What's Cooking in the Kremlin by Witold Szablowski
Author:Witold Szablowski [Szablowski, Witold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-11-07T00:00:00+00:00
4.
I came home from the army, and at the Praga restaurant they received me with open arms. But it was clear to everyone that I wouldnât be there for long, and that Iâd be going to work at the Kremlin.
To everyone except me, that is, because I didnât think much of myself as a chef.
Even so, it really did happen. It turned out that Alexander Fedorovich, the uncle of one of my teachers, was made the Kremlinâs food managerâI couldnât possibly have expected that one day I would replace him in that post. He asked her if she had any capable graduates, and she named meâit was rare for anyone to graduate with nothing but top grades, but Iâd managed to do it. So Alexander Fedorovich invited me in for a conversation.
âDo you have a wife, young man?â he asked.
âNo,â I replied. âBut I have a girlfriend.â
âAfter two years here youâll get a nice apartment. Itâll be perfect if you want to get married.â
In those days you waited far longer than that for an apartment, so it was a serious reason to accept. I didnât think about it for long.
But before I started the job, I had to wait two months until the secret services had vetted me properly. I filled out a questionnaire, and then they checked to see if I was telling the truth. I had a problem, which was what to write about my father, who had been in jail, but someone suggested I put that I didnât know him and wasnât in touch with him. Apart from that, I had to say if anyone in my family had been repressed in the Stalinist era, if anyone had been a German POW during the Great Patriotic War, or if anyone lived abroad.
Luckily in my case there was no issue with any of it.
I took the opportunity to ask Mom and Grandpa a few things, and it turned out that my forebears on their side of the family had been very rich; they had traded in food on a grand scale, and even had their own barges. My great-great-grandfatherâs house stands in the city of Skopin to this day, and itâs now the local history museum. All this greatly interested meâas Iâve already told you, I adored and still adore history.
But the real elite were the family of my father, whom I didnât know. They turned out to be direct descendants of Alexander Danilovich Menshikov, who was Peter the Greatâs right-hand man.
Luckily at the Kremlin, either they didnât check quite so far back or they werenât bothered. I got the job.
When I arrived I was still a child. And the Kremlin kitchen has always been a place with unusual personalities. There were people still working there who had cooked during the Great Patriotic War, people who remembered Stalin and Khrushchev, people who had seen and experienced a great deal in that kitchen.
But no life story can compare with that of Timofeyevich. I only ever saw him once, but Iâll never forget his face or his slightly stooping figure.
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