Of Bees and Cabbage Pie

In our wired age, it is hard to imagine life without distractions—between cell phones, iPods and instant messaging, we rarely find ourselves alone. But, just for a moment, picture a Russian village deep in the countryside, with no means of easy communication with the outside world. How did the villagers keep themselves entertained? 

By all accounts, life was anything but dull, as people gathered regularly to talk, sing and dance. Yet most social gatherings were not simply an excuse to idle away the time: more often than not they were structured around work. Male gatherings frequently took place in the summer, when barns needed to be raised or cottages built in a communal effort. Women’s gatherings took place in the late summer and early fall, when the fruits of the harvest had to be processed quickly before spoiling. They also took place in winter, when young girls and women gathered to spin or card wool. Such tedious tasks could fly by if the conversation was lively enough and especially if the workers knew that a feast awaited them at the end of their labors. 

The American term “bee” captures the bustle of these gatherings. As you’ll read elsewhere in this issue [pages 51-56], one especially popular type of bee in Russia was the kapustnik, when women got together to chop cabbage — an activity that even under the best of circumstances is laborious. Most of the cabbage would be immersed in brine to make kvashenaya kapusta, the mild sauerkraut that is a mainstay of the Russian diet, providing a wealth of vitamins otherwise unavailable during the cold season. Kvashenaya kapusta is also a crucial ingredient in shchi, Russia’s national soup. So important is sauerkraut to this cabbage soup that, when fresh cabbage is used the soup is known as lenivye shchi, or “lazy cabbage soup,” because no effort has been made to brine the cabbage first. At least the chopping also had some immediate rewards: any cabbage left over from the brining barrel was turned into a delicious cabbage pie — also known as kapustnik.

As they worked, the women traded gossip, told stories, and sang songs. Young girls often ended the evening with fortune telling, in the hope of discovering who their future husband would be. This augury took many forms: the shapes that occurred when molten tin or hot wax was dropped into water; the tea leaves left on the bottom of the cup; the face that appeared in a mirror by candlelight; the message revealed by a deck of cards. Work bees were a much-anticipated opportunity for women to bond, and because the participants accomplished so much, there was no guilt involved in their pleasure. 

We can get a sense of how important these gatherings were to women and to village life by reading the letters of Aleksandr Nikolaevich Engelgardt, the erstwhile rector of St. Petersburg Agriculture Institute who was exiled in 1871 to remote Smolensk province. There, his housekeeper, Avdotia, ruled the roost. In an 1872 letter to the journal Notes of the Fatherland, Engelgardt describes a cabbage bee during the harvest.

During the garden harvest Avdotia displaced me completely, as though I were not even the master; it reached the point that she even moved into the house with her cabbage. While I was waking up one morning, I heard some kind of noise on the other side of the wall, they were pulling something, they were moving about.

“What’s that?” I asked Avdotia.

“Why, they’re going to chop the cabbage in the kitchen… It’ll be fun, the babas will be playing songs, I called for the best players.” …

It was gay in the evening… in the kitchen, on Avdotia’s territory, they chopped and shredded the cabbage. The babas and unmarried girls sang songs, and finally, having finished with the cabbage, left to dance. Avdotia directed everything, and even her husband, the steward Ivan, did not interfere with anything, because cabbage is a woman’s business. Everything came out very well; they chopped and shredded two enormous tubs, which they then put in the kitchen. The next day I left to go visiting and returned after several days. I came into the rooms and there was the most horrible stench, it was impossible to breathe freely. 

“Why does it stink so in here, Avdotia?… You cannot even come into the house.”

“I don’t know. There’s no such thing, it hardly smells of cabbage, it’s marinating, it’s fermenting. That’s all it could be.”

In fact, it was the cabbage fermenting.*

You don’t have to spend hours chopping cabbage to enjoy this issue’s recipe, which captures the spirit of the Russian kapustnik without the labor—or the fermenting smell. This pie offers a tasty, and slightly sweet, wintertime treat.

* From Aleksandr Nikolaevich Engel-gardt’s Letters from the Country, 1872-1887. Translated and edited by Cathy A. Frierson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Lazy Cabbage Pie 

This flaky pie is a quick version of the more elaborate kapustnik. It’s delicious on its own but even better when served in a bowl of hot beef or chicken broth. 

Dough

2 cups unbleached white flour

1⁄2 pound (16 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 cup sour cream

Pulse the flour and butter in a food processor until the mixture resembles fine cornmeal. Add the sour cream and pulse just until the dough begins to hold together, no longer. Scrape the dough from the bowl of the food processor and shape it into two disks. Wrap each in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

Filling

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 small head of white cabbage (about 21⁄2 pounds)

1 cup water

2 teaspoons salt

6 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

Freshly ground white pepper

1 egg, lightly beaten

Melt the butter in a large skillet, then stir in the cabbage, coating it well. Stir in all the remaining ingredients except for the egg. Cook, covered, over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes, until the cabbage softens. Then cook, uncovered, for 10 minutes more, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has evaporated.

Preheat the oven to 425oF.

On a floured board, roll out one piece of dough to a rectangle about 12 x 15 inches. Fit it into a 9 x 13-inch baking dish. Spoon the cabbage filling evenly over the dough. Roll out the second piece of dough and lay it over the filling, turning the edges under. Brush with the beaten egg. Bake until crisp and brown, 25-30 minutes. Cut into large squares to serve.

Serves 8. 

Adapted from The Winter Vegetarian