Kazan — summer 2014

I did all my major shopping today so that tomorrow I can make my first pilaf experiment. Alas, the spice lady at the Чеховский рынок (Chekhov Market, the farmer’s market near my apartment) had no ground cardamom, only the whole variety in the pods. Damn. More work. So I bought the cardamom, which Wikipedia tells me is the third most expensive spice in the world by weight. Guess I'll have to buy a mortar and pestle tomorrow.

Since I have no spouse/partner, I cook for myself. I mean, if I don't, who the heck will, right? So here in Russia I'm continuing my culinary growth. This time it included grinding cardamom by hand. I bought a mortar and pestle. In the morning I experimented with grinding cardamom. And every hour or two after that, I would come into the kitchen and sniff the ground cardamom in the mortar. I'm mostly not fond of cardamom. But after the second or third time, the smell was practically intoxicating. Shoot. If other spices react like this to being fresh ground, I may have to make grinding them a regular habit.

The recipe itself turned out amazing. The details are on my food blog. When I say amazing, I'm not kidding. The rice tasted better than any rice I've ever had in my life.

2014-07-07: Despite the fact that most Russians don't own cars, parking space is at a premium. To reserve the parking near my apartment building for themselves, the occupants for the last several years have strung a cable across the driveway with a combination lock at the end, and when they drive in and out, they stop to open/close it. Effective, but not particularly pretty. So a couple weeks ago they replaced the cable with a nice new gate. The driveway is blocked by a double gate, and the pedestrian part is blocked by a person-sized gate with a small sliding bar to close it.

Тhe new pedestrian gate was sometimes left open by the residents, and sometimes it was closed. Apparently some of the neighbors liked the illusion of security that a closed gate might produce, and others just didn't give a damn. I was rather annoyed by the draw bar, but I figured I needed to be a considerate neighbor, so I got in the habit of closing it. Then one day I got home and noticed the draw bar had vanished entirely; one of the neighbors apparently was fed up with it. And one of the illusion-lovers replaced it with a twig...

2014-07-16: Apparently one of the neighbors was displeased that the drawbar vanished. A new one has appeared, and this time it is chained to the gate.

Hm. That's a puny chain. I predict it's gone in 48 hours.

On Monday I went to visit Galiya, Lila's mom. I ate before I went. That was stupid. Tatars *never* neglect to feed you. Here I am in my American mindset expecting to sit and chat and maybe drink some tea, and of course Galiya feeds me like a prince. Visiting Galiya was one of Lila's friends, Nuriya, a breath-takingly beautiful woman of 26. She is quite the entrepreneur as well. Dresses like a Getty, owns her own car and travel business, and is kind and charming in conversation as well. Lila herself is a world-class human being; I shouldn't be surprised that her friends are as well.

So what did Galiya feed me. First a picture, then a discussion. (Click the picture for a larger version)

In the upper left is a dish with white and brown bread; the brown bread is potent Russian rye, not that tasteless crap we call brown bread in the states. Below that is homemade jelly made from pine needles; no, I'm not kidding. Below that you can see one fourth of a bowl that was filled with lapsha, a homemade chicken soup with homemade noodles.

Back to the top, those round things are chak-chak, which are balls of flower dough baked and bound with honey. Under that is sliced ham, and very tasty ham indeed. Under that is a summer salad.

Back to the top are two covered containers with different homemade jellies. Under that is homemade hot sauce, which to my great shock was actually spicy a bit. Under that was a mushroom and mayonnaise salad. The dark shadow is a heart-shaped container of chocolate-covered chak-chak. And under that is cheese-mayonnaise-garlic salad, which I will have to address in a future entry.

On the weekend I bought крыжовник. Had to look up the translation. In English they are called gooseberries. I don't think I've ever had gooseberries in the US. In fact, I think the first place I heard of them was in a Monty Python skit.

I bought this batch from a little old lady on the corner. God only knows where they were gathered... probably somewhere near Chernobyl. (I'm kidding. Chernobyl is a long freakin' way off.)

The unripe ones kind of taste like not-quite-ripe wild grapes. The ripe ones have a sweet, pleasant taste that I'm at a loss to describe. Click the picture for a larger version.