Bite-size Stories

Italians grew up with ai frutti di mare ; the French with boeuf bourguignon . My iron-curtained past is personified by Herring in Fur Coat -  a pickled herring dressed in seven layers of pungent veggie swagger. Nothing embodies the kitsch of Soviet life - the outrageously tacky, overdone ways - better than this playful dish. Its taste and colour stood in stark contradiction to the drabness of daily life. Naively optimistic, desperate to inject brightness into the grey Comi-collage, people served this magenta salad as the centrepiece of any gathering or celebration. The Empire may be gone, but this souvenir from the Motherland endures. From communal flats in Kiev and Moscow to New York, Melbourne and Monte Carlo - where the people go, Herring in Fur Coat goes too. You may think your palate isn’t ready for the experiment. But baked beets, mixed with grated waxy potatoes and carrots, boiled eggs, and homemade mayonnaise, all layered over pickled herring laced with onion and dill, ...

For most, it’s just an odd-looking beetroot soup. For me, it’s much more than that. Kiev - the old town perched high on its steep hills, clasped by the river. In summer, its narrow streets are drenched in lilac and chestnut blossom, generous under the sun. In winter, snow falls in heavy flakes, turning the city shiny, grim, and mysterious in the dark. Kiev is grandma’s borsch. Flushed pink and pungent, impossible to forget, impossible not to return to. At twenty-three, I crossed Australian border security with two hundred dollars, a suitcase, a new husband, and a baby bump. Who needs more to start a life? What I didn’t know was that beetroot soup came too, undeclared. It was the most important of all possessions. Decades later, it still is. Because the most important possession is who you are.

Of course, there are better ways to tell a story - with intelligent characters, sophisticated dialogue, and a well-designed plot. This little tale, though, is all about dumplings. Tender pastry morsels filled with cherries. Back in Kiev, growing up, they were too lavish to have at any other time but cherry season, when the summer sun gave its abundance. At holiday houses, it was a family affair - hours around the garden table, folding small pockets of pastry, sometimes with blueberries, but mostly cherries, the favorite and the affordable. Fresh from the markets, they came in rattan baskets, carrying the sun in their burgundy weight. You’d split the flesh, prise out the stone, and carefully collect the thick, sweet juice for sauce. Each cherry was wrapped in a delicate pastry floret, sealing in its nectar. Allowed to eat with my hands, cherry juice streaked my face and dripped down my fingers. That’s how I learned: the messy things in life are often the best.  

These small, sweet pancakes were my favorite growing up. I remember whole apple slices being browned in the still-sizzling pan. Fond memories of the place where I grew up, in the country that doesn't exist.  I often think I have two lives. My first twenty years spent on steep hills above Dnepr. Heavy chestnut tree blossoms and heady lilac flood the streets as you climb back up from the river. Kiev. The next twenty-five are coming to an end in sunburned, windswept Melbourne.  One day, there will be a pen, sharp and witty, factual and insightful, that will tell the whole story. Chaotic, intense, and often agonizing times that pushed a whole generation away from home.  And I, for now, just keep my food memories to connect what I had been with what I have become.