Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

There were also Tbilisi pickles, Italian wine fish stew, Hungarian cabbage stew, Ukraine red cabbage soup, Cantonese tomato barbecued pork, and Hangzhou barbecued pork. They felt particularly close to the Chinese dishes introduced in Soviet Woman . But for grilled and fried game, they felt totally at sea. Because they had no way to get game, they made fun of the illustrations in the cooking section: a rabbit holds a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, explaining to the readers how to cook and eat delicious game. It was like a person enthusiastically telling others how to kill him and make him as delicious as possible.

Once in a while, they would try to make some snacks: Russian sweet bread, sugar and honey pancake, and curry beef turnover. Some recipes required “marshmallow cream,” and they immediately studied the instructions and searched for the ingredients to make it: cream, gelatine, egg white, sugar, caramel, water, and vanilla. To make marshmallow cream you mix these ingredients together and beat for a long time until it becomes fluffy. Cream, gelatine, and caramel were the things that were most difficult to find, and the stores in Fuan just didn’t sell this kind of stuff. Youyou remembered that the mother of one of her elementary school classmates worked in a food processing factory, so she went to talk to her. Her classmate’s mother said, “Our factory does have these things, but what do you need them for?”

Youyou said, “My grandma is sick and the doctor gave her this folk prescription, which requires only these three things. Just a little, a little bit of each of them.” But even a little cost money. The food processing factory was government-run, so Youyou used her back-door connections and spent a vast sum of money, 1.40 yuan, to buy cream, gelatine, and caramel. She and Tiao took turns beating the mixture, using chopsticks, the way they beat eggs. It was really hard work. When Tiao thought about it years later, she felt that mixing these watery ingredients and beating them into a snow-white, fluffy cream was nothing short of a miracle. She’d kept at it with Youyou’s encouragement. They beat the mixture for almost an hour, until their arms were sore and their vision was blurred, but, at last, they succeeded. The sticky fluid finally turned into fragrant cream! Ah, marshmallow cream!

There was a sumptuous spread in the “Home-Style Kitchen” section that particularly interested Youyou. Actually, it was only a few examples of cold dishes with fruit and vegetables. It read: The dishes you make should be both tasty and attractive. Using ingredients like fresh cucumber, green peas, sliced boiled eggs, green onions, and tomatoes, you can put together an attractive dish. In early autumn, vegetables are abundant, so homemakers can easily prepare a variety of delicious and appealing dishes.

Below are recipes from Vladimir Lepushin, head chef of Moscow’s Metropol Hotel.

1. Festive Appetizer (Cold Dish): First, cut cooked wild fowl into thin slices, and then take fresh potatoes, green peas, cauliflower, and celery stalks, and dice after boiling. Thinly slice both cucumber and tomatoes into the same thickness, then combine all of these, adding salt and dressing (mix vegetable oil, egg yolk, and, according to taste, add mustard and vinegar, and whisk together). Then your appetizer is done. Next, arrange your appetizer in the following manner: In a tall, footed bowl, stack the ingredients in layers, making a tower shape, and drizzle with the dressing. Then on top of the tower place a hollowed-out chili pepper, and on its carved-out tip place an olive (or a small plum) and then surround the tower with olives (or plums), and around this arrange fresh apple and cucumber slices with their edges cut in a zigzag shape. On these slices place more olives, and finally around the outer edge of the bowl garnish with fresh lettuce leaves.

2. Apple Cup: Carve out most of the flesh of an apple to form a shell in the shape of a cup, then take the small pieces of carved-out apple, along with fresh cucumber, boiled carrot, green peas, and cabbage, and combine, adding dressing, and place back into the apple shell. Put the apples on a platter and surround with lettuce leaves, lemon slices, and rings of sliced chili pepper.

3. Little Basket: Take a large cucumber, scoop out the core, and carve into an oval-shaped basket. In the interior of the small basket you can add cold vegetables. Using a green onion, fashion a handle for the small basket. Around the small basket arrange cabbage leaves, and on top of the leaves you can place balls carved from carrots and fresh cucumbers.

Youyou attentively studied the three examples described and felt that the “Festive Appetizer” was not achievable. The wild fowl and olives would be impossible to get, and furthermore, the whole process seemed too complicated, like culinary acrobatics. The “Little Basket,” however, was feasible. Cucumbers, green onions, carrots, and cabbage were all easy to find. She then started carefully sculpting the “Little Basket.”

Tiao was not interested in any of the “garnishing” techniques in cuisine. As an adult, every time she saw those “realistic” peacocks and flowers carved out of carrots and turnips, or goldfish made out of preserved eggs on a banquet table, she would respond with disgust at the showy bad taste. She thought that for a chef to spend so much time and effort on these decorations was not only unnecessary but simply a useless sidetrack of culinary art. That was why she didn’t applaud Youyou’s “Little Basket,” even though Youyou crafted an exquisite version with her inspired hands and a paring knife.

Fei had her own amusements at the time. She leafed through the pages of photos in Soviet Woman for the fashions:

This coat, with gold print, has raglan sleeves and no buttons. The skirt and lining are made of pale mauve silk.

Gorgeous two-piece dress, waist-length, with form-fitting top.

Woollen dress with white and green stripes, set-in sleeves. Skirt pleated along the stripes.

Boating clothes. Tank top, pants made of pea-green waterproof material, and a deep blue jacket with black and white stripes.

Fei devoured the fashions in the magazines, sure she would look very pretty in any of the outfits, particularly the boating clothes. It was Soviet Woman that first informed her that boating involved special clothing. How professional and romantic it made a pastime like boating look! Fei told Tiao what she thought and Tiao agreed with her. During a period in which no one could tell women’s clothes from men’s, everything they saw seemed beyond luxury. They stared at those clothes obsessively, so absorbed that they couldn’t help fantasizing that they could lift them right off the page and try them on. There was a black evening gown with flared skirt called “Cairo Night,” worn by a model with bare shoulders and a slender waist, which Fei couldn’t resist imitating. She put down the magazine, walked to the door, and took down a black raincoat that belonged to Youyou’s father, conveniently hanging on the back of it.

She ducked into the bathroom with the raincoat. When she came out, she was “Cairo Night,” her plaits coiled on the back of her head and her beautiful, smooth shoulders exposed. She caught the black raincoat below her shoulders and above her breasts, showing off her sculpted collarbones. She clutched the clothes tightly at her chest to keep the raincoat from slipping down. Ah, “Cairo Night,” both Tiao and Youyou clapped for her. Just then she played a little trick, suddenly loosening her grip and letting the raincoat fall. She stood naked in front of her two friends. Perhaps she hadn’t really done it on purpose; or perhaps she wanted them to see that body of hers, so mature and worldly. How many secrets her body kept from them!