Kazan — summer 2012

On the way home from Sabantui we stopped at the store for some groceries. Here's what we bought.

In the upper left and far right are some bags with fruit. Then there is a bag of dried bread slices, which are called sukharí. So what do you think is in the blue bag? Ice cream. You can't tell from this angle, but there is a perfect cylinder of ice cream in this plastic bag. This type is called plombir, their fattiest ice cream. More power to them! I'll eat as much fat as I can get my hands on.

Russian/Tatar hospitality is amazing. They never stop feeding you. Although we had just been to sabantui, they immediately put on tea and set the table with the following goodies.

Let's see... the loaf of sliced bread you will recognize, as well as the cups of tea. The glass bowels hold three types of varenye, syrupy jam, which from left to right were made of blueberries, currants, and cherries. The yellow stuff above that is chak-chak, a Tatar desert made of flower and honey, very sticky and sweet.

And then they added some store-bought strawberries, which are decent but not nearly as good as the ones from their garden, and some ham to make open-face sandwiches with the bread. All those things together make a standard Russian/Tatar snack for visitors. Americans, learn a lesson here. That's how to treat a guest.

Lastly, here are Flyura and I. This is one excellent woman. Smart, hospital, hard working. But more than that, she and her husband have founded a very harmonious family. There is a general kindness and politeness to each other that I don't see everywhere, and they have an easy-going friendliness that shows they actually enjoy each other's company.

The biggest compliment my friend Tom gives is to say that someone is the salt of the earth. Flyura and her husband Oleg are part of the salt of the earth.

PS. Crud. I don't think I got a picture of Oleg. Guess I'll have to go back...

Every patriotic Murrikan owns a grill on which testosterone-gifted men grill hamburgers, steaks and brats. The Russian/Tatar equivalent of the that event is making shashlyk, i.e. shishkebabs. Every family owns a set of shampury (skewers) on which they string chunks of pork meat alternating with pork fat. They also will use mutton and beef, but my hosts all agree that pork is best. The chunks of pork fat help keep the rest of the meat chunks moist, and they themselves are crunchy and delectable in a way that would make George H. W. Bush (the older one) proud. For those of you who don't know the reference, he was fond of fried pork rinds, and if he liked that stuff, he would go crazy for this.

Here's a picture of the shahslyki under construction. Previously they had been marinating in a mix of garlic and spices.

In the movie “Moscow does not believe in tears” the male protagonist says, “Only men should make shashlyk.” Today the daughter Dasha made and grilled them, and frankly she did a stellar job. Sorry, guys, but I'm gonna have to take the feminist side on this one.

The skewers are eventually moved to a mangal, a setup that holds coals and is of a particular width. The skewers are of a standard size, so pretty well all the mangaly are of a standard size as well. And if you go out into the woods, sometimes you will find a rectangle of bricks in the middle of the woods that have previously served as a mangal. You can rely on the fact that your skewers will fit perfectly across those bricks that were rather thoughtlessly left by previous shishkabobbers. Here are ours on the grill.

In the meantime Danila et alies are setting up a table, upon which everything will be placed. Danila has coached his family admirably in advance of my arrival, telling them things such as the fact that I like salads made entirely of leaves. This caused his mother a bit of perplexity. Russian salads tend to be mixes of vegetable matter and meat bound together by sour cream or mayonnaise. She did a great job on this salad, even thought it almost nothing but greens (gasp) and some oil and vinegar.

And here apparently I made another cultural error. I started to use a fork to pull the meat off my skewer, and they immediately told me no-no-no, you must eat it straight off the skewer. Of course, I had to make a video of that.

Y'know, that video makes me think a bit of Andrew Zimmern. I foresee my next career on The Food Channel.

Y'know, all this blogging takes a lot of time. While the shashlyk were cooking, the banya was being fired up. Danila's brother Sasha and I used it after dinner. The banya is sort of the Russian version of a sauna, except that they actually use it to clean up. And to beat each other with birch branches. No, I'm not kidding. I'll try to add details and pictures later

Obviously we haven't eaten enough today, so Flyura prepared pelmeni, which are sort of a Russian ravioli equivalent. Basically they are dough wrapped around meat. Instead of tomato sauce they are usually served with butter or sour cream. These ones have been floating in a glorious pool of butter before they were put on the plate.

Had a picnic in the afternoon. Details later.