Lobio is a hearty, yet good-for-you Georgian bean stew chock-full of earthy spices and vibrant herbs that is traditionally served with cornbread.
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Russians have a saying that the way you greet the year is the way you’ll spend it. As the first few moments of 2018 began to settle in, I decided I would have no problem if the maxim proved itself true this year. I was in London, my first visit to the storied city, and I had just shared a six-course, Michelin star meal with one of my best friends, Libby, at Fergus Henderson’s St. John. By the time the clock ticked midnight, we were already at the downstairs bar-turned-dance floor, sipping on Negronis, and meeting fellow guests from all parts of the globe. My heart felt full and my world big.
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From the outside, my December probably looks like that of everyone else's: scouring stores and the internet for gifts, raking through stacks of cookbooks for recipes, attending holiday parties and dinners, and trying (keyword here) to balance said parties and dinners with smoothies and salads.
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An afternoon of Georgian khinkali with me and my family!
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An epic journey through the Georgian Military highway inspires years of perfecting the culinary art of khinkali.
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This curried butternut squash soup is a golden recipe I've been turning to for years.
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Light and tender sponge cake and baked apples combine the best of both worlds in this Russian Apple Sharlotka.
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To my readers and those who reached out to me after last week’s post, thank you. Thank you for making me feel heard. When I write a blog post (and I don’t mean to sound self-deprecating), my expectations for anyone to actually read it is quite low. Who has time these days, I think, to do more than scroll through the pretty pictures of food? Putting my feelings and thoughts to paper is catharsis enough, but to realize I have an actual audience for them is truly…moving and heartening. Many were quick to point out that bravery isn’t simply weathering the bad things in life, but more how we choose to respond to them. Whether I feel brave on a day-to-day basis or not, I’m glad I’ve chosen to write about this phase of my life— if only because you all know how to make a girl feel loved and cared for. Again, thank you!!
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Nothing is ever for certain in the world of medicine. I’ve learned this truth in the way doctors shy away from definitive answers and conclusions. I’ve learned it after countless letdowns. Weeks worth of hopeful wishing and planning out the window, now leaving me with Plan B, C and other letters I haven’t accounted for. I’ve learned all of this to then forget it and be disappointed when things don’t work out as hoped.
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A question I often receive is “How do you make all this delicious food and still say thin?”. I wish I could just pin it on a lightening-fast metabolism, but unfortunately that’s not the case. The reality is that my relationship with food has had its ups and downs over the years, but only recently have I felt like I’ve started (keyword here) to achieve a healthy balance.
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The other weekend, I traveled to NYC to meet with my dear friend Libby who is moving to London at the end of the summer. I think our initial instinct was to have "one last hoorah," but in the end I think we struck a good balance. Yes, there was a night where we may have indulged in too many bottles of sparkling wine, but we were just as happy to spend the next afternoon doing nothing else but rewatch the first season of Girls. Going out aside, we also had the chance to cook a few meals together, picnic in the park after a visit to the Union Square farmer’s market, and snack on world-famous chocolate chip cookies on our way to a memorable breakfast at Jack’s Wife Freda. In between meals, we visited an urban garden in Harlem, made it to a centennial Irving Penn photo exhibit at the Met, and, of course, strolled through Central Park—later returning for Shakespeare in the Park’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream."
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Whenever I tell others that I’m Russian, I often find myself responding to the same old stereotypes: cold, harsh winters, burly men knocking back shots of vodka, and a penchant for “that soup with the beets.”
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Beep beep beep—ah, finally. You open the oven door to find your little roasted chicken inside, a perfect 165°. You set it on the counter top and give it a rest. Perfumes of lemon and sage fill your kitchen, triggering loud growls from your stomach, but you find ways to distract. Maybe you toast a chunk of bread or pour yourself a glass of wine, but you don’t bother with setting the table—you know perfectly well where this is going. The chicken should probably be given a few more minutes, but come on, hasn’t it rested enough already? You walk over, eying your poultry prize. There’s a moment pause, and then you dive right in. Pull off a wing here, a chunk of breast there. Crunchy, golden skin gives way to tender, supple meat, and ooh, yes, let’s mop up some of those pan drippings for good measure too. To eat with your hands is like choosing your own adventure, picking away until you reach the most rewarding and succulent bites. It’s all fun and Game-of-Thrones like, until you realize you’ve eaten way more bird than appropriate and you’ve got a hefty pile of bones to show for it. Whoops.
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The power of food—to transcend boundaries, both geographical and cultural, and unify—has been the main idea behind Chesnok. By focusing on the recipes that have allowed my own family to bond through the years, I have created a space, a virtual communal table if you will, where I too can forge a connection with others in my community and around the globe. This week marks exactly one year since I’ve started to share a little of my life and my family’s food heritage with you all and I’ve been rewarded with a warm and welcoming embrace. To know that others believe in me has gone, and will continue to go, an incredibly long way towards this passion project of mine.
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It’s been a little over three months since my accident and after spending most of that time with family in Rhode Island recovering, I’ve finally returned to Charlottesville—my other home of the past six and a half years. I’ve quickly realized, though, that my life here is no longer quite the same and the experience has reminded me of something the narrator says in the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: “It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed, is you.”
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Many have asked how I keep myself busy and yes, I've been reading, binging-watching tv shows and keeping up with my favorite food blogs and websites. However, not as much as I’d initially have thought. The amount of mental energy that goes into thinking and worrying about my hand, the focus required for rehab exercises, the mental fog that comes from constant pain and its partner, pain meds, has left me surprisingly pretty unproductive.
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It was December, and my New Year calendar was already booked with cooking classes and workshops I was going to teach. Fruitful meetings with local artists and purveyors were leading to exciting collaborations, and a trip to Georgia was even in the works for February. I was feeling validated in all the work I had put into Chesnok, and the momentum had me eager to get back to it once the hustle and bustle of the holidays died down.
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Even though I grew up in a household where the family meal was always the main focal point of holidays and family gatherings, where eating out was once-a-year kind of occasion, my own passion in the kitchen, particularly for baking, didn’t really take hold until high school. Not really sure the exact moment it all clicked, but I do remember coming across what was then a nascent blogging world, being subsequently introduced to the likes of smittenkitchen, David Leibovitz, and Joy the Baker. All of a sudden, obsessing over my RSS feed—making sure I was up to date on all my 20+ blogs— was my new and favorite source of procrastination. This was also around the same time that my usual visits to the library also began to change in motive. I would go and emerge hours later carrying literal stacks of books—no longer of novels, but of cookbooks and the occasional food memoir.
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