Is making borscht a political statement?

"We wondered why we had grown up being afraid of the Soviet Union" and other thoughts on Russia and food, including recipe links.

Dear friends and readers,

This weekend I am sharing the latest installment of Doll Collection Dinners: Wildly fun adventures in the kitchen inspired by a collection of seventy-two dolls from around the world.

If you are looking for what we ate, with links to the recipes, scroll down to the end. But I’d argue the stories make a good appetizer!

Either way, thank you for being here and Enjoy! Or in Russian: приятного аппетита! (Privatnava appyetita)

Fat cubes and borscht

A few months before the Ukrainian people overwhelmingly voted in favor of the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in 1991 and the country claimed its sovereignty from the Soviet Union, my husband went with a school group to the capital city of Kiev. Mark stayed in a family home where his host mother tried to fatten up his skinny, eighteen-year-old body with cubes of solid fat called salo and big bowls of borscht. The fat cubes, Mark says, were as disgusting as they sound, but the bright red beet soup was delicious.

When I told Mark that our next Doll Collection Dinner would be a meal from Russia, he asked, “Are you prepared for the pushback?”

Most of us have some stereotypes about our Cold War enemy, as well as feelings about the man who has been president of the new Russia for twenty-four years and has been leading a war with the independent nation of Ukraine for the last two years.

But it’s probably not just political reasons that keep you from putting Russian food at the top of your list of favorite cuisines. You have likely not researched Russian foods unless that is, you read “A Gentleman in Moscow,” and then maybe, like me and other bookworms with food blogs, your interest was peaked by Amor Towles descriptions of Latvian Stew!

But that is kind of the point of the Doll Collection Dinners. My doll collection includes dolls from all over the world - from Venezuela to Malaysia, Korea to St. Kitts - each brought home by my dad and stepmother for me since I was three years old. It all started on my father’s first trip abroad in 1978. Now at age forty-nine, I am getting to know the countries with my family by cooking new foods and asking my dad for stories about his travels.

If you are new to our “Doll Collection Dinners,” you can read about my father’s first international trip, doll, and dinner here.

My dad has traveled more than most people, but it so happens that my husband beat him to Russia. In the spring of 1991, Mark jumped at the chance to go with some classmates on a trip that his high school Vice Principal had organized. As a teenage boy, he says he was both excited and terrified by how much Vodka was poured for him at the dinner table with his host family. To his credit, he managed to keep his pants on despite several offers of money for the jeans he was walking around Moscow wearing. He laughs telling the story, saying he just couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to do: Take them off in the street and go home in underwear?

My father-in-law was an FBI agent, so Mark had to get special clearance to be allowed to go to Russia. It was a crazy time for the Cold War giant. Things were unraveling. Nine months after that high school spring break exchange trip, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned and what was left of the Soviet parliament voted to end itself. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was dissolved on December 26th, 1991.

I can’t help but wonder what that educator in New Jersey was doing, taking kids into a chaotic de-centralized state on the brink of crisis. Mark remembers the many cases of wine that the principal packed in alongside the kids’ suitcases and guesses he was up to something…

A doll my dad brought home from his first trip to Russia in 1992

Utter Chaos

My dad visited Russia for the first time in the summer of 1992, about six months after the fall of the USSR. He says, “It was utter chaos at the airport in St. Petersburg. Our bags were tossed and dumped and we had to hunt and scramble to find them. I remember we were relieved when we found them off in a corner.

“The street cars in St. Petersburg were running on tracks that were not nailed down. The weight of the trains pushed the rails down as the cars tilted to the side. I don’t know how they were even functioning.

“In Moscow, we stayed in a classic old hotel in the middle of the city. Each day we left the hotel and were confronted with old women selling anything they could to survive. It was so sad.

“We took a bus trip outside of the city and it felt like moving back in time. It was an impoverished, third-world place. The villages were so very primitive that we wondered why we had grown up being afraid of the Soviet Union.”

Mother Russia

Back to the food. You are probably not planning a big pot of borscht for your next dinner party, but that is exactly what we did! And we invited a friend who lived in Russia twice, speaks some Russian, and really does have a fondness for piroshki to help us make a big Russian Doll Collection Dinner.

Brynn arrived at our house with a bag of oranges and a bottle of black current-flavored kefir, things she remembers being ubiquitous when she spent a semester of college in St. Petersburg in 1998. She also brought along some photos and a clipping from her hometown paper that celebrated her return trip in the summer of 1999 when she, as a precursor to her later job with the US Geological Survey, managed to get access to nature preserves in Russia that were only accessible to scientists.

As a parent, I know how hard it can be to express to our kids the meaning of experiences that shaped who we have become, big life-changing things that happened before they were born. The stories feel disconnected from the present. Her children, like mine, know about the war in Ukraine and that Putin is a monstrous world leader, so it’s hard to explain the vagaries of history that gave someone like Brynn a deep fondness for the handpies, called pirozhki, and the writers who continue to stack up by her bedside.

This, too, is what these doll dinners are all about. The stories, the memories, the connections, the chance to taste new flavors that help us all understand a little more about people, places, and cultures. The chance to connect.

Our Russian Menu

This was a truly delicious meal! I’d recommend everything and importantly all four of the kids at the table found something to love (mostly the pork-filled pies!)

Here’s what we ate:

• Pirozhki stuffed with three fillings (pork, cabbage, and apple)

• Borscht with chicken, beets, cabbage, potatoes, carrots and dill

• Syrniki - cottage cheese pancakes - served with jam and sour cream (my personal favorite)

• Chocolate-covered dried apricots and prunes

• And Vodka from Mother Russia that Brynn had been saving (for just this occasion!?)

You should make these handpies!

I can understand why Brynn ate pirozhki daily and why they are beloved in Russia. The dough is a little sweet and very tender. And there is no end to what you could put inside. The dough was super easy to work with - it stretched and shaped like a charm - and still tasted buttery and delicate!

Brynn says: I followed the dough recipe from here but added only half the sugar recommended.

Fillings

1. Pork - Three pounds of ground pork cooked with finely diced onion, along with finely shredded carrot, salt and pepper and a few tablespoons of dill at the end.

2. Cabbage - Made from the recipe included with the dough, but instead of grated hard-boiled egg (which is very traditional), we added grated carrots and dill.

3. Apple - A few tablespoons of butter, finely diced apples, and some brown sugar, all cooked until soft. Any variety of pie filling could work.

Tip: Let the fillings cool completely, then make little piles or scoops on a tray. Put the tray in the freezer for about 10 minutes so the piles stiffen to make it easier to wrap them up in the dough.

на здоровье… To health!

Thanks for reading! If you know someone who loves Russia, or would love to read this, please share it. And if you have stories of your own, I’d love to read them in the comments!

And if you are interested in reading about other Doll Collection Dinners, check out:

• Japan, I didn't go ありがとございました! The story of a different dinner party, thoughts on Pico Iyer & going nowhere, and links to some awesome recipes.

• Poland, 1978 The story of why my dad went to Poland, what he ate there, & the doll that led to a collection that inspires our wild adventures in the kitchen.