2 egg yolks
8 1/2 tbsp butter
1 pinch salt
Beaten egg for sealing and glazing


Dissolve the yeast into 7 tablespoons of lukewarm milk (this is most important, if the milk is cold it will clump up and probably damage the whole process).  Add the sugar, cover and leave for 15 minutes.  Stir half the flour into the yeast mixture with a wooden spoon to make a "pre-dough"; mine came out more or less dry after this.  Cover and leave in a warm place for about an hour or until it has doubled in size.  Beat the egg and butter until frothy, add salt and remaining milk and work into a smooth mass.  Add the remaining flour and knead on a floured surface until the dough no longer sticks.  


Once the dough is ready, you can roll it out until it's about 1/4 in thick and cut it into rounds using a glass cup.  I think I make mine a bit too thin...

For the fillings, the book has a super long list of things that people bake into piroshki.  I opted for the following 4, the "recipes" for which I more or less made up. I'm just going to list ingredients and leave the proportions up to your imagination.

Mushroom and Onion - Brown onions in butter then add mushrooms and cook until almost all the liquid is removed.   

Potato and Curd Cheese - for this I once again squeezed all the liquid out of the American cottage cheese and mixed it in roughly equal proportions with the mashed potatoes.  I added just a tiny bit of cream to make it a bit easier to manage.  An important note about the potato filled piroshki, they need to have some kind of holes poked into them, or decorative slashes added to their tops, otherwise all the yummy potato cheese filling explodes out of them. 

Sauerkraut and Onion - I browned onion in butter and added slightly more sauerkraut than onion. 

Ground Chicken - kitchen helper Jay browned onions, garlic and ground chicken in a frying pan and I ran it through the food processor.

Fill each round with about a tablespoon (or less) of filling, brush the edges with beaten egg and seal.  Brush the sealed piroshki with beaten egg and bake at 425 degrees for about 10 minutes or until golden brown.  Serve hot with sour cream and sauteed onions.  The dough will make about 60 piroshki.

This was the first batch; I forgot to brush them with egg, and they were a tiny bit over cooked (the original recipe said 20 minutes - I took these out after about 13 minutes) but they were very tasty - and you can see what I meant about the potato filling coming out.  The second batch came out beautifully and I was too busy eating to remember to take any pictures of it.

Another note about making piroshki, at first I was sealing them by hand, which I'm not very good at, then I remembered that years ago, I'd bought a dumpling press at a market in Chinatown.  That made my life much easier and made piroshki production a lot faster. I also suggest making the fillings ahead.  It's exhausting trying to do it all in one night - so exhausting that I shoved everything in the fridge and put it all together the next day.

Yablonchna Babka

 (Apple Bake)

1 1/3 lb apples, peeled, cored, and chopped into small pieces
Lemon juice
9 tbsp sugar
4 eggs separated
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon
Pinch of Salt
Butter for greasing the pan
Confectioners' sugar and fresh apple slices for garnish (optional)


Preheat oven to 340 degrees and grease a small baking dish with butter  Coat the apples with a bit of lemon juice immediately to prevent browning.  Beat the sugar, egg yolks, and sour cream in a bowl until frothy.  Beat in the flour, cinnamon, and salt.  Hand mix in the apples.  Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and gently fold into the rest of the batter.  Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

This recipe has so much egg in it, it's almost a custard.  I didn't have any extra apples left for garnish and I don't like confectioners' sugar, so I just ate mine plain.  Rich and delicious.

About the book:
At one point in the novel, Pierre starts to feel as though he must "do something." So he goes off to watch the battle of Borodino.  Thinking he will be out of the way, he lands himself smack in the middle of the target for the heaviest French fire.  He nearly dies there, is almost captured by the French, almost kills his would-be captor, and isn't heard from by anybody for many days after.  He feels himself an utter coward for running away, remembering how earlier he had seen soldiers marching toward the battle exchanging witty banter with the wounded being carted back.  He wonders (as do I) how they can continue marching forward when they see the mirror image of their future selves in the wounded and dying.  Another of the many ways in which war makes no sense to me.

Book 11 - Chapter 22 - Carters' Millet, Golubsty, and I Didn't Read This Weekend

Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes:  Cooking Around the World: Russian and Polish by Lesley Chamberlain and Catherine Atkinson

Music:  Downloaded a yoga video to burn off some of this sour cream, but no new music

Carters' Millet

1 1/4 cups millet
2 1/2 cups vegetable stock
4 oz bacon
1 tbsp olive oil
1small onion, thinly sliced
3 cups mushrooms, sliced
1 tbsp fresh chopped mint (had I been able to find any of this, I'm sure it would have added a lovely flavor)
Salt and pepper


Rinse the millet in a sieve.  Mix in with the stock, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer 30 minutes.  Fry the bacon until crisp, remove from the pan, reserving some of the fat.  Add olive oil to the pan and brown the mushrooms and onion for about 10 minutes.  I added some Asparagus, because it was in my fridge and about to go bad.  It added some color and flavor.  Mix all ingredients with the millet and heat through.

Golubsty

(This is actually a Polish recipe, according to the book, 

but I'm sure the Russians eat something similar)

1 large Savoy cabbage (emphasis on large)
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1 lb of ground beef, lamb, or pork
1 tsp ground corriander
5 tbsp stock
2/3 cup cooked long grain rice
chopped fresh parsley (I didn't even have dried parsley - oh well)
2 tbsp butter melted


For the sauce:
1 1/4 cup sour cream
2 tbsp tomato puree (we used tomato paste)
1 bay leaf
Salt and Pepper


Preheat the oven to 350.  Carefully remove 12 outer leaves of the cabbage, rinse, blanch in a pot of salted boiling water for 4 minutes, remove and pat dry.  Buying a smaller cabbage because you are thinking to yourself, "what the heck am I going to do with the rest of a large cabbage?" is a mistake.  It will make wrapping your "parcels" much more difficult.


To make the stuffing, brown the meat in a frying pan for 5 minutes, remove and drain off excess fat.  Add the oil to the pan and cook the onion for 5 minutes.  Stir in coriander, meat, stock, rice, and half the parsley, salt and pepper.  Simmer for 5 minutes. Place a tbsp of filling in a leaf and wrap it up.  If you bought a small Savoy cabbage and missed the step about blanching it, kitchen twine will help you out a lot on this recipe (I actually found the missing twine, it was under the couch - I don't understand either).  Arrange in one layer in a baking dish and brush with melted butter.


Heat the sour cream, tomato puree, and bay leaf, stirring until bubbly. Stir in remaining parsley and salt and pepper.  Pour sauce over the cabbage. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes.  Uncover and cook an additional 15 minutes.

We forgot to cover them.  They didn't get dried out, but the sauce could have been creamier.  We didn't do a lot of things on this recipe.  Probably because my kitchen helper Jerilyn brought over 2 bottles of our favorite pink prosecco and we started drinking before we started cooking.  This is a warning about the dangers of cooking while under the influence, kids.  It wasn't a tragedy this time, but ugly things can start to happen in your kitchen. We suggest staying sober while chopping your veg, and doubling the sauce to make this recipe extra yummy.

About the book:  I was going to read yesterday, but my Kindle battery was dead.  Instead I read about some English Kings and Queens.  I won't bore you with the details, but I will say this, George III sure lost some prime real estate.

Book 11 - Chapter 22 - Herring Pate, Chicken Bitki, and Tolstoy Contemplates the Causes of Great World Events (A Lot, and Kind of in Circles)

Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes: Cooking Around the World: Russian and Polish by Lesley Chamberlain and Catherine Atkinson
Music:  We've maybe been slacking a bit on the Russian music, but there might have been some Russian guitar at the beginning of the night...

Herring Pate

2 fresh herrings, filleted
4 tbsp butter
1 tbsp creamed horseradish sauce
Black pepper


I was seriously concerned about this "fresh herring" as nowhere in the directions does it say "cook" the herring.  Being uncertain, and thinking I would never find cured herring fillets, I just bought a jar of pickled herring in cream sauce, thinking, why not?  I threw it all into the food processor and it was the least favorite snack of the night.  It wasn't horrible, but even I didn't eat that much of it.  As it turns out, after buying the jar, there were cured fillets right in my backyard Pathmark which might have made the dish tastier.  And Wikipedia has this to say about raw herring: served as a Dutch delicacy, Hollandse Nieuwe, (Dutch New),  is raw herring from the catches around the end of spring and the beginning of summer. This is typically eaten with raw onion.  So, Bethany and Carey, when in Holland...

Chicken Bitki

1 tbsp butter
4 oz mushrooms, finely chopped
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
12 oz ground chicken
2 eggs, seperated
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 tbsp flour
3 tbsp oil
Salt and pepper
Lettuce leaves and sour cream to serve


Cook the mushrooms in the butter over medium high heat for 5 minutes or until all the juices have evaporated.  Mix crumbs (crushed crackers - if have no idea where your Pathmark keeps its breadcrumbs and never have bread in your house), chicken, yolks, nutmeg, and mushrooms.  Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.  Kitchen helper Jerillyn was going to do this with a whisk "because it says you have to," but I turned her on to the hand mixer and saved her from carpal tunnel.  Fold the egg whites into the mixture and shape it into flattened and elongated meat balls (oblongs instead of spheres).  Roll in the flour to coat and then fry 10 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through.  The original recipe doesn't call for sour cream, but we found ours to be a bit lacking without it.  

Everyone liked the Bitki better than the pate.  Small wonder.

About the book:

I have read way ahead since my last blog and am trying to fill in the gaps.  One of the things Tolstoy constantly circles back to, and back to, is the idea about who is responsible for the great, man-made events of the world.  He has Napoleon thinking always that he is responsible.  Tolstoy tells us in asides this is absurd.  He seems to believe (though his repetition and insistence imply that he was not 100% certain) that the greater the man, the less control he had over his own decisions.  There is some merit to it, I suppose, in that, had the Grande Armee not wanted to got to war, Napoleon would have been arrested as a lunatic for trying to rile them up.  In a nutshell, Tolstoy seemed to think (and this is where his theory falls down, folks) that somehow the world is ready for massive numbers of people to move from West to East and so a Napoleon must arise with a great idea to conquer Moscow.  It was the will of the something which makes the people want to support a Napoleon.  He never uses the word god.  He simply states that the world was going to do it, and Napoleon, or any great leader, far from being responsible, is simply carried by the tide, incapable of stopping himself even if he wanted out (which, being Napoleon, he didn't).

I find it troubling, because, he has a point.  How on earth can one person be responsible for so much human turmoil? But then, where does the idea originate?  Economic depression perhaps?  The latent human urge to create upheaval and reroot ourselves?  Tolstoy never touches on it, and we are left looking backward at the events of the past, possibly missing the signs for the future.

No new music:  Sorry.

Book 9 - Chapter 22 - Blini with Creamed Mushrooms and the Coming of Age (Disillusionment) of Nicholas Rostov

Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes: Cooking Around the World: Russian and Polish by Chamberlain and Catherine Atkinson
Music:  Just had Jay's ipod playing on shuffle

Blini

2/3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp easy-blend dry yeast
3/4 cup warm milk
2 tbsp butter
1 egg separated
3 tbsp oil for the pan 

It is possible that if you don't mix everything in the right order, your batter will come out thick and rather gluey. It is also possible, since I've never made it before, that it will be thick and gluey no matter what you do. That said, the instructions are to mix the flours with the salt and the yeast, then make a well in the center. Pour in the warm milk, mixing until smooth and let rise one hour. If you live where I live, you already know that some ingredients are harder to find; I had to go downtown to a Whole Foods for the buckwheat flour and exotic mushrooms, never guessing that I should have picked up yeast while down there - there was none in the Pathmark at 125th. I used baking powder instead. I also made the very foolish assumption that these would be made just as regular pancakes are, and I didn't really read the directions. Instead of making a little well, I just dumped all the ingredients together in a bowl, including the oil, which was really for the pan. I also do not have a microwave, so I assumed I could just heat the milk and melt the butter together in the same pan. If you were to be more literate than I, at this point, you will have waited out your hour, and can now mix the egg yolk and butter into your batter, which will have dutifully risen to double its original size. The final step is to beat the egg white with a whisk until it forms stiff peaks and fold it into the batter, which you then cover and let stand for 20 minutes. I did beat my egg white, but not with a whisk, I strongly recommend technology in the form of a hand blender. Heat the oil, which you will in no way have mixed into your batter, in a frying pan and take in the show of trying to get small, silver dollar sized rounds out of the glutinous mass that your batter has become if you have failed to follow instructions properly. Panic, flip the first, thick cakes and flatten them with the back of the spatula to attempt to get the right thickness; then add water to your batter until it becomes somewhat more manageable. Cook the rest of the batter in the way of regular pancakes, waiting for bubbles to appear before flipping, and keep warm while you wait for your mushroom sauce to cook. Or in my case, due to much panic and nonsense, keep your mushrooms warm while you wait to sort out the near-disaster of your blini.

Creamed Mushrooms

1 small onion sliced
4 tbsp butter
6 cups sliced mushrooms
2 tbsp fresh dill
1 1/4 cup sour cream
Salt and pepper to taste


Melt the butter over medium high heat and saute the onions for 5 minutes. Stir in the mushrooms and saute for another 3 minutes, stirring constantly. The recipe calls for white button mushrooms, but since I love exotic mushrooms, I used a mixture of buttons, baby Portobello, Shiitake, Maitake, and some dried Chantarelles that I resuscitated in hot water; and a good thing, because I think the stronger mushrooms added all the flavor that the dish had. Stir in the now familiar sour cream and dill, add salt and pepper generously to taste and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer another minute or until the sauce thickens a bit. It will not get that thick if you leave all the mushroom liquid in the bottom of the pan. However, draining off the liquid, I think, would take out most of the butter and flavor, so I just left it in. Add a lot of salt and pepper, and extra dill to this. It is almost, but not quite bland. You might even consider adding some chicken or bacon. I considered and found the consideration quite feasible. 

Serve your mushrooms hot over your blini with a salad on the side. It's pretty tasty, but you really have to love mushrooms. The recipe is listed in the appetizer section, but it only took one look at the pictured blini to realize that this was easily heavy enough to be a main course. The salad is necessary, as stated in a previous post, to save this from being an overly brown meal.  (Special thanks to Jay for his decorative arrangement of salad and mushrooms for the photo op.)

About the book:

"Since the campaigns of Austerlitz and of 1807 Rostov knew by experience that men always lie when describing military exploits, as he himself had done when recounting them; besides that, he had experience enough to know that nothing happens in war at all as we can imagine or relate it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski's tale, nor did he like Zdrzhinski himself... But he did not express his thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had gained experience. He knew that this tale redounded to the glory of our arms and so one had to pretend not to doubt it. And he acted accordingly."

Nicholas Rostov, formerly a coward of the Czar's army, has this wonderful coming of age scene.  In the above passage, he condemns a man in his mind for exaggerating about war.  He does not speak about his thoughts, does not even convey them and the sixteen year old adjutant attached to him (as devotedly as he was formerly attached to Denisov - and where is Denisov, by the way?) will buy the whole tale, or also pretend to, for it is glorious to hear valiant tales of war.  Rostov is learning to be a military man for whom nothing is important but victory for the sake of being able to go home alive to a home that is as close as possible to the way you left it.  

He realizes that bravery comes more from thinking of anything other than the danger rather than from facing the danger head on.  He captures a French officer and is embarrassed by it rather than elated.  He has become disillusioned with heroism, as have many of the other characters of the book. "So others are even more afraid than I am!" he thought, "So that's all there is in what is called heroism! And did I do it for my country's sake? And how was he to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And how frightened he was! He thought that I should kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand trembled. And they have given me a St. George's Cross.... I can't make it out at all."  He is learning that it is possible to take a man's life simply because his leader is at odds with the other man's leader.  He realizes this with an "unpleasant feeling of depression in his heart."  He is also learning the value of medals of honor and soldierly banter.  

He may actually become a better sort of character as we keep reading on.  
  

Book 8 Chapter 15 - A Giant Bag of Frozen Pierogies, Stone Imperial Russian Stout, Lamb Plov, and Natasha Rostova is a Fool

Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Recipes:  Mrs. T's Pierogies
Stone Imperial Stout
Cooking Around the World: Russian and Polish by Lesley Chamberlain and Catherine Atkinson


Music: Prokofiev - War and Peace

Mrs. T's Frozen Pierogies

We baked them, then fried them in olive oil and served them with the requisite sour cream.  They were a little dry; I think because of the baking.  Next time I will steam them and then fry them in butter.  

For a giant bag (it was the only one they had in the freezer section and it was also on sale) of mass marketed frozen Pierogies, they could have been worse.  I most certainly would have done better to head to a Russian or Polish store and get some fresh ones.  Very soon I will be purchasing a rolling pin and assembling a crack team of Pierogie stuffers and making my own.

Stone Imperial Russian Stout

10.5% Alcohol by volume.  Allegedly brewed in the style of the Czars who liked their beers dark, it's thick, rich, and delicious.  And too much of a good thing will knock you on your ass (just ask Sam).  

Lamb Plov 

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup prunes

1  tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp butter

1 large onion chopped

1 lb cubed lamb fillet

8 oz ground lamb

2 cloves crushed garlic

2 1/2 cups vegetable or lamb stock

1/2 cups long grain rice

Large pinch of saffron

salt and pepper to taste

Put the raisins and prunes in a bowl with just enough water to cover them and add the lemon juice.  Set this aside and start browning the onions and garlic in butter.  Add the meats and brown them for 5 minutes.  If you are like me, and you can't, apparently read, you may have over purchased the ground lamb and gotten a full pound instead of just 8 ounces.  This will not ruin your recipe, but will make it much richer and meatier.  Stir in 2/3 cup of the stock; bring to a boil then cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 1 hour or until lamb is tender.  I used the remaining Vegetable Better than Bouillion that I managed to scrape out of the jar. After the hour has passed, add the remaining broth, saffron, and rice, bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover and simmer until rice is tender.  If you live near the 125th St.  Pathmark in Harlem, you already know how huge it is, and that it has a ton of odd products you might not find anywhere else in the neighborhood as well as a reputation for 20-30 minute wait times at the register.  You may also know (as I do... now.) that it does not sell vegetable stock in any form that's not the Lipton Onion Soup and Recipe Mix that my grandma always made into French Onion Dip for the Super Bowl.  I had to use this soup in my recipe and cut out the extra salt.  I also used brown basmati rice which takes a lot longer to cook than regular rice and which absorbs liquid a bit differently I think.  Following these adaptations, your Plov will be more saucy and a little darker brown than the picture in the cookbook. When your brown rice is finally cooked, add the raisins and prunes right at the end, and heat through.  Serve with some kind of green vegetable that was not indigenous to Russia, but which will prevent you from being bored with all this brown food.  I used plain steamed broccoli and the combination of flavors (and a little color on the plate) paired very well. 

About the book:  Nataly Rostov is a fool.  A fool in love with love who is about to attempt an elopement with one of the biggest liars and womanizers in Moscow.  I liked her character when she was engaged to Andrew Bolkonski; she was a young girl learning to be a woman and she was interested in being intelligent and cultured for Andrew.  Now that she is about to throw him over for Anatole Kuragin, I almost don't even want to read about her.  She is obsessed with his obvious pleasure in her beauty which means she is really just obsessed with herself.  He has written her two letters and met her about four times. He is already secretly married to some country peasant woman he compromised whose father apparently caught up with him.  He didn't even write her the first love letter; Bergerac-style, he got his friend to write it for him.  

What is most interesting is the way in which Tolstoy captures that hysterical nature of a stubborn woman who is bent on doing something she knows is stupid but who cannot stop herself.  She was screaming at her friend "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" She is clearly afraid to hear the truth about Anatole, which is that he's a bastard.  

About the music:  The opera, of course, cuts out so much of the book.  I've never heard a Russian opera before, but it's not that much different from most of the others.  And of course, I read all the song titles and now I'm curious to know whether Natasha and Andrew get back together before the end, or whether a bunch of Natasha's loves die in the burning of Moscow. 

Chapter 11 - Stuffed Artichokes and Kotmis Satsivi (Chicken in Walnut Sauce) and Rich Russian Mothers Indulge Their Sons Way Too Much

Book:  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes:  Stuffed Artichokes
Kotmis Satsivi

Music:  Russian Classical Guitar for 7 and 6 String Guitars - Andrei Krylov

Stuffed Artichokes

2 Artichokes
Sour Cream (about 1 cup)
Zest of 1 Lemon
Juice of 1/2 Lemon
Salt to Taste
About a cup of crushed nuts

The recipe is in kilograms and grams and I was too lazy to translate it.  I was also a bit afraid the lemon would curdle the sour cream, but it was delicious.  I have no really funny stories about this cooking experience, it was smooth sailing the whole way.  First, cut the stems from the bottom of the artichokes so that they will stand up straight.  Cut the tops off so that you can rip their little hearts out later.  Steam them for about 20 minutes.  I'm not sure this is an accurate time, mine came out with softened architecture (didn't stand up for the stuffing) but like all lady killers, the hearts were a little tougher than I hoped they would be.  While they are steaming, pulverize some nuts in a food processor.  I used walnuts because that's what I had for the chicken recipe, but I imagine almonds or just about anything else would have worked fine.  Maybe not peanuts.  Mix the sour cream, lemon zest and juice, and pulverized nuts.  When the Artichokes are sufficiently softened up, rip their little hearts out and stuff your nuts inside.  This is the best way to create yet another generation of heartless little bastards with prickly outsides.  I am still talking about cooking.  I guess that's what Julie Powell was getting at with all her sexual imagery.  It's just too easy. Once you are finished being a misogynist, serve the artichokes warm and dip the petals in the sour cream mixture.  

 Kotmis Satsivi

For the Chicken:
5 Chicken Thighs
4 Tablespoons Butter
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil

For the Sauce:
1/4 Cup Minced Onion
2 Cloves Garlic
1 Tablespoon Flour
1 1/2 Cups of Chicken Bouillion
2 Tablespoons Red Wine Vinegar
1/8 Teaspoon of Cloves
Pinch of Saffron
Cinnamon and Cayene Pepper to taste 
Bay Leaf
1/4 teaspoon of salt
3 ounces of shelled walnuts, pulverized

Rinse and dry the chicken (Julia Child Style) melt the butter and heat oil - brown the chicken for 5 minutes on both sides, then cover and simmer for another 15 minutes or until cooked through.  


Meanwhile, back on the Farm (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Style), melt butter and saute onions and garlic in a saucepan.  Add flour until a paste forms.  Add bouillion and bring to a boil until a thick sauce forms.  Add spices - you can make this as spicy as you please - "it's possible" that my kitchen helper "didn't measure the cinnamon and cayenne." I loved it.  Add salt and walnuts.  Keep warm until chicken is done.  

 

The dish was amazing despite the collapsed infrastructure of the artichokes and the tough hearts (pictured here as a pile of greenery).  And my kitchen helper was fantastic and for somebody who claims she can't cook, did a great job of making the sauce entirely unaided.  I think this whole "I can't cook" thing is a fib.

 

About the Book:  During our discussion, Ashley and I spoke about the fact that we both hadn't read very much since the last time we talked about reading.  We also spoke about the fact that it was interesting how the Czarists had a "true" French emigree staying with them and the radicals had an Englishman and a baby bear staying with them.  In the chapter after the rum drinking party I blogged earlier, we find out that our little delinquents have actually taken the bear, strapped it to the back of a local cop, and thrown the two together into the canal.  One of the mothers was listening on silently while everyone was discussing her son's shocking exploits but it's clear that they aren't very shocked and a few seem to think it's a darn funny scene.  

Curiously, if I'm not wrong, the bear is a symbol for Russia.  In this case, a young bear is being made into a clown for the amusement of some young, very drunk radicals who have since been kicked out of St Petersburg and been forced to move on to Moscow.  Interesting symbolism.

About the music:  Soothing guitar.  Lots of quick strumming and plucking.  I'm entranced by it and have no idea which is for 7 or which for 6 string guitars.

Chapter 9 - Pickled Herring on Toast, Salmon Koulibiac, "Russian Salad," and Apparently Some Russians Drink Rum

Book:  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes:  Blue Hill Bay Pickled Herring
Trout Koulibiac
Russian Salad

Music:  A Russian Weekend - Various Artists

Pickled Herring on Dark Wheat Toasts

(I did not pickle my own herring)

I bought a jar of Blue Hill Bay Herring Fillets in Wine Marinade and I cut up some Dark Wheat bread and it was delicious.  Interestingly sweet and surprisingly tasty.  After the toast was gone, Samantha was eating it with a fork from the bowl, it was that good.

Salmon Koulibiac

Ingredients:

2 Salmon Fillets

2 Hard Boiled Eggs
1 cup of cooked long grain rice

2 Bunches Green Onion (sliced both white and green portions)

Large bunch of Fresh Dill

1 Lemon (zested and juiced)

Box of Puff Pastry

1 Egg (beaten for glaze)

If you are going out to see some friends at an open mic before dinner and don't want to eat at midnight, I suggest prepping your filling ahead of time.  Add half the dill to the water and steam the salmon for just about 4 minutes.  Don't listen to any web site that says you have to (over)steam your salmon for 10 minutes, it won't ruin it, it just won't be nearly as tasty.  Flake the salmon,  and mix everything together in a big bowl to await your return.  And don't, as I did, forget to boil the eggs, because that will spoil your whole plan for getting that prep work finished ahead of time.  If  you have a faithful kitchen friend named "biscuit Ben," ask him kindly to boil the eggs for you, then crumble them and add them to the mix.  When you are ready to bake, use one sheet of puff pastry for the bottom.  You are supposed to roll it out - I don't have a rolling pin and couldn't use my grandmother's "Vodka bottle as a rolling pin" substitute because my vodka bottle has chocolate drips all over it - so I just oiled a baking dish and threw the sheet in there and that worked fine.  Spread the salmon mixture evenly over the pastry, leaving room at the edges to seal it.  Assemble the top, pressing the edges together and brush with the beaten egg.  Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes until golden brown. 

A note about looking for fresh, skinless trout fillets in East Harlem.  Don't bother.  The original recipe called for trout, which I really wanted to try, but there is only one fish market in my neighborhood and no trout to be found and only salmon steaks with the skin on.  I ended up buying frozen fillets in individual sealed packages.  It was fine.

 "Russian Salad"

Ingredients:

2 cartons of grape tomatoes (because they are the only ones that are red right now)

3 cloves garlic

1/2 Vidalia onion

1/2 Cup sour cream

Salt pepper to taste

Slice tomatoes into chunks, press garlic, and chop onion finely. Add sour cream and salt and pepper. Mix well and chill. Let stand long enough for flavors to blend.  If you are not a big onion person, don't add the whole onion, it's really oniony.  But tasty and a nice, creamy accompaniment to our Koulibiac.

Some suggested variations to the Koulibiac:  Sam thought Feta would add nicely to the mix and I think some white sauce or alfredo-style sauce would complement it deliciously.  I think you could use the alfredo sauce especially if you used a regular pie crust, which would give you more of a pot-pie taste to it.  I imagine you could substitute any other sort of shredded meat as well, if you are not a fish lover.  Also, if you have any leftover filling when you are done, I think it would be great mixed up with mayo in pita bread.

About the book:  Apparently, the Russian aristocracy was even more "French" than I realized.  At one point, an awkward son of our social grasper wished to tell a story at a party and insisted on it being spoken in Russian, but he spoke haltingly "as a Frenchman might, who'd lived in Russia for a year."  I also read about the other son, Anatole, who was a "rake" about town and threw drunken card parties every night before visiting the brothels.  He had a friend who made a bet that he could climb out on the roof, drink an entire bottle of rum (not vodka!) without taking the bottle away from his lips and without holding on to anything for support.  He won his bet and he might be a quite charming addition to some of our more raucous, modern fraternity parties.

The set up of the story right now is that all the proper people are anti-Napoleon and have staying in their midst a "true" emigre from France.  Who seems to be staying there only until the Bourbon restoration comes out on top.  These folks have his and her coachmen to assist with capes and jackets, and twiddle their time away at parties praising the Czar and his family and cursing the revolutionaries.  A few "uncivilized" young persons advocate for Napoleon,  but so far they have been quickly muffled up by empty pleasantries and overzealous hostesses who speak too much French.  NB:  It is only to the revolutionaries that Pierre (a half-Italian illegitimate son) is know as Pyotr. 

About the music:  The nutcracker suite is not suggested eating music.  I believe all the comments were to the effect of "I feel as though I have to eat faster!"  We had to skip ahead to the Borodin in order to enjoy a relaxing tune with our meal.

Chapter 1 - Quick Sour Cream Chicken, Cauliflower Fried in Butter, Roasted Potatoes and Dill, and Napolean is Just Another Robespierre

Book:  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes:  Potatoes Roasted in Olive Oil, Dill, and Sea Salt
Cauliflower Fried in Butter
Quick Sour Cream Chicken

Music:  Tchaikovsky -Serenade in Strings

Potatoes Roasted in Olive Oil, Dill, and Sea Salt 

(The potatoes I just threw together.  I read some kind of Russian Recipe for Potatoes and Dill, but couldn't find anything too authentic on the internet that didn't involve soup or mushrooms. )

Ingredients:  
1 Bag Baby Red Potatoes
Olive Oil for Coating
Sea Salt for Sprinkling
Dill

Heat oven to broil.  Set a timer for 15 minutes.  This is most crucial.  Otherwise, you may forget about them or a student's parent might call and engage you in a frantic search for her son and you will end up with mostly burned potatoes which otherwise would have been perfectly crispy and delicious. The salvaged remains (from the bottom and edges) will prove this to you in a most disheartening way as you throw away the blackened bits.

Cauliflower Fried in Butter

Ingredients:  
One Head of Cauliflower (trimmed and separated into florets)
2 Tbsp Flour
Salt and Pepper to Taste
2 Tablespoons butter 


Steam the cauliflower until just tender.  Coat with flour seasoned with salt and pepper and pan fry in hot melted butter until brown and crispy on all sides. 

Before engaging in this, retreat from the frustration anything in your life might be causing, such as lost keys, check books, or students.  By no means should you go on a rant about said missing item when it is suddenly discovered to have been hanging out with his wayward friends, lying to his mother, and cutting your class.  Any of these actions may lead you to leave the cauliflower in the flour too long so that it gets caked rather than just coated and to subsequently, and in anger, throw it all into the pan before the butter is hot enough.  The result?  Soggy cauliflower that you have a sense would have been much tastier had you calmly dusted it with flour and salt, added a few tablespoons of olive oil to your butter, heated the pan properly, and browned it more quickly. 

"Quick" Chicken

Ingredients:  

1 ea average chicken (I just used 5 chicken thighs)
3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup sour cream
2 ea eggs
salt
pepper

Fry the chicken in butter.  I took a cue from Julie and Julia and dried my meat to make it brown better.  Darned if that wasn't about the only thing that was easy to make happen.  Cover the pan and stew the chicken for 15 minutes. Open it and leave on very low heat. Beat eggs and stir in sour cream. Pour the sauce into the pan on low heat, stirring regularly, until the sauce thickens. 

Here's my take on this recipe:  It was like coating chicken in very moist, creamy scrambled eggs.  Scrambled because I might have still been ranting about a student instead of stirring, and eggy simply because the 2 eggs to 1 half cup of sour cream was just too much egg.  I suggest reducing to one egg and, if you like sour cream, increasing to 1 cup.  I would also get boneless, skinless chicken, since the nice crispy skin I had achieved was sort of boiled out of it by the sauce. 

NB:  When attempting to recover a failed chocolate vodka, you can try chilling it, and that will take some of the edge off the burn and the chocolate will not precipitate out.  You can also try adding ice to it and serving it with some cream, which takes the other edge.  However, in the end, the dulled blade still remains and you should buy better vodka.

All said and done, the meal did not taste bad, even the soggy cauliflower was suggestive of better days gone slightly to fat.  It was not so good as to put me off my desire to paper cut a certain teenager with his report card, but I did enjoy some for lunch leftovers today.

(My food photography may need some work - but look at that scrambled egg sauce...)

About the book - I have only read chapter 1.  The Russians in this chapter seem to see Napoleon as no better than another Robespierre profiteering on the chaos of France. They speak about the "hydra of revolution" which implies that he is simply one head of many, and all bent on destruction. His power; however, is perhaps the greater as he has set himself up above the people whereas at least Robespierre had remained party to the tribunals who eventually engineered his demise. The impression Tolstoy leaves us with from this speech is that there was no delineation between the revolution and Napoleon's upstart wars.

As for the 2 characters you meet in chapter 1, Anna is charmingly and pretentiously called "Annette" and litters her conversation with 3 generations of genteel French phrases.  What a cruel ironic blow it must have been to those raised to think of Paris as the center of culture, worthy of emulation, having to see their beloved mentors reduced to the rotten red (to borrow a phrase from Dickens) of the guillotine.  And Prince Vasili, "who like a wound-up clock, by force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed" should prove to be quite the standard, villainous, social grasper.   I think I'm going to enjoy reading this book. 


About the music:  Tchaikovsky, procured by Jay (thank you!), was playing all through the dinner cooking.  I don't know how to write about classical music, but it was lovely.

A last note about this project - one person, Eric, has already offered to forward me a recipe.  Thank you!  I would love to see them.  Scouring the internet is tiresome and not always authentic - I am going to make a bookstore trip soon for a Russian Cookbook, but in the meantime, if you know any foolproof (student-crisis proof?) recipes, please pass them on.