Is culinary excellence inherited, automatically and guaranteed? Unlikely. Because experience and inspiration cannot be adopted, they can only be created independently.
Everything my mom cooks is exceptionally delicious. She is literally a culinary poet. A couple of fat notepads with handwritten recipes and clippings from tear-off calendars. Two or three cookbooks. The usual set of conscientious mistress. But my mother, in principle, could give master classes. I don’t remember a single festive table that would be repeated in my menu. There are, of course, crown dishes. Napoleon cake (prepared only on special occasions), poppy seed roll (for Christmas), pumpkin soup (with cream and almonds, always split in two) and absolutely divine kulebyaka. In my childhood, among other things, stuffed duck neck and dumplings from three types of meat appeared. But this is already aerobatics, which, due to the complexity, did not have time to become a tradition.
So here are the pies. This kulebyaki has the whole secret in the dough. In general, this is a universal yeast dough, in which, depending on the season, the mother changes the filling – cherries, blueberries, rhubarb, cabbage. The recipe seems simple, but I could not achieve such air and tenderness at the exit. Mom’s pie doesn’t go stale for two weeks. On the third day, mine becomes a loaf for twenty-two kopecks, as my mother contemptuously calls failed pastries.
Mom, in the sense of her gastronomic secrets, is very jealous. Everything related to cooking is surrounded by a reserved fence. She avoids divulging secrets as best she can, a random guest will never receive a recipe in her life, and even more so it will not be made public in vain right there at the table through crystal and flying forks.
I am an exception. After all, a direct heiress. Anya, write it down!
And here I am, a diligent student, point by point “giving” the components of an immortal masterpiece. Eggs (of course, the yolks are separated from the proteins, the latter are whipped with a fork), yeast (do not overdo it!), Oil (only olive only!), Flour: first a glass, then the rest after the protein is carefully introduced. How many? How much will it take. This is the hardest part. At these words, my mother reaches out her hand and suddenly pokes her finger in my chest. “The dough should be like a woman’s breasts.” Here I am a little perplexed, but now there is no place for doubt. Now knead until the dough itself falls away from the palm of your hand. And now attention to the screen! I’m only telling you a secret. (At this point, mom switches to a whisper.) At the time of starting the sour cream, give baking soda on the tip of a knife. Everything. I didn’t tell you anything. Now swallow what you have written.
Ah, that’s it! Soda, soda! Hooray. In short … nothing happened. No, it’s edible, of course, but…
And now, at the next feast, killing the legendary kulebyaka, I decide to “check the clock”. Mom, I say, I do everything according to the recipe. Yolks from proteins. So? The best olive oil in the world. So? Mom looks at me with sympathy. “I’ll give you a little more cream,” she says authoritatively. How?! Well, like this. So softer. It is obvious! It’s clear. Next is sour cream. And soda, mom, soda! “What soda? Mom tenses up. “Soda is completely unnecessary.” You said! “Well, I’ve come to… a conclusion,” Mom says as a matter of course. I’m desperate. But I knead up to the female breast, at least am I right? Mom: “Yes, the dough is almost ready. What to torment him?
A wonderful culinary intriguer, mom trusts only improvisation. And it can be understood. Because improvisation is a derivative of experience mixed with established proportions. This is intuition and freedom. Learn the materiel, baby! And your fantasy will swirl by itself, overcoming the magnet of order. Even jazz is improvisation within the canon.
In Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, Douglas’ grandmother delighted the family with fantastic meals day after day. But as soon as a benevolent relative put things in order in her kitchen and armed the old woman with a cookbook, she literally turned to stone. Everything cooked in order and from the right jars turned out to be completely inedible. This short story is a real hymn to fantasy, experience and primordial chaos, the parent of all living things.