The
Monarchist Cookbook
By Valarie Stivers-Isakova
Yelena Molohovets, the Martha
Stewart of tsarist Russia,
published 26 books between the
years 1856 and 1910. Their
topics ranged wildly, from
Christianity and the family to
advice to doctors and patients,
not to mention a short history
of the universe (including a map
in color), but her most famous
work was the first one. It was
titled A Gift to Young
Housewives: A Means to Reduce
Expenses in the Household.
Published in 1856, this book is
still in print today, and most
Russian women who cook seriously
either have it or have heard of
it. Molohovets provides over
2,000 recipes in every category
of foodstuff, including soups,
pirozhki and suckling
pigs. There’s an exhaustive
table of meals broken down by
month into four categories of
expense. A typical lunch menu
from the second expense bracket,
in May, goes something like
this: soup puree from sorrel and
spinach; lin (a type of fish)
under sauce; decorative pastry
basket of carrot, turnip, potato
and cabbage in béchamel; beef
with Italian macaroni and
mushroom sauce; coffee ice
cream; and pistachio torte.
Obviously, all of these recipes
require that you have on hand
various kinds of homemade stock
or homemade kvass or jam
or a little bit of pig’s skin,
for flavor. Here is how the
redoubtable Mrs. Molohovets
begins the book (loosely
translated by me):
“Cooking is its own kind of
art, one that, practiced without
supervision or dedication,
requires not years but decades
of experience. And the requisite
decades of inexperience can be
very expensive, especially for
young married couples. It’s
often heard how all kinds of
unhappiness in family life can
be ascribed in a large part to
the fact that the mistress of
the house was inexperienced and
didn’t want to penetrate or
understand the craft of
housework.”
So, girls, if you want your
husbands to be happy, you’d
better watch the servants like a
hawk, keep a well-stocked root
cellar, and know how to take
apart a cow.
As impossible as it is to cook
like this in the modern
world—especially in the States,
where it’s not even easy to find
yeast in a supermarket anymore
and tracking down sorrel and
black bread adds another level
of complication—the recipes in
this book sound so delicious
that, from time to time, I give
them a whirl. After all,
Molohovets is the source of the
recipe for my mother-in-law’s
wild-strawberry varenie—which
takes three days, involves
teaspoons of vodka, and
perfectly preserves the shape of
the tiny berries. The torte
section’s glazes (coffee,
rosewater, pistachio) and
fillings (poppyseed chocolate,
beaten plums) are alone enough
to make the translation, the
Yandexing (Russian Googling) of
archaic units of measurement,
and the days of cooking, worth
it. Here’s one I’ve tried
recently:
* a zolotnik, or thimble,
is roughly 4 ¼ grams, which is a
heaping teaspoon
* a lozhka, or spoon, is
1/3 of a cup
LITTLE CABBAGE PIES
#319. The usual dough with yeast
General rules for dough:
1. For each pound of flour, add
a full teaspoon of salt.
2. If the dough recipe includes
butter and eggs, then you should
add less than a glass of water
per pound of flour.
3. For 6 to 8 people it’s enough
to use 1 ½ pounds of flour; from
these proportions, you’ll get 18
little pies.
4. For each pound of flour, you
need 2 zolotniks of dry
yeast, which you dilute in ¼ cup
water. Add to this 1 teaspoon
flour, mix, let ferment
slightly, then that start making
the dough. For dough that can be
made in 3 to 4 hours, double or
triple the amount of yeast.
INGREDIENTS:
1 glass of milk
1 ½ pounds flour [I use 1 pound
white and ½ pound whole wheat]
2 to 3 zolotniks yeast
1 lozhka sugar
2 egg yolks
1/8 pound butter
egg whites
water, salt
STEPS:
Mix one cup of water or milk
with the activated yeast [or 4
to 6, for the fast version] and
half the flour. Let it rise.
Once risen, make the dough as
best as you can. Cream until
white the sugar, egg yolks and
butter with 1 teaspoon salt.
Add this to the dough mixture
with the remainder of the flour,
so that the dough is fairly
thick.
[How anyone handled this without
a Kitchenaid and a dough hook, I
don’t know.]
When it rises, put
it on the table, cut into
pieces, roll each one out with
the rolling pin. Put ½ lozhka
of filling on each piece. Pinch
up beautifully. Let rise on a
board. Baste with egg yolk mixed
with a bit of water and butter.
Immediately place in a hot oven
[I set mine to 375 degrees] for
about 20 minutes.
INGREDIENTS:
1 pound cabbage
¼ pound butter [or olive oil]
2 to 3 hardboiled eggs, finely
minced
salt, pepper, dill
STEPS:
Take the cabbage
[I
recommend using a whole cabbage.
You can always snack on the
filling if you have too much!],
mince it finely, add 3 teaspoons
salt. Wait 10 minutes, squeeze
out cabbage, strain, splash with
boiling water. Once the water
drains away, transfer into a
little pot, add butter [or olive
oil]. Mix together. Stew,
stirring often, until soft but
not fried or browned. Once
ready, add hardboiled eggs, salt
on the end of a knife, pepper
and a little bit of chopped
dill. Mix.
