AS WATER FINDS its own level, so gastronomes the world over run good food to ground.
“Try my perfect apricots — juicy, and ripe!”
“Come here my beauty: fresh sea bass, just off the boat, come and smell — nothing fresher! Special price for you!”
“Best spices…lowest prices!”
These are the familiar overtures of market vendors from Malibu to Marrakesh, yet many foreigners are surprised to hear them in the colorful farmers’ markets of Moscow, where fresh produce, meat, poultry, spices, herbs, cheese, dairy products, and flowers abound year round. Russian food markets offer a colorful alternative, a wide range of fresher, and better quality ingredients, in stark contrast to the historically tedious, time-consuming, and less than congenial experience of Russian grocery shopping. In addition, like the bonus lemon a favorite stand owner often throws in a favored client’s shopping basket, Russian markets also serve up a highly entertaining, noisy, and lively multi-cultural show from their salespeople.
Bazaar in Russian has two meanings. The first is “marketplace” or “souk.” The secondary, more colloquial meaning is “din” or “racket.” Visitors need only to walk into a market to understand why: noises echo up and down the length of the long, low building, bouncing off the metal ceilings, and ricocheting off the stone floors and marble countertops. Cleavers clang, thump, and hack though haunches of beef and lamb. Plastic vegetable flats clatter to the floor as their contents disappear into squeaking carts, piloted adroitly by young Tadzhik runners, who, for modest tips, follow clients around the market carrying their purchases. Over the cacophony of sounds, market vendors vie with one another to attract buyers. Each food category has its corresponding nationality and gender. Stocky, square-faced, barrel-chested men in bloody white coats butcher the cuts of beef, veal and lamb on massive scarred wooden chopping blocks, against a backdrop of hanging carcasses. Blond, blue-eyed women with thick regional accents and cheerful aprons offer all things game and poultry: skinned rabbits with furry feet, ducks, geese, tiny quail and partridge, velvety chicken breasts, moist whole roasters and plump fryers. Eggs are sold in lots of ten, rather than twelve, and in addition to incomparable double-yoked eggs for which the markets are justifiably famous; the ladies also offer delicate quails’ eggs. For those with strong stomachs and a taste for excellent stock, the poultry ladies have chicken feet and necks on sale. At the next counter, a cheerful rotund lady from the Moscow Region lovingly strokes her row of whole baby suckling pigs, which look as if they were just enjoying an afternoon nap.
Musky-skinned men and women with gold teeth and thick, almost incomprehensible, Caucasian accents entice buyers to their stands of fresh fruit and vegetables. They press on passers-by juicy wedges of tomatoes just up from Baku, plump Israeli strawberries, and Portuguese tangerines — all the freshest and cheapest in the market, they swear loudly, often on the Koran itself, since these vendors are from Muslim Azerbaijan. Their hyperbolic compliments, proposals of marriage, and fervent wishes for long health and happiness combined with tough haggling lend Moscow’s markets an atmosphere that is more jovial Mediterranean and Middle Eastern than dour Slav.
Older Russian women in headscarves preside majestically over refrigerated cases of homemade dairy products: tvorog (“curd” or “cottage cheese”), Caucasian salted cheese, and the all-important thick, rich Russian smetana (“sour cream”). They dip small twists of paper into the tubs and reach over the counter to offer a taste and lengthy lectures on the degrees of sourness and enviable high fat content — ever in Russia a hallmark of quality, never a cause for cardiac concern. Across the hall is a group who seem far more savvy, yet much less approachable: the shifty smoked fish and cured meat merchants. They proffer an indifferent and miniscule taste of the different degrees of salted and smoked salmon and sturgeon, salty, cured meats, and red caviar. Show sufficient interest, and if the security guards are conveniently looking the other way, you might warrant a discreet murmured invitation to pay a small sized fortune for the embargoed black caviar, not on display, but, they assure you, on hand in the back for the right price.
For a change of pace and taste, a visit to the jams, jellies, and preserves stalls is in order. Here, rows of jewel toned, sticky, sweet, hand-labeled jars of varenye (“jam”) are arranged, made from fresh berries and stone fruit: the beloved Russian accompaniment to tea and pancakes. Next to the varenye are jars of mushrooms in brine, another timeless Russian technique of capturing and preserving the bounty of a brief growing season, each babushka in every tiny village jealously guarding her own signature recipe and technique.
Because the growing season in European Russia is so short, pickles and preserves play a key role in the country’s cuisine, and no market in Russia worth its brining salt can truly be considered legitimate without its pickle section. Your nose leads you there first, the sharp, acidic scent cutting through the air. Strident middle-aged women shout out, urging you to try their extensive array of pickled cucumbers, khren (“horseradish”), salted scallions, garlic, and mounds of kvashina kapusta (“sauerkraut”) — the cornerstone of any Russian zakuska (“hors d’ouevres”). A stroll through the pickle section is another free lesson and taste testing in brining and salting. Then it’s on to the fish section, where live crayfish creep and crawl over one another, picked over critically by well-heeled Russian men in suede jackets, in pursuit of the standard fare for a guy’s night in. Silent Tadzhik boys patiently spray slippery, silver river and sea fish laid out symmetrically in moist and shiny rows on a mountain of shaved ice. Alongside them are the more exotic and foreign seafood: scallops, octopus, squid, mussels, clams, and oysters.
There are literally hundreds of smaller markets all over Moscow, but the five primary food markets are Leningradsky, Dorogomilovsky, Danilovsky, Cheremushkinsky and Rizhsky. Each has grown and developed organically over decades, and in some cases centuries, around a central location or transport lynchpin; and each one has its own special character and clientele, and discerning Muscovites and seasoned gourmands know which to visit for their particular needs.
Rizhsky Market developed on the square opposite one of Moscow’s nine railway stations, where trains from the dairy-rich Baltic States arrived. Rizhsky today is the decidedly “down and dirty” of the five, a legacy of the wild 1990s, when Russia’s fledgling capitalists set up their first kiosks around Rizhsky Market and took their first risky steps towards supplying the insatiable Russian demand. A warren of small kiosks, which sell everything from electronics to knock-off cosmetics, surrounds the traditional food market complex. These are increasingly being squeezed out by larger, slicker, more consolidated concerns, to say nothing of the sprawling Golden Babylon shopping mall, once the largest in Europe, and the latest testimony to Rizhsky Square’s enduring mercantile character. Pricing at Rizhsky is competitive Vigorous haggling (almost a prerequisite) can bring the prices down, but locals caution first time visitors to keep an eagle eye on what vendors do behind the counter, as well as exercising a healthy skepticism about the quality of goods for sale. In stark contrast, Cheremushkinsky Market, nestled in the respectable southern middle class residential enclaves around Profsoyuznaya and Universitet metro stations, is more sedate and civilized, with less haggling, and a more logical layout. Muscovite males maintain that Cheremushkinsky is the best one-stop shopping for everything one needs for a trip to the banya (“sauna”), particularly the supply of dried fish snacks Russians enjoy with beer, as well as a good range of veniki — the all-important bunches of birch and eucalyptus branches used by banya habitués to beat one another, raising the temperature and encouraging toxins to exit one’s pores. Pricier Danilovsky Market, adjacent to the seat of the Moscow Patriarchate at Danilovsky Monastery, is perhaps the oldest of the five, dating back to the thirteenth century. It specializes in exotic, hard-to-find items and is known for its extensive range of dried and candied fruits.
When I first lived in Moscow, Leningradsky, in the Northwest of the city, was a seven-minute walk from our flat and I took my daughter Velvet there each week in her stroller, where she became a great favorite of the wizened old women from Baku who sold fresh herbs. Each week as I chose marjoram, tarragon, dill, parsley, cilantro, and scallions, they peeled and carefully washed a tangerine, apple, or apricot for Velvet, crooning endearments and blessings to her. One June, I asked them if they could find green basil, instead of the ubiquitous purple basil. A hasty summit was convened in Azeri. There was a good deal of throwing up of hands, vigorous shaking of heads, flashing of gold teeth, and a massive shrugging of shoulders, but eventually, they agreed to provide me with two flats of green basil, enough to fill fifty baby food jars with fresh pesto — enough to last us through winter. Leningradsky Market is also the traditional go-to place for everything to do with Uzbek cooking, particularly the classic Central Asian rice dish, plov (“pilaf”). At Leningradsky Market, a venerable one-armed Uzbek spice seller deftly spoons eggcups of spices from their colorful boxes into twists of newspaper. Next door, his sons sell the metal cauldrons in which plov is prepared then buried in the ground to slow cook. They sell bags of plov rice, and small twists of a special, pre-mixed spice combination (proportions they stalwartly refuse to reveal, even after a decade of pleading). If you ask, they will deliver a diatribe on how plov should be prepared, and urge you to purchase one of the exquisitely glazed pottery plov platters, small condiment bowls, teapots and other traditional Uzbek crafts.
My years trawling the stands of Leningradsky Market with Velvet turned me into a very confident and creative cook. Pesto was only one example of learning to follow the excellent Russian tradition of buying and preserving the bounty of the season. Since many of the ingredients traditionally used in Western European Cuisine were not available, I learned to substitute. The market vendors became my friends and teachers. Pavel, the butcher, donned a pair of grimy glasses fastened together with adhesive tape to peer at the copy of Julia Child’s diagram of a cow I brought to him, kindly writing in the Russian names for the cuts of meat. Svetlana, a stunning poultry saleswoman scored me two delicious free-range turkeys each November, saving me the neck and giblets, but removing the feet. Ruslan, a squash and onion seller, reserved a perfectly round, deep orange pumpkin each October. Wizened Baba Raisa taught me how to recognize good sour cream and made me promise I would never buy it in a plastic container, which she rightly maintained ruined the taste. From the honey team, who lined up their jars from palest yellow to darkest brown directly in the sunlight so they glittered like the mythical Amber Room, I learned the difference between clover, flower, and other types of honey. Encouraged by plump, blond Natasha, I swallowed hard and bought a rabbit, which was skinned all over except for four furry toes. It made excellent pate, but I felt guilty for weeks. I am still working up the courage to attempt the baby suckling pigs.
Our move to downtown Moscow in 2007 coincided with the lengthy closure of Leningradsky Market for repairs, so I set out to make my name as a regular at Moscow’s largest, and to many, most serious market, Dorogomilovsky, behind the Kiev Railway Station. This was a daunting prospect, much like starting at a new school or job, and I did not approach it lightly. Dorogomilovsky is where the pros shop: early in the morning, the parking lot is jammed with restaurant vans, and you can see many of Moscow’s celebrity chefs sniffing the fish, arguing over cuts of veal, and poking eggplants. In Moscow, it’s often not about what you know, but who you know, so I called up one of my favorite celebrities, American Executive Chef Michelle Michalenko, and begged for a tour, some introductions to key vendors, and the inside track.
“I could send my staff,” says Michalenko, who graciously allowed me to shadow her on her weekly trip to the market, “but it’s much better if I go myself. I always see something new, and if I can’t find something I need, I know where my substitutes are — I never polish or finalize a menu until I return from shopping.”
Michalenko is a Dorogomilovsky regular, greeted with enthusiasm and respect by her regular suppliers as she makes her way up and down the rows of kiosks, each specializing in a different kind of food. What look like derelict holes in the wall turn out to specialize in a treasure trove of hard-to-find ingredients sold by knowledgeable professionals: French baking chocolate, Italian olive oil, Indian spices, and beautiful beef tenderloins. We squeeze into tiny narrow shops selling professional chef’s supplies such as oversized parchment paper, cocktail spears, and round molds. Michalenko fondly recalls her early experience as a frustrated foodie in Moscow.
“I came in 1994 for the first time when my sister was living here. She just wanted me to cook for her, so I gave her a grocery list and she just laughed. For me it was incomprehensible — all I could find was cabbage, flour, carrots and butter.”
Michalenko was then shown the ropes of Dorogomilovsky by a senior colleague who spent a day introducing her to individual vendors, and establishing her credentials as his colleague. She admits that shopping for food is still a lot of work, and finding the exact ingredients can often be hit or miss, but that Moscow’s markets provide her with the inspiration she needs to be a successful and creative chef.
“The markets teach you things you would never learn in culinary school. I think about what I want to cook and then when I get there, it totally changes… when I find something exotic or unusual like quince or persimmon.”
Moscow markets have become very cosmopolitan in many respects, offering small stands specializing in Spanish, Italian, and Thai ingredients, but there is still a strong tradition of buying what is in season. It’s nice to know you can get a fennel bulb at Danilovsky any time of the year, but Muscovites feel a bigger sense of occasion at the arrival of the first cherries in early summer, fresh berries and the high summer glut of cucumbers ready for pickling, and the dusky abundance of late summer eggplant and plum tomatoes in September. As a taste for travel abroad becomes the norm rather than the exception among Russians, so too have they gained an appreciation for good food and quality ingredients, for international flavors as well as superbly executed traditional Russian fare. And Moscow’s markets have somehow kept pace with it all. RL
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