SpiceLines

"Next time, bring me a husband," laughs a merchant at Kuznechny, a covered market
in St.Petersburg. She is selling big bunches of dill and parsley, traditional greens in
Russian cuisine.

It’s 7:42 AM in St. Petersburg. The early morning sun is slanting across the street. Well, perhaps not early morning. During summer’s white nights, the sun begins its slow ascent at 2:00 AM after just an hour or two of deep blue twilight. I love the endless day. It makes me feel unmoored from time.

We’re standing on the sidewalk outside Kuznechny market, waiting for the doors to open.

To get here, Masha—a plump, red-headed aeronautical engineer turned computer analyst—has led Bill and me through empty streets along the Moika River, past faded stucco palaces, through an arch into a secret garden with wide, tree-shaded paths, and finally on a street car down bustling Nevsky Prospekt until we alight a few blocks from the onion-domed Lady of Vladimir church.

The covered market won’t open until 8 AM. On the sidewalk a few elderly women are selling buckets of blowsy pink and crimson peonies. Across the street, in the shadow of the 18th century Russian Orthodox church, a vaguely Asiatic brother and sister are hawking a version of shawarma, shredded carrots, cabbage and meat wrapped in flatbread. Masha shows us the window of Dostoyevsky’s last apartment, now a museum. “He always chose an apartment where he could see the domes of a church,” she says. The great novelist probably strolled through Vladimirsky, the open air market which occupied the site on which Kuznechny was built about 70 years ago. Today food is sold is an airy, white-tiled hall, but for centuries there was a vibrant oudoor market on this spot.

At last the doors open. The air is marvelously perfumed with dill. “Next time you come, bring me a husband!” jokes a vivacious red-head, who is laying out big bunches of the greens--parsley, onions with long tops and feathery dill--which are used in so many Russian dishes. There are almost no customers and the merchants don’t mind chatting as they uncover their wares—caviar on ice, brightly colored honey cakes, jewel-like displays of dried fruit and nuts.

Here’s what we’re seeing and tasting now:

--Mounds of plump stiff-necked garlic bulbs, some creamy white, others lightly streaked with purple. Not Chesnok Red, or any of the other compact Russian purple stripes grown in America, but more likely elephant garlic—which, naturally, is often called “Russian garlic.” In Georgia the mild tasting cloves are tossed with olive oil and lemon or vinegar, marinated for a few days and then eaten like a salad.

--Bright red tomatoes with tiny “birds’ beaks” or tails curling out of the blossom end. Enormous pink tomatoes that look a lot like German Johnsons, a popular heirloom variety at our local farmers’ market.

--Glorious bunches of green and purple grapes that give new meaning to the word “Dionysian.” Each juicy bunch hangs from an iron stand in solitary perfection. From the south, piles of red-gold cherries, dewy apricots, buff-colored melons, their rinds traced with intricate lacy pattern.

--In the meat section to the rear, huge pork haunches. In the fish department, tanks of live perch, carp and sterlet, a sort of sturgeon with a long, narrow, vaguely prehistoric snout. There is a recipe for whole steamed sterlet with a sauce of ground almonds and Madeira in the cookbook for Podvorye, an idyllic dacha turned restaurant near Tsarskoye Selo, the turquoise summer palace of Catherine I.

--Ladies with frilly white tiaras and stern expressions selling ladlefuls of smetana or sour cream. Russian sour cream tastes a lot like crème fraiche and it can be very runny or quite thick, depending upon the fat content. It is sublime on beet borscht and, mixed with a spicy Georgian blend of herbs and hot red pepper, over boiled beef sprinkled with dill and fresh cranberries. Carp is sometimes baked with potatoes in sour cream.

I buy a slice of domashnije siz—Masha translates this as “cheese of homemaking”—white, delicate, creamy cheese pressed into round decorative molds. It is exquisitely fresh but so perishable that 12 hours later the texture has become rubbery.

-- Spicy pickled cucumbers, whole garlic and bundles of wild garlic shoots. The vegetables are steeped in rassol, salted vinegar spiked with hot peppers, horseradish root, dill, black currant leaves and other ingredients. Leftover rassol, or “pickle water,” is the base for a variety of hearty soups, one of which is known as rassolnik, a common cure for vodka hangovers.

--I linger longest with a shy young man selling dried fruit and nuts. There are plump walnuts, pine nuts from Siberia, dried apricots, kiwis, figs and wild cranberries (much smaller than our own), and tiny packets of spices: cinnamon, coriander seed, and blue-black barbarries with a bright, acidic flavor. The shiny, reddish churchkhela, a traditional Georgian candy, is irresistible: walnuts are threaded onto a thin string, then dipped repeatedly into grape juice that has been boiled until it is thick and syrupy. The candy is soft, chewy, sweet and mildly scented with cinnamon.

We’d love to tarry, but our friends are calling. The honey sellers still haven’t appeared. In fact, at 9 AM a surprising number of tiled counters are simply empty. It is too early? Or is something else going on?

Since April 1, immigrants have been banned from selling at any of Russia’s 5,200 food markets, ostensibly as part of a “Russia for Russians” campaign. Traditional vendors of fruits, vegetables and spices—mostly Georgians, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Chinese—are forbidden to work in the markets. Empty stalls and price hikes followed the ban. For more, see “Markets Suffer After Russian Bans Immigrant Vendors,” Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times, April 14, 2007.

Kuznechny Market is located at 3 Kuznechny Pereulok.
Telephone: +7 812 312-4161