Tea for Three

Photo: table set for tea at Irina’s

Galina and Irina and I have gotten together for tea three times, once at each house. Having tea is not the same as having coffee, apart from the obvious difference of what you drink. Having tea requires food. In Russia you can serve almost anything with tea except soup – if you serve soup, you’re having “dinner.” Dinner comes in the middle of the day. You can have “tea” in the morning, afternoon, or evening.

I started this recent round of teas in rather typical Russian fashion. Fruit is a good thing, a touch of luxury in any season but summer. It can be whole fruit in a decorative bowl, homemade vareniye, which is something like a jam, or sliced fruit. I served sliced rounds of orange layered with rounds of kiwi.

Candies are nice to have on the table, fine chocolate or anything pretty. Mine were fairly ordinary hard candies, things we had around. No special points for me on that.

There should be some homemade dish, a pastry or cake or something. You might serve a store-bought item to your family, but if you’ve invited people to be your guests, you should make them feel special. Well, here I fell down. I don’t have any cookbooks here, and I wasn’t up to the challenge of Russian baking, which is done without baking powder. So I fixed cinnamon toast. My guests looked at it politely. I don’t think it’s common in Russia. Fortunately the tea was in the end successful, but only because Galina had brought me a homemade apple cake.

A week later we gathered for tea at Irina’s, and her table is the one pictured here. Irina collects blue porcelain, and she sets a very pretty table. I very much liked her apple cake, and I’m going to give the recipe here, as best I understand it. When the three of us get together, the conversation alternates erratically between English and Russian. When it’s in the second mode, I don’t always catch the details.

Irina’s Apple Cake

4 eggs, beaten until light
200 ml sugar
200 ml flour
½ kilo apples (about 1 lb)

Butter a cake pan and dust with fine bread crumbs. Mix eggs, sugar and flour into a soft dough and spread in the pan. Top with peeled, sliced apples which have been dipped in flour. Sprinkle with cinnamon if desired. Bake in a very, very slow oven for about an hour. The dough will rise above the apples. After that happens, you can turn up the heat if you wish.

Although Russians normally bake with baking soda or yeast, this cake uses only the leavening power of eggs. It’s remarkably light and tender. I’m looking forward to trying it at home, and will amend the recipe for the American kitchen.

Today Galina had us over for tea. She served cherry vareniye and a Russian style cheesecake. It was our farewell get-together since I’m leaving this Sunday. But Galina and Irina have both been to the United States, and I’m expecting to see them there some time in the future. I wonder what they would think if in the U.S. I would just serve them coffee?