Tasty and Healthy

As you’ll read elsewhere in this issue (page 48), for many years Moscow’s great exhibition center, VDNKh, promoted the achievements of the USSR’s national economy, its narodnoye khozyaystvo.  In 1979, I spent two months at VDNKh, working as a guide for an American exhibition on agriculture, part of the cultural exchange with the Soviet Union that had been set up in the late 1950s.  At the time, I had no idea how appropriate our theme was for the VDNKh exhibition space. In fact, agriculture was the original idea behind the halls. They were opened in 1939 to celebrate Soviet agriculture, or selskoye khozyaystvo, as reflected in the site’s original acronym of VSKhV. Here were displayed the fruits of the collective and state farm system, a latter-day Potemkin village of abundance when the agricultural reality was grim. It wasn’t until 1958 that the exhibition site was renamed VDNKh, and the focus of its displays shifted to industrial production and Soviet achievements in science and engineering – that was, after all, the age of Sputnik. 

The exhibition’s original focus on the harvest was not an arbitrary choice. For centuries, Russians had greeted a good harvest with joy. But the Soviets were the ones who perfected the art of harvest celebration. In fact they politicized it, creating a highly public pokazukha (pretense) of efficiency and abundance. Store windows were decorated with lavish food displays that masked empty shelves within; restaurant menus listed dozens of dishes when only one was usually available. Such pretense was visible both at VSKhV and in the famous Stalin-era cookbook, Kniga o vkusnoy zdorovoy pishche (A Book of Tasty and Healthy Food). This book first appeared in 1939, the same year that VSKhV opened to the public, and, like the exhibition, it depicted happy, healthy people enjoying tremendous bounty. Its many editions reveal the government’s attempt to script the right way for people to live, which necessarily included the proper preparation and consumption of food. Politics were present from the first page. Before offering up recipes for a good and healthy life, A Book of Tasty and Healthy Food proclaims:

Under the direction of our glorious Communist Party, its Central Committee and the Soviet government, the people of our immense and powerful socialist Motherland, through heroic and creative labor, are erecting the majestic edifice of communism, creating in life mankind’s age-old dream of building a communist society and an abundant, happy, and joyous life.

Both the book and the exhibition hall attempted to make citizens feel good about Soviet agriculture in the face of a monotonous, and sometimes scarce, diet. But, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, both icons lost their relevancy. In the early 1990s, the by then shabby VDNKh got a facelift and a new image as VVTs, the All-Russia Exhibition Center – a marketplace not of agricultural produce but of commodities, especially Western ones. Meanwhile, A Book of Tasty and Healthy Food lost out to competitors like the Povarennaya kniga dekadansa (The Decadence Cookbook). Nevertheless, many of its Soviet-era recipes are still delicious today, like the following one from the 1953 edition, which rivals commercially-prepared veggie burgers any day.

Vegetable Cutlets 

1⁄2 pound carrots, peeled, trimmed, and finely chopped

1⁄2 pound beets, peeled, trimmed, and finely chopped

1 1⁄2 c. milk

3 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon sugar 

Salt to taste

3⁄4 pound pumpkin or winter squash, peeled and finely chopped

3⁄4 pound cabbage, finely chopped

1⁄2 c. semolina (cream of wheat)

3 eggs

2 lightly beaten egg whites

1⁄2 c. fine dry bread crumbs

Vegetable oil for frying

Sour cream

Place the carrots and beets in a skillet. Heat the milk and pour it over them, then add the butter, sugar, and salt to taste. Cover the pan and cook over low heat for 15 minutes. Then stir in the chopped cabbage along with the chopped pumpkin or squash, and simmer the mixture till the vegetables are soft, another 15-20 minutes. When they are tender, gradually stir in the semolina and simmer for 8-10 minutes, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. 

Remove the skillet from the heat. Stir in the eggs, mixing well, then allow the mixture to cool. Form patties from the cooled mixture. Dip each one first in the egg whites, then in the breadcrumbs. Fry the patties in vegetable oil until golden, turning once. Serve with sour cream.