Anna Kharzeeva - The Soviet Diet Cookbook - exploring life, culture and history – one recipe at a time

I really can’t imagine making rombaba in the kitchen of a communal apartment. You end up using just about every bowl and utensil you own, and the clean-up is worthy of a “subbotnik” – a communal neighborhood spring cleaning.

Although I made half a recipe, it was a huge portion, so I asked my husband to take some into the office with him – thank God for offices where people will eat just about anything! He was given a mission to find out what people thought of the rombabas I made: if they were like what they remembered.

The homemade rombabas weren’t quite like what I remember, and I don’t think it’s just the rum messing with my memory. The results: 4 of the 5 participants said they weren’t like they remembered, but one said the rombaba tasted exactly as she recalled. Further research showed that she was the only one who had ever tried homemade rombabas.

That’s it, Granny… I’ve had enough of your “no one else baked it at home” tales. And, since you’ve had your own kitchen for the last 50 years, there truly is no excuse not to try this recipe.

Making the yeast dough wasn’t that hard, and I just followed the Book’s instructions. As for the sauce, I ended up with a lot of it, and my “babas” were soaked in it much more than the store-bought ones. The sauce is really delicious though, so I guess soaking the pastries thoroughly is not a bad idea – if you’re going to eat them then and there, that is. I don’t think they would keep very well that way.

I may not mess about with the lay of the land any more, however. I’ll buy my rombabas from the shop and pour a Bacardi to go with it. Rum has very much made it to Russian parties and homes by now and has replaced Stalin’s preferred Georgian tipple. These days, “Dear Leader” would have to stay sober. Or maybe not, as the home of rum is none other than communist Cuba.

Recipe:

Dissolve yeast in 1 cup of warm milk. Add three cups of flour and knead into a stiff dough. Roll into a ball. Make 5 or 6 shallow cuts in the ball and place the dough into a pan filled with 2—2 ½ liters warm water. Cover with a lid and set in a warm place for 40—50 minutes.

For the cakes:

1 kg flour; 2 cups milk;

7 eggs; 1 ¼ cups sugar;

300 grams butter; ¾ tsp salt;

200 grams raisins; ½ tsp vanilla;

50 grams yeast.

For the sauce

½ cup sugar; 1 ¾ cups water;

4—6 spoonfuls of rum, wine or other liquor.

When the dough increases in volume by 50%, remove it from the water with a slotted spoon. Separate the eggs. Add egg yolks to sugar and mix until there is no white showing. Whip egg whites into a froth. Add to the dough ball the second cup of warm milk, salt, vanilla and egg yolks mixed with sugar. Mix well.

Add the remaining flour and knead the dough. After that, add the butter to the dough and knead very well. The dough should not be too thick. Again cover and put in a warm place. When the dough again increases in volume by 50 percent, add the raisins, stir and pour the batter into the prepared mold.

Cover and put in a warm place to rise. When the dough has risen to 3/4 the height of the molds, then gently, not shaking, put it in a cool oven, approximately 45—60 minutes.

During baking, the mold must be rotated with great caution, as even a slight push can cause the dough to fall. When the rombabas are ready, (readiness is determined in the same manner as in cakes). Remove from the mold and put on a dish. When cool, pour the syrup over them, carefully turning on a platter so they are soaked in the syrup soaked from all sides. Then, put them on a separate dish to dry. Put on another dish, covered with a paper towel, to serve

This week, my breakfast meal was mannaya kasha or semolina porridge, affectionately known as manka. This is the breakfast that Soviet people really had every day, unlike the one described in the Book.

These days, however, I would never serve it for breakfast if I wanted people to speak to me again. Not that everyone hates it, but your chances of at least half the people in the room having a reaction of: “anything but this, I can’t believe this is happening to me” when served this meal are very high.

The reason for such a reaction is that manka has always been considered the best breakfast meal for kids, and it is served everywhere – at home, in preschool, at school, at the office cafeteria… It’s a milky gooey mass on a plate that, if not quite cooked right, or not very hot, turns quickly into… a milky gooey mass that is slightly less edible. It is a real life nightmare for many.

In a famous short story, “All Secrets Become Known,” a boy has to eat his manka or he won’t be allowed to go to the Kremlin. He hates the stuff and pours it out the window and straight on to someone’s hat. I still remember the drawing in the book with the porridge coming off a tall skinny man’s hat, nose and coat. I know many people who would say that’s exactly where it belongs.

Lucky for me, I actually like manka. Granny will make it for me on the odd occasion and I’m always happy to have it. I even ordered it at a restaurant recently! I loved watching people’s reaction when I told them what I ate. I think I narrowly avoided being put in a mental institution.

Even though I have manka every now and again, up to this point, I’ve been able to avoid making it for myself, as I know it’s not easy to keep it from forming lumps and/or burning. I was really focused and trying very hard, yet my porridge didn’t turn out perfectly – it was a little bit burnt, and had a few lumps in it. I ate it anyway.

Granny says she was surprised when in a kind of home economics class she conducted at school, a pupil was making manka with cold water. He put the dry manka in the proportion of 2 tablespoons per 1 cup water into cold water and then slowly brought it to a boil. He explained that this way there were fewer lumps. Granny took his advice to heart and makes manka that way to this day.

I also feel grateful to manka, since I recently found out it helped my parents survive. They were both born in 1963, a year in which, according to Granny, “ all the food suddenly disappeared from shops.” “There were no grains,” she said. “When your mom was little, I was surprised to find a packet of manka in the shop, and when I took it home, I saw that it had worms and bugs in it. Turned out it was the ‘strategic reserves’ that had been made a while ago and had gone bad.”

My dad’s mother says that when she was pregnant with my father and living in Kursk, she had even less food than there was in Moscow. She would be given some manka as well as some other foods at a special office for women who were pregnant or had young children, and that was a huge help.

It seems to me that unlike we young modern Russians, the Soviet adults stayed loyal to their childhood savior.

“There were carrot, cabbage and beet rissoles with manka for sale in the ‘gastronomy’ sections of restaurants and cafes,” Granny remembers. “They were all very popular.”

Granny’s friend Galina Vasileyvna also shared this story about the ubiquity of manka in the Soviet diet:

“When ‘ptichye moloko’ (bird’s milk) cake first appeared, it would be sold at the Praga Restaurant. It was so popular that you had to put in a pre-order and then wait your turn. Those who didn’t want to wait developed a recipe for it that could be made at home. In it, they replaced the soufflé with manka porridge. The recipe went around the whole country, traveling from city to city.”

I will continue to stay loyal to the meal that kept me, my parents and grandparents full in the mornings – the porridge, not the cake. That would be my Soviet nightmare.