(* My rating.)

Irina Yusupova!

Her mother, Ksenia Aleksandrovna. What a wonderful headdress.

Zinaida Yusupova and her pearls. She's breathtaking.

At 8 am I finally screamed, "Stop calling me!!!" I wondered why he was being so doggedly persistent, as though if he redialed enough times, Katya would eventually appear at the wrong number. I wondered what cruel woman had given him a made-up number.

And then a few minutes ago, another number I didn't recognise showed up on my cell phone.

"Hello. I am replying to your ad on craigslist."

"Uh, what ad?"

"The ad about domination."

"Wrong fucking number!"

So I put two and two together, run to the computer, do a search for "Katya" under Craig's List Erotic Services, and lo and behold: my number is one of two listed in a posting advertising that an "Extreme Russian Dominatrix is Ready to Make You Her Bitch".

THE MINUTE YOU ENETER MY ROOM, I will kick your balls so badly that your eye will get red. Then I will grab you by your small pathetic cock , and will make you scream for mercey.

SPECIALTIES INCLUDE BUT NOT LIMITED TO:
-BONDAGE
-COCK AND BALL TORTURE
(ball busting, crushing, cock whipping, cock cruching under my heels, stretching, forsking torture , branding)

I called the other number listed and got a woman with an obviously Russian accent, who denied everything. Well, she knows now that a typo is costing her business, whether or not she wants to admit to it.

Kind of wimpy for an extreme dominatrix, don't you think?

I've developed a new, and slightly pejorative, online game.

1. Go to Paper Doll Heaven.
2. Select your celebrity victim.
3. Using the available wardrobe, construct the Russianest possible outfit.
4. If it's really definitive, send it to me and I'll post it.

Have fun!

(Pretty sentiment, but can anyone verify - or quash - this for me?)

(click to enlarge)

A gateway to all (well, a few) things Baba Yaga:

Sur La Lune's modest collection of Ivan Bilibin's unforgettable illustrations - where Art Nouveau meets folk art lacquerware meets the Rider-Waite tarot deck - to Vasilissa the Beautiful, starring Baba Yaga. I read this edition when I was very young and Mr. Bilibin (more on his life and work here) set the impossibly high standards by which I judge and judged children's books.

Helen Pilinovsky gives a wonderful, beautifully-presented two-part study of differences in Russian and Western fairytale conventions (from which my opening quote was taken). Part One is an overview; Part Two ventures into the domain of Baba Yaga.

--

Oh! My mother always talked about wanting to bite my flesh when I was a little girl. Of what deep-down primal urge can Baba Yaga be the personification?

My daughter when you were small

How I wanted to eat you.

Cast off flesh of my flesh

I wanted to keep you in me,

Digest my fear of losing you as I swallowed

You whole, plumped and roasted.

Can you forgive the way I fretted over the oven

And took the measure of your

Wrists with my worried fingers?

A poet's response to the Baba Yaga myth.

(I first came across this piece of landscaping genius in an inflight-shopping catalogue on a Continental flight from San Juan to Newark two weeks ago. Sadly, three and half hours wasn't nearly enough time to absorb all the wonders on offer, from "carpeted mobile pet steps" to help your little runt of a dog up onto your sofa, to a variety of home lie detector machines - a call to arms for suspicious spouses - and a sensory-overload morning alarm system, complete with vibrating pillow attachment, strobe light and some ridiculous number of decibels.

It occurs to me that, minus the pet steps, you've got the ingredients for a spy/interrogation/lite torture package right here.)

The Guardian reports on the uncovering of a lost archive of early 20th century "private albums of photographs for body-conscious men and women" (with emphasis - at least in this article - on the men). Some additional shots from the archive, with a couple of "contemporary reinterpretations", the inclusion of which I don't really understand. (My cynical brain imagines curator Valery Katsuba refusing to release the contents of the archives unless his own work is exhibited alongside it.)

Calling this sort of meathead photography "homoerotic" is like finding lesbian undertones in the Russian woman's stereotypical fondness for uber-girly adornment and exaggerated form (super-pointy shoes, death-defying stilettos, and so on). Can't people just admire physique?

Also: "Muscle Maryas". Russian themes do so invite obviousness, do they not?

Life in a gulag seems unimaginable for such a fine-featured man. Or for anyone. But then I'm a Vonnegut-loving "humanist" who has trouble accepting any kind of confinement-based penal system.

Remember back in August when he went on a hunger strike to protest his friend Lebedev's placement in a "punishment cell"? I shudder to imagine what a Russian "punishment cell" might entail.

As I say, I'd never made borsch before. Borsch is a funny, mutable thing. I tried to make it how I had liked it best, at Me100 restaurant in Petersburg. Borsch is one of those foods people like to argue about - see the ongoing debate on soupsong.com's International Soups pages, with their five competing submitted versions, listed under both Russia and Ukraine. (Soup Song is just a wonderful set of pages in general, by the way.) Epicurious has a whole bunch of borsch recipes, with invariably cranky user comments ("My mother...", etc.) Whatever. I like it hearty, tart and meaty. This is no watery pink soup for summer. I made the winter version, a hot and nourishing beefed-up soup with bone-in shank, shredded at the last minute after surrendering its marrowy goodness to the cause.

I browned the shank in olive oil and then sweated onion, carrots and potatoes in the meaty fat. Beef broth and water; bay leaves; tomato paste. As long as it takes. Cider vinegar to taste, and sliced cooked beets at the last minute. Beet juice as you see fit. Dredge up the shank; shred; discard the bone. Serve with a fat dollop of sour cream and plenty of fresh dill.

Funnily enough, though the Russians and Ukrainians can fight over authenticity all they like, borsch is arguably the national soup of a quite unexpected little place - Hong Kong. "Loh-soong" soup, as it is known (Cantonese phonetic form of "Russian"), contains no beets at all, is heavy on the cabbage side of things, and is found in every cafe in the city, usually as the soupe du jour. It's popular enough that Campbells has recognised it with a special local flavour of tinned soup known as "Chinese Borsch" - see their website.

My crab salad I like a lot. I developed it when I was living in Russia, often encountering local versions of krabovyi salat that had, I thought, potential, but very little in the way of taste. When I first thought about making this in America I worried that imitation crab wouldn't be the budget food here that it is in Russia - its uses seem confined to California rolls. But hidden in the prepared seafood section I found a three-dollar offering of "Alaskan Pride", enough to serve 4-6.

I coarsely chop the imitation crab meat, and mix it with a couple of chopped hard-boiled eggs, a scattering of corn kernels, some cooked rice and very finely minced red onion. Throw a handful of dill in there, pepper furiously and bind the whole thing with just enough mayonnaise. The taste probably owes a lot to nostalgia, but I like it, it's very savoury and honest. In true Russian style I garnished it with a blanket of dill and some wholly extraneous olive halves. It's good chilled, piled on top of black bread and served with beer. Try it!

I foresee a renaissance of Russian flavours in my cooking, although one recipe I won't be replicating (or eating, or even thinking about) anytime soon is the (ig)noble Selyodka pod Shuboi, or Herring under a Fur Coat, a metaphor which only works if you happen to like your fur coats soaked in the blood of the clubbed seal they were skinned from...

Aren't familiar with this uniquely sweet/sour/boney/lurid delicacy? Be very glad.

"Why are Communists so fond of the colour red?"

(I'm not sure I buy the secondary krasnyi=red/beautiful explanation.)

(Click to enlarge.)

The Russian Food Pyramid, courtesy of the Southeastern Michigan Dietetic Association.

The longer I live in New York, the more I miss Russian food. There I could eat a three-course biznes lanch and still feel less bloated and pickled than I do after two-thirds of a deli sandwich. Over-seasoning is ruining my life. New York food of any "nationality" is too salty, too sweet, too much. I miss the soothing blandness and innocent garnishes found in Petersburg cafes. I miss chicken bouillon and lapsha and dull white pap. I miss vinegar's starring role. I've been making hot broths and plain vanilla cupcakes: original, unevolved foods for an exhausted palate.

The Russian Food Pyramid makes me laugh. Why aren't Russians allowed fresh fruit, but condemned to dried? It's as though someone in Michigan researched his pyramid in 19th-century Russian literature (except for the artichokes and the Brussels sprouts, which I am not convinced are available even now). An examination of their English Food Pyramid convinces me, by apparent consistency of research methods, that this is so. I also like that vodka is so much a part of the Russian "diet" that it's included in the pyramid, though neither the English nor the Irish have a beer allowance. The rest of the Russian info was apparently gleaned from Polish sources: pierogies and holubkys?

This week's New Yorker (the Food Issue, yay!) has a nice little reminiscence from one Anya von Bremzen, of toddler days in 1960s Moscow, where connections secured her an unlikely place at the writing desks and dining tables of an exclusive little kindergarten for Central Committee children. (Not available online, I'm afraid.)

"Fish-fat time!" the teacher announced when her charges awakened. I thought she meant fish oil, which was administered daily at all kindergartens. Instead, I was approached by an elephantine nanny with a heaping spoonful of black caviar. It was my first encounter with sevruga eggs. They smelled metallic, like a rusty doorknob.

"Open wide...a spoonful, for Lenin," the nanny implored. "For Motherland, for the Party!" she said, pushing the caviar toward my locked lips. I started to gag.

"Don't you dare throw up!" she bellowed. "Or I'll make you eat every drop of your puke!"

My alienation intensified with every meal: veal scallops, poached sturgeon - this food, I knew, would horrify Mother.

Russians, Russianists, tell me what you ate and what you eat.

My eyes cry tears of blood.