Recipes are deviant, magical and political.
Yoana and Alice, together with the occasional guest, will be cooking all kinds of recipes and their sounds and stories every other Saturday on the Worm radio.
Trauma and nostalgia are linked in the taste buds of our grandmothers.
My grandmother loved potatoes. But not quite like any other person I
have known. She loved cooking them, serving them, eating them, she loved talking
about them. As a child, my grandmother lived alongside war, coups and
regimes. During times of hardship for people in Bulgaria, often potatoes were the
only thing to eat. I always felt that due to the shortage of food, her memories were
focused almost entirely on food.
Talking about food is an effective way of developing relationships ‘woman-to-
woman’, and of establishing shared perceptions and experiences. Trauma and
nostalgia are linked in the taste buds of our grandmothers. “Traumatic” past can
move between generations, aka "intergenerational trauma". Potatoes have become
carriers of that trauma. They have to be handled delicately, with respect and care in
order to satisfy my grandmother's expectations. They had to be peeled paper thin,
so as to waste as little of the edible material as possible. If the potatoes had to be
cut, it was crucial to cut them into stripes in such a way that each one turns out to
be odd shaped and has a minimum of four corners, in order to reduce chances of
sticking.
The following recipe is not a potato puree, it is not mashed potatoes, it is mashed
potatoes expanded with eggs, cheese and citrus fruits. It is a celebration of eating
every damn cubic millimeter of that potato. It is the taste of the trauma and
nostalgia of post conflict societies, in the taste buds of our grandmothers.
Potato spread aka Бърканина (Barkanina) recipe:
Boil the potatoes. Here you face two choices, to peel and cut into big chunks and boil,
or wash and boil the whole, uncut potatoes with the skin. Then cool and peel them.
In the episode we pre-peeled and cut them in order to boil faster. Originally my
grandmother boiled them whole with the skin.
After the potatoes have been boiled, they have to be smashed. In the original
recipe, my grandma used a hand-cranked meat grinder to smash the potatoes and
grind the onion . That machine was an absolutely universal tool, she used it for this
recipe, to make tomato juice, cookies and rarely to grind meat. In the show, we
used a potato ricer for most of the potatoes, and then a regular potato masher for
about 10-15% in order to make some fariety in the structure and prevent smooth,
uniform blend. After the potatoes are smashed, leave them in the pot. You can
grate the onion, or use a chopper. Ideally you have a blend, mixed with fine as well
as slightly bigger pieces. Add the onion to the potatoes. Add 4 eggs, 250 grams of
ricotta, the lemon juice and the sunflower oil. Add salt to your taste.Then mix with
an electric mixer on a low speed until homogenous.
Spread a thick layer on toast and sprinkle a bit more lemon. Eat and
weep. Consume within a day or two (raw eggs inside).