Hi! Thanks for visiting The Manor, and apologies for the long gap between entries. I hope everyone is well, and that (if you're reading this in Sydney, Newcastle or Armidale) you're surviving the evil and repulsive New South Welsh heatwave I keep hearing about. I'd send you some comfort snow if I could, but somehow it strikes me as one of the less postable parts of Nature's Bounty.
Anyway, last week I had to teach the word "breadwinner" to one of my classes. It's a fairly idiomatic term of course, and I thought it might be one that students would have some trouble wrapping their heads around. But they picked up the meaning remarkably quickly. This set off a whole chain of thoughts in my head about food in general and bread in particular, which is what I want to type to you about.
Let me kick off with some ancient history. I realise this is quite a tangent (even by my standards), but if you stick with I promise we'll eventually arrive at the point. At least I hope so.
Here we go:
Before Nat and I visited Germany in 2000, we were warned by various people about German food. “It’s bland and it’s stodgy and it’s horrendously fatty and badly cooked”, was the general consensus. Fortunately for us, this turned out to be completely untrue. Some of the best meals I’ve eaten have been served to me in moderately-priced restaurants in Germany. If you don’t believe me … well, go there and find out.
Here's the thing, though: in mid-2005, when I started telling people I was moving to Russia, it sparked a rash of similar warnings about the food here. (Hmmm ... "sparked a rash"? Let's hope that's a mixed metaphor. If it isn't ... eeuww!) But I still recalled having my ear bent about the awfulness of German food a few years earlier, so I kind of ignored these warnings. Result: I’m pleased to say that I arrived in Russia with almost no culinary pre-conceptions. Yay me.
So, all-of-a-sudden here we are in January, which means I’ve been in Moscow for just over four months now. And guess what? Ninety percent of the Russian food I’ve encountered comes direct to your plate from the steaming kitchens of Stodge City.
I have to be fair and point out that there are some gastronomic delights to be had in Moscow. One obvious example is the great variety of things Russians do with beetroot. Borshch – provided it’s well-made and not too oily – is definitely not a bad thing to put in your mouth. For those who aren’t familiar with this stuff, it's basically beetroot soup, but describing it this way tends to undersell it. I've said some truly memorable bowls of borshch (along with some not-so-memorable ones). There are a ton of variations and possible ingredients, but the defining characteristic is its rich, reddish-purple broth. Yum.
However, with all of that said, stand-out dishes like borshch are exceptions to the rule here. Overall, the Russian culinary landscape is ... well, if I were to compare it to any of the actual landscapes I know, I'd have to choose tundra: nearly everything is frozen, and there's an awful lot of oil out there!
Hmmmm, so what was I going to mention next? Oh yeah, that's right. When I started writing this entry I had it in my mind that there were two things I wanted to say about food. The whole "Russian cuisine – not my favourite!" idea was thing#1. So thing#2 is next up, quite obviously. Only, I'm not sure I know how to brooch this subject without causing offence ...
Hang on a second.
*ahem*
See, it's like this: I feel the time has come to have a word to you Australians about bread.
[Cue to another tangent.]
Once again thinking back a few years, I remember one evening when my good friend Matt told me about a conversation he’d had with a woman from Berlin who’d moved to Australia some time beforehand. (This is Matt o’ the clan Hilzinger, btw, not o’ the clan Spannagle.) He asked her if there was anything she’d been glad to leave behind in Old Europe when she moved, and also if there was anything she really missed.
In response to the first part, she told Matt how relieved she was to be living in a country where you didn’t need to constantly add and remove layers of clothing in winter to maintain your body temperature. It's the same here in The Big M ... before venturing outside, you pile on seven or eight layers to insulate you from the bitter cold, then peel them off as quickly as possible when you get inside a well-insulated building, and re-apply them whenever you want to do so much as pop downstairs for a sandwich. All of which can have a negative effect on your routine. I sometimes find that, if I've got just a vague plan to go out-of-doors but no compelling reason, the layering-up process seems like too much of a hassle and I decide to stay in. So I can sort of empathise with the relief this German lass must have felt when she realised her days of layering up were over.
When she was asked about what she missed, Matt’s Berliner friend answered him with a single word: “Bread”.
Now, I definitely don’t consider myself to be any kind of Connoisseur of The Loaves. However, having travelled 'round a bit and lived in Moscow for a few months now, I do feel qualified to guess why Matt’s friend would single out bread above anything else.
First of all, German bread lives up to its reputation. It’s remarkably good. I wouldn't say that's quite so much the case here; I mean, "outstanding" is not a word I'd use to describe Russian bread, and quite a bit of it suffers from being loaded up with smetana (a strangely unsour version of sour cream). But it isn't bad, either. Overall I'd give Moscow bread a high pass mark, possibly leaning towards a credit. And most of it is real, actual bread. The Georgian loaves you can get here (if you'll excuse yet another digression) are particularly worthwhile, and anyone who comes to Russia shouldn't leave without trying them. They're similar to Turkish bread, but just a bit fluffier. Very tasty and great for soups.
I guess I should start edging a tiny bit closer to the point, though. It's basically, this: in my opinion, the comment made by Matt's German friend illustrates that bread deserves some deeper consideration in certain parts of the world. So let me give you my tip. The key to understanding bread, I reck'n, is to take a Kabbalistic approach.
The Kabbalists, see, were mystics on the fringes of Judaism. Along with a whole tableau of other wacky things, they were fond of saying that humankind is unable to look directly at the face of God. Meaning that you can’t go “So, who is this God person, anyway?” and expect to figure it out by concentrating really hard until the answer drops into your lap, wrapped in a nice neat parcel of linear logic. Mr. Y.H.V.H. (the name that appears on his visa card) is just too large, reckoned the Kabbalists, and too … well, you know, ineffable, intangible, incorporeal and a big list of other "in-" words that people are fond of using when they describe their deities.
So the Kabbalistic view was that you really needed to take an indirect route, narrowing your conception of what God is by understanding what he isn’t. I’d argue that much the same principle applies to bread. So, for example:
1. If it has no grain in it whatsoever, and looks like it never did, then it’s not bread.
2. If it isn’t a species of flat bread (naan, pita, lavash etc.) but you can take a pre-cut slice of it and slide it under a door, then it’s not bread.
3. If shearing it into pieces small enough to swallow requires only marginally more effort from your teeth and jaws than accomplishing the same task with strawberry yoghurt, then it’s not bread.
4. And lastly, if it has no discernable taste of its own, then it’s not frikkin' bread, okay?!.
By now, the Kabbalistic methodology should be paying off; that is, your contemplation of The Unbread should be helping you to form some idea of bread’s true nature and essence. I’m sorry to bore those of you who are reading this in parts of the world where bread is commonly available, but if you’re reading in Australia I hope you’re paying close attention. Why? Well, because I feel that – although there’s certainly some actual bread kicking around in that country – unless you live in Leichhardt or somewhere similarly euro-centric, the real stuff tends to be overwhelmingly obscured by a welter of lilywhite duck food that isn’t bread at all. Much of it isn’t anything, really ... just slices of protective material engineered to save you from getting honey or beetroot juice all over your hands. For a nation that prides itself on being relatively cosmopolitan, service-oriented and tourist-friendly, this just isn’t good enough.
Okay, so let’s review:
a) bread
b) bread
c) bread
d) precisely-apportioned prisms of white, fluffy nothingness; a kind of soft, flavourless void where the bread should be.
Exactly what you’re meant to do with this information (assuming you don't violently disagree) I’ve no clue at all. But that's okay: just think about Friedrich Engels. I’m quite sure he had very little idea of what people would do with his observations about the flow of capital when he first sat down with his friend Karl and started nutting out the Communist Manifesto. But others did eventually come along and put his ideas to use (though arguably not very well), and now I walk past his statue every week outside the Kropotkinskaya Metro station. I have to say that Fred looks pretty pleased to be there, too, surrounded as he is by street vendors selling all manner of aromatic loaves and rolls. Therefore, following his example, perhaps it isn’t too idealistic to imagine a fairer, breadier future for a society in which nearly all bread currently flows away from the proletariat.
So please, Australian readers, will you try to do something about the bread situation for me? ‘Cause the next time I have to endure re-runs of Australia’s Funniest Home Videos in the baggage hall at Kingsford-Smith airport, I want to know there’s a decent crusty roll waiting for me afterwards. And I don’t think I’m alone :-)
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