From Russia with Love, Salt and Time - The Jewish Chronicle

In the 1980s, Alissa Timoshkina, author of Russian cookery book, Salt and Time, lived in a tiny apartment in the Soviet Union with her parents, grandparents and great grandmother, Rosalia.

Rosalia was from the Ukraine. She, her husband and their son — Timoshkina’s grandfather, then a small child — had survived the Holocaust in separate ways. She escaped Nazi-occupied Ukraine, travelling from her home to Siberia on false identity papers, having changed her name for a less Jewish one, and joined her husband there. It was a perilous journey.

“She took lifts from whoever would take her and slept in hay stacks along the way” says Timoshkina. “She left my grandfather with a non-Jewish family, who hid him — I think she felt it was the safest place for him. She went to live with my great-grandfather in Siberia, and after the war she went back for my grandfather. It was a miracle that they all survived but they suffered terrible atrocities.”

As a child, with no idea of what her great-grandmother had endured, Timoshkina’s earliest memories of the lady who was her primary care giver in her early years, were of her food and kindness. “She was one of the most gentle and generous people I’ve ever known, and she was also an amazing cook. To me she was the embodiment of nurturing. She fed me and my mum and was always in the kitchen cooking and making wonderful pastries like rugelach.”

When Timoshkina was eight, Rosalia, who had worked all of her life as a Soviet canteen cook, moved into her own apartment. She continued to ply them with food.

Timoshkina feels the love shown to her by Rosalia through food was connected to her experience of living through the war. “The journey she had to make through Nazi-occupied Ukraine to Siberia cannot have been particularly plentiful with food. She had to sleep in haystacks and take lifts from anyone who would take her. It was maybe because of that experience of deprivation that she placed so much importance on feeding.”

Even in her mid-nineties she continued to live on her own and cook for herself. “She would still make us pastries to take home. My memory of her apartment was the smell of butter, vanilla and cinnamon.”

Although the family, didn’t particularly celebrate Jewish rituals, Rosalia did cook certain recipes familiar to Ashkenazi cooks everywhere.

Her recipe for forshmak (on the facing page) is included in the book, which was published this month, her borscht (borsch in Russian) gets a mention and there is also a recipe for an aubergine matzo bake.

For Timoshkina, matzah was one of the most Jewish foods, but not readily available when she was growing up. It was so tied to religious practices which people were wary of flouting. While multiculturalism was officially celebrated, the state was atheist, so any religion was frowned upon.

Rosalia would have large boxes of it sent to her from cousins in Moscow. It was kept at the back of her cupboard. “We were not the only ones hiding it away” she recalls. “When I was two or three we went to visit my mother’s university lecturer. I was crawling around under one of her beds and found a box of matzah. I ran back into the room where they were chatting waving it around and asked if we could have some. The lecturer was so uncomfortable that we had found matzah in her home!”

The (non-kosher) book is a collection of recipes inspired by Timoshkina’s homeland — Siberia. In her preface, she explains that the region, a place of exile from the 17th century until the 1950’s and one used to resettle various populations, was a melting pot of culinary traditions from Ukraine to the Caucasus to Central Asia, Mongolia and Korea.

Towards the end of the 20th century the family did manage to emigrate to Israel. Rosalia had no proof of her Judaism as she had burned all her papers during the war, so the family recorded her story so they could write it down as evidence. “As soon as they read it, they agreed that our family could go and live in Israel.” Unfortunately, immigrant life proved too difficult for Timoshkina’s parents — one a lawyer and the other a doctor — and they returned to Russia after six or seven years.

Jewish food was present but far from the main menu for her family. “Our diet was mostly Soviet food and was very much influenced by the seasons.” She explains that in winter it was a very simple repertoire — a few different soups; maybe roast chicken and root vegetables; fermented foods to eke out summer vegetables through the winter when imported food was not available. In summer it was a very different story, with plenty of fresh produce.

Timoshkina’s route to writing the book was indirect. After school she studied film at Queen Mary’s College in London before doing a Masters and then a PhD in Soviet and Holocaust film. A stint in the office of the UK Jewish Film Festival followed, before she started film themed supper club, KinoVino, to indulge her two joint passions — film (kino in Russian) and food. “I would choose a film and curate a menu to go with it. I had a good network and used that and Instagram to get it started and it did really well.”

“My favourite event was one I did with Emma Spitzer. The film was called Oma and Bella, and it was about two Jewish grannies cooking together in their East Berlin kitchen and talking about food and family. It’s one of my favourite films. Emma did a properly hearty Ashkenazi meal to go with it.”

Her participation in a charity fund raiser meal for Action against Hunger led by Indian chef Romy Gill, which was covered by BBC Radio 4, raised her profile, and led to an approach from a literary agency. “They asked if I’d ever considered writing a book — it was the perfect situation — everything I felt passionate about came together in a nice way.”

A few months after she delivered that baby to her publisher, she gave birth to baby Rose — named for Rosalia — who is now a smiley six month old. Her great-great grandma would definitely be kvelling.

Salt and Time, Mitchell Beazley £25