Tales from the Three-Ninth Kingdom—The History of Gluttony: Food Memoirs

By Nina Krasikoff

"Tales from the Three Ninth Kingdom" is semibiographical memoirs, written in format of imaginative fairytale, where characters are fictional and unanimous, suitable for gregarious and illustrious times immemorial. In process, she pieced together entertaining tales, epicurean quotations, proverbs and anecdotes, enriching them with the fantasy, only fairytale permit. It is a diary of consummation of culinary delights on all levels: from the doomed world of Romanoff and even more mysterious and strange times before; uncertain dimension of which served exactly the concept of this book
It is a small forest of colorful stories, tailored with the twist on established genre of food memoirs:
The first part of the book is nostalgic flash back to the postwar childhood, exploring a difficult and colorful survival, where reality was bearable only, when one applies a good doze of fantasy.
The second part is a colorful world, occupied by eccentric and decadent characters, whose eponymous life still used as a source for hilarious entertainment.
The third part is memorabilia of forgotten recipes, originated in palaces, urban mansions, hunting lodges, ancient monasteries and summer estates, unraveling culinary traditions and history of food, which always followed the rhythm of the changing Four Seasons.
This book is contribution to the multicultural canvas of America, where among hundreds ethnic infusions, the Russian cuisine have been noticeably implanted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984552747

Book preview

TALES FROM THE

Three-Ninth Kingdom—

the History of Gluttony

Food Memoirs

Written and Illustrated by

NINA KRASIKOFF

Copyright © 2018 by Nina Krasikoff.

ISBN:                  Softcover                      978-1-9845-5273-0

                            eBook                            978-1-9845-5274-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/07/2018

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

My Flight Into The Foodie World

Tales From The Three-Ninth Kingdom.

Menu For Four Seasons

Appetizers Menu

Spring

Spring Menu

Summer

Summer Menu

Fall

Fall Menu

Winter

Winter Menu

DEDICATION

Dedicated to my beloved parents Michael and Tonya

Special appreciation to Kristina Feigin and Daniel Ramos for professional advises and critique in the beginning of my project. To Luda Parvitskaya, Anastasia Parvitskaya , and Stanislav Parvistky, who believed in me, support me and helped to recollect forgotten folklore, so much needed for completion of my book, and thanks to Sergey Blekher, who’s computer expertise helped me to shape and illustrate my book. Thank you all for your generous and loving contribution.

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INTRODUCTION

My nostalgia for the fearless days of traveling and exploring the food - world served as a guide while writing this book. The approach is more literary and written as a readable voyage into eccentric and colorful world of happily sated gluttons from the time immemorial. It might served as a mental aphrodisiac for a sofa-travelers and readers who liked to curl-up and leisurely nurture delicious fantasies about dark tunnels of Russian gourmet world,where outrageous was considered charming. The excessiveness and decadence is attractive aspect of gourmet writing, because it is entertaining and humorous.

Memorabilia of forgotten recipes were originated in urban mansions, hunting lodges, ancient monasteries and summer estates and compiled by the four seasons, capturing the essence of a rich country cuisine and the ambience of the time immemorial. I like to contribute to the multicultural canvas of America, where among hundreds ethnic infusions the Russian-gourmet cuisine have been noticeably implanted. It is my hope to bring to the readers the ultimate essence of the decadent Russian style of eating, which might encouraged even the most indolent reader off the couch and straight to the kitchen to whip up a pagan midnight feast.

To unravel the deepest culinary traditions one only have to look to the culture, history, urban life, the influence of the Orthodox Church and rural villages, which always followed the rhythms of the changing Four Seasons. It was the treat for my mind and my palate to reawake events and retell them as it was a fairy tale. At this time I would like to depart to the very beginning of my journey, which led me to the wild and splendid times of the three-ninth-kingdom.

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MY FLIGHT INTO THE FOODIE WORLD

It all began when I was around 6 years old and started to experience flying in my dreams as every child does, while growing up. I vividly remembering these reoccurring dreams which followed the same exciting pattern; I am stepping out of our apartment, spreading my arms, bending my knees and looking down at the tips of my canvas sneakers. Almost immediately I elevated in the air like a gracious weightless bird and glided down all 4 flights of stairs in a matter of seconds, landing softly on the handmade country rug in the lobby and stepping outside with my heart throbbing in my chest. This euphoria would stay with me long after my flight, giving me an extra boost of energy on top of what I already possessed by nature.

All I wanted upon awakening was to experience a real flying at any cost. My imagination, being that of a child who grew up in the comfort and security of a traditional European backyard, did not stretch beyond the height of the attic of our building,which could serve as the platform for a courageous pilot like me. Our backyard provided the perfect audience for this adventure, possessing a desirable bunch of kids craving a spectacle, a long and crooked row of benches, built in the time immemorial by a bighearted carpenter, always occupied by numerous grandmothers whose duty was to watch, teach, spank and hand out precious crumbled cookies for the ever-hungry, wild and imaginative bunch of rascals (local name basurmans) on the loose, whose parents were busy working to rebuild the country ruined by WWII.

I remembered I chose that particular sunny summer Saturday in June because everybody were out and my intuition told me that the weather was clear and perfect for flying. Even then I knew that any kind of overcast could overshadow the effect of my performance. It was the beginning of summer vacation and children were gathering in anticipation of something exciting. And what do you know, they did not have to wait for too long for it to happen. This morning our doting mother braided mine and my sister’s hair as usual and dressed us appropriately for a day of activity in the yard. In my case it was a silly, flower printed cotton smock that allowed me to move freely. The wider the better for my upcoming project, I thought. Instead of going downstairs to joint everyone, I rushed straight up to the attic, opened a small round window and looked down to check if there was enough of the audience for my spectacular flight. To my satisfaction, everything was in order to proceed including the most important figure in our yard Baba Pranya - a permanent character on the bench at any time of the day. No one knew her age or if she even had a family or children. No one was ever invited to her dark and mysterious garden level dwelling. Her whole life was here on this bench with the exception of winter days of course, when neighbors would kindly bring her food for dinner and check on her through a half open door. Without any doubt Baba Pranya was an exemplary fragment in our yard and quite powerful. She was impeccably groomed by local standards, with a traditional scarf around her grey hair, a neatly ironed dress (she only had two of them: one for summer and the other, a bit heavier for winter) and an imminent starched apron with big red roses sprigged on it. The whole image of her, presiding and bearing her usual spoils of local gossip, made her comfy and approachable.

She knew everything about everyone and could describe in detail what was happening behind each door. Her knowledge of who was happy and who was not, what was cooking in every pot and what was what in the world of politics were encyclopedically correct. It seemed that her life’s occupation was to collect detailed social statistics about everyone in vicinity of this colorful neighborhood. That knowledge made her irreplaceable when things came to domestic disputes or principal arguments, matchmaking or criminal investigations, not to mention her unique status in a gossipy circles when she could let loose friendly and neighborly verbal laundry, exposing juicy details without hurting the subjects of the conversation. Shortly, she was the quintessence of our lives. Without her, any wedding or funeral was unthinkable. She was the information center and life rotated around her without hurry or disorder, because she was in charge and conducted it from her backyard office which in this case, was a worn out wooden bench. She handled all events with the iron fist of a self-imposed judge, never failed to be smart and loving, and saved so many souls, including mine. This thought brought me back to the event of that dreamy summer day. When I glanced down and noticed that Baba Pranya was in the first row, somehow I got a mental confirmation that my adventure would go well, because without her the most important witness would be missing.

My excitement was almost palpable, but I tried to be calm and composed- the qualities I carried throughout my entire life. I swung the window open and, produced a loud announcement from the depth of my lungs to the crowd below, demanding that they stop what they were doing and start watching me. For a short second there was brief silence, followed by numbed fascination and curiosity. All fingers were pointed at me with the expectation of something out of the ordinary which already gave me the stimulating kick I needed. After seeing total attention, I gave the order for complete silence and watch me flying (because I knew how, I have seen it in my dream). I pulled my wide skirt over my head and spread it out like wings, while climbing and dangling my left foot over the frame of a small round attic window. At this very moment Baba Pranya got into the picture and the historical course of events was changed.

She jumped from her bench and immediately estimated the situation up to the last nuance. Being a backyard social worker and therapist, she took command over this rather dangerous event. I was slightly surprised to see her taking such active participation in this event, because at the beginning of my journey, I believed I was to be the only solo- star. Being impressed by her immediate and serious response, I paused for a moment, because it was quite flattering for my little brave heart to have Baba Pranya on my side. Being powerful and reputable in all domestic matters she announced with a loud and thunderous voice for me to stop and to proceed only in the proper manner. She said that just simply jumping is not glorious and not the right way to do it, adding that it was a historical event and should be carried out appropriately. She suggested for me to rethink the whole process over very well and then carry out my actions, all the while keeping a strong and hypnotizing gaze upon me. Recognizing the depth of my determination, she began to arrange a landing place by pushing everyone in the yard together in a circle, then whispered to my father to run upstairs as quickly as he could to fetch me (I had no idea of this malicious betrayal) and continued fussing about the whole spectacle, verbally prizing me for my courage. All females in the backyard were ordered to spread their skirts out to create a catching net to prevent me from having a harsh landing. Then baba Pranya positioned her enormously big body in the center and spread her starchy bright flowery apron as wide as she could, screaming for me to direct my flight to her spot,naming it the victory landing place. Throughout all this hustle and bustle no one had any doubt of the seriousness of my intentions. To convince me of their equally serious reception, Baba Pranya continued to praise me while hypnotizing me with loud orders and shuffling positions of the people in the yard. In the process she created the most flattering and illustrious vocabulary for my action, putting me literally in the rank of the first astronaut, complimenting my personality and courage and stating that in order to make it even more spectacular she had to count down from 20 (what a smart way to stretch time). She did it pragmatically slow, elevating her voice with each number, making it sounds like a thundering church organ. My mind was on the verge of ecstasy, because I would never imagine my adventure would draw such a crowd and spectacular participation. I could hardly wait until the end of the countdown and almost fainted when I heard 19 ½. I took my flying position with my skirt pulled higher above my head and physically felt my little heart pounding in my mouth. This moment my thoughts outpaced my steps and I flew and flew very high, almost reaching a ceiling of the attic. Before I knew, I was in the hands of my loving father who was just in time to catch me. He lifted me up to his shoulders and said: OK little girl, mission accomplished.

All I heard was the enormous roar of the crowd in the yard, acknowledging not a sadly abrupted flight but the fact that I dared to dream and challenged circumstances by almost carrying it out to fruition. I became an instant hero that day.

Needless to say I was severely punished, not physically but pedagogically. My parents were too loving and intelligent to exercise the cruelty of spanking. They knew that for an outgoing child who spent the best times of her life outside, to be confined in a small apartment for a week would be harsh enough. This choice of punishment was predictable and I was grounded.

I was reprimanded without much lectures and it was expected that I knew the depth of my blunder, depriving me of enjoying summer games and all I could do was to sneak from behind curtains, which gave me plenty of time to contemplate my life. Still being in an elementary school and voraciously reading a geographical magazine Globe, I was already intoxicated by images of travelers who dared to climb, hike, and fly to exotic places. No other form of media gave me more colorful dreams capable to waft me out of reality and place me into the very midst of an adventurous world, as that magazine. One day our teacher invited us to discuss our dreams and what we wanted to do in the future. I answered in one breath, without any hesitation,that I wanted to be there, while pointing to a picture of Mongolian nomads. They had no urban landscape, only the steppes, camels, their colorful clothes and horses. These places fascinated me the most because all of their chores were done outside in the open and that is where real life happened. But traveling to the steppes still lay very far away in my life and at the present moment I could not even go to the backyard where happy summer games and adventurous life were in full swing. The thoughts about sad finale of my abrupted flight did not offered me any solution but accept my educational quarantine.

As usual, in unexpected, limited or hard situations one always found an outlet. Even prisoners confined in a lonely cell learned how to write poetry and scratch it on the wall. After a whole day of crying I washed my face and decided to find something useful to entertain myself. Naturally, I went to the kitchen where the most delicious activities of daily life occurred.

Kitchen life did not have any hindrances against anybody, easily forgave all deadly sins, did not segregate people by the presence or absence of talent to cook and simply enfolded everyone in a delicious and fragrant blanket. For me it was a place to forget my sorrows and redefine my routine for a while. Surprisingly, kitchen offered me a platform for observation and inspired me to attempt my first fumbling into gourmet world in the near future.

My mother and aunt Katherina were just about to start a fire in the old fashioned wood burning stove and getting ready to cook. It was still relatively early and not being distracted by thoughts of happy life in the yard I watched how they spread everything on the kitchen counter they were planning to cook for the day. It was a cornucopia of everything one could gather in very sporadically provisioned post war markets of a still ruined Petersburg. The chronic shortage of basic provisions created long lines of people equipped with portable string-bags as permanent companions in hope to fill them with anything edible.

To stand in a line was a part of everyday life. There were special days when certain products were only given per person, so it was to our advantage that every member of our family arrived to stand in line. Occasionally there would be only plain, stripped of meat smoked bones available as part of government provisions. We did not question where the meat was, just stayed in line with our parents, most times deep into the night,with written numbers on our palms that gave us a chance to return to the line, because we children did not have the patience and would stray from the line to play. These particular events made the whole city looked like enormous massacre of cows was committed somewhere in the outskirts of the city, and all that was left were huge smoked and meatless carcasses. They were hashed away in all directions by the lucky shoppers, being wrapped in the latest newspapers soiling the pictures of political leaders with the greasy spots. No one thought it was politically incorrect in the given circumstances. During the next days, due to this massive supply, all the kitchens in the neighborhood were drowned in the smoky aroma of creative stews.

I am still addicted to everything smoked and occasionally sneaking into Russian, Polish or German ethnic neighborhoods, stocking up my shopping bag with the smoked fish and variety of meats, helping me to recollect the smell of my childhood.

Back in those days having supply of deeply smoked bones meant making an aromatic stock but one needed plenty of creativity regarding other components besides the usual potato that was found growing in every backyard in place of flowers. Everyday needs and severe postwar hunger replaced esthetics with practicality for a while.

Here is our dad’s intuition and passion to cook came to the risqué and we began our adventurous green hunting, which I will return a little later.

What attracted me the most was the happy and content atmosphere in the kitchen that started early in the morning where they sharpen knifes, move pans and pots around and chop and mix all they have in a very particular order, until the sound of the frying, hissing and sizzling ingredients started to shape into the character of a dish. It was a magic stew in the making and I was a witness of conjuring process, without noticing how fast the time of my punishment for flying passed by. Their smooth and confident choreography over the pots and pans was transcend and contagious. I was unmoved and entranced, sitting on the small round kitchen stool, not taking my eyes off the surface of the table which was level with my curious eyes. I have no doubt it was then that the poetry and mystery of cooking opened its secret world for me. It was prelude to my life as a gourmet cook and recipe collector. After adding all the ingredients to the pot, my mother would wrapped tightly the towel around the lid to trap the aroma, preventing its escape, and let it simmer and ripe at a slow heat till dinnertime.

It was a traditional family ceremony of opening the lid and catching the most aromatic whiff of the stew to warm our hearts. That was a simple stew without any fancy ingredients or cream. Its brown and fragrant gravy was so rich and delicious that one could impatiently eat it straight from the pot, accompanied with only a hunk of rye bread. It was so intense it almost had a symphonic quality. We usually prepared it in the winter, when these heavy and delicious stews were appreciated the most. Whenever I have a chance to recreate it again, it never fails to deliver nostalgic memory of my childhood.

At the end of my educational quarantine, I was allowed to participate a little in the process of cooking. If at this point I would be asked what it is that I would like to pursue in the future: to rethink a new and more deliberate attempt to fly or to learn how to cook, I would answer yes to this question without hesitation and thus began the journey of my life – traveling and exploring the magic of the world and the mystery of cooking.

Before I hit the roads of my dreams, alone with a backpack, carrying only a few essentials and a notebook as my companion, being totally prepared and knowing what I am looking for, there was a long and fascinating itinerary inside of my family life that helped me to accomplish the rehearsal of my dream.

Being behind the table when delicious (often cooked for the whole day) dinner was served, I noticed that everything about cooking and talking about the food was gravitated toward the most incurable gourmand - my father. He managed to balance his serious engineering career in the Baltic Sea military ship corporation with his hobby of being an art and ballet aficionado and epicurean. I joined him enthusiastically and the two of us stepped into experimental, sometimes limited and hopelessly imaginative world of cuisine which colored our days at the table in an existence somewhere between dream and reality. Also, my dad was one of these incurable polishers of reality,who would say, even at unpretentious plain forest picnic, the line like: pass the damask, please in which case it would be an over-laundered old handkerchief. For his sense of humor he was admired among his friends and family.

The shortage of food in postwar Europe was indescribable. It was told that all the rats, squirrels and leather belts were eaten throughout the German siege (blockade) of Petersburg (then Leningad) during WWII, so what was left was in the hands of God and the imagination of its optimistic citizens. I recall this post-war optimism of surviving very vividly, when our father would take me and my sister for a green hunting in the rural fields and forests full of wild vegetation to discover what was edible. We tried and devoured sorrel, clover, rabbit’s cabbage, cornelian cherries, crab apples and who knows what else. The goal was if our stomachs did not get upset then the family could survive deliciously.

In a search for nourishment we spend weekends learning the lore of scavenging through the green pastures, forests and fields and ultimately harvesting all the edible greens. Just looking into our baskets full of roots, leaves, young buds, flowers, bark, mushrooms, wild berries and horseradish, branches of mint, dandelions and chamomiles would reassure us that we would not starve at least another week.

During these green hunting’s we stumbled upon sad and deserted villages, ruined by relentless German attack. Its population was killed or they simply never returned from evacuation. We were amazed how fast nature could disguise and camouflage all political calamities and disasters of war and turn it into beauty once more. These savage battlegrounds, succumbed by nature, hastily turned into a virgin wilderness, only giving away the story of the place through the stubborn remains of its surviving cultivated vegetables and flowers, that use to grow there in the past.

By looking at it, I would fall into a reverie about us humans disappearing through a magical transformation in a faraway future, being beautifully turned into flowers and grass and somehow it was not sad at all, but comforting. These thoughts about us returning to where we came from haunted me all my life. In my heart I agreed with the process of blooming, wilting, recycling and returning again, as a part of the ever-reshaping and never dying world. These scamper thoughts were particularly happy and comforting for a child of my age laying on a green patch of grass under a blanket of cozy clouds in a company of my father and sister somewhere in the forest, munching on a handful of wild strawberries to assuage our hunger. In that particular setting everything looked like an instant paradise and any philosophical reasons were accepted with an easy heart.

We witnessed these sacred grounds with the postwar ruins being comforted by nature and besotted by vegetation. There we found riots of currants and raspberry bushes which became wild and spread into the forest, still producing sweet berries, overgrown mint between artillery shells, and crawling roses coils around crumbling stone walls claiming them forever and creating a green canapé similar to the lost pyramids and ruined palaces of lost civilizations.

We were resourceful scavengers and gathered anything nature offered - myriads of berries and mushrooms, early spring tree sap, herbs and bouquets of fragrant forest flowers. We always brought them to decorate our apartment. The forest flowers were exaggerated, oversized, irresistibly beautiful, magically colored in exotic shades and almost poisonously fragrant. They always gave us a headache, because all the forest flowers exhumed an intensely sweet scent especially overnight turning our small bedroom into a perfumed and stramonium chamber. But the craving for beauty was above that little discomfort and so we repeated this routine again and again.

After our baskets were filled and the sandwiches were