Kazan — summer 2012

Wow, now this is amazing. There is a kosher restaurant in Kazan.

The number of Jews in Kazan is miniscule, so I would think that the restaurant might fail for lack of clientele. Good luck to them!

Dear Residents!

The hot water will be turned off in your building from 25 June 2012 through 15 July 2012 due to maintenance and pressure testing of the heating systems.

Yup, cold showers every day.

This is standard during the summer in Russia. During the winter it's a matter of life or death to have the hot water running, so summer is the only time you can really do maintenance.

Our students in Kazan this year will be in classrooms at the Institute of Economics, Management and Law. I inspected their newest building a couple weeks ago and mentioned that their student cafe was remarkable, done up as a cityscape of Singapore. My friend Lesley requested some pictures, so here they are. I'm afraid that the small photo format of this blog wouldn't do them justice, so I'm posting larger pictures here.

Cooking

Yes, I know you'll laugh at me. Today is the first time I've cooked in Russia. And this is my ninth trip. Oh, sure, I've put frozen stuff on the stove in boiling water, but that's really it. I've never really taken fresh food and cut and slice and combine and spiced. Today I did.

A friend had advised me to prepare squash like this: “Fry the squash in sunflower oil. Shred the garlic on a shredder, mix it with mayonnaise, and then mix it all together.”

That sounded kind of boring. I'm from Arizona. We like our food a bit spicier. So here's what I did.

1. I used half the squash, cutting it into reasonably sized chunks.
2. I used half a white onion, same treatment.
3. Fried the squash and the onion in sunflower oil, throwing in some black pepper and a bit of salt. When that had softened, I removed it from the flame to let it cool.
4. In the meantime I grated the garlic on the brand new grater I had bought for that purpose. Didn't work so well. Got through maybe half the garlic. Then I just minced the rest by hand.
5. Mixed the garlic with mayonnaise.
6. Mixed the mayonnaise with the squash mixture.
7. Ate with delight.

This stuff turned out great. I'll probably make at home now back in the States. It would never have crossed my mind to do the garlic-mayonnaise thing. That's partly due to my mom; she was/is not a fan of mayonnaise, and growing up I think the only time I ever saw the stuff was when she was making tuna salad. (Hm. In retrospect I don't think I remember her ever eating tuna salad. I'll have to ask.)

My Russian apartment did not have a grater of the right type, so I went ahead and bought this one.

I must tell you that a fine-toothed grater is no replacment for a decent garlic press. I had seriously considered bringing one with me this summer, but then I had thought, “Nah, there's no chance I'll really cook in Russia.” Wrongo, bucko.

Here are the squash and onions frying on the stove.

Here they are cooling on a plate.

Here they are all mixed together.

I'd give you another picture, but I ate it all.

I brought a bottle of ground chipotles with me to Russia, and I just made calabacitas with it with the second half of a large squash. So good!