It’s an unlikely meeting between a Russian Count and an Indian Maharaja that takes place in two very different books: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles and A Very Pukka Murder: The Maharaja Mystery by Arjun Raj Gaind. They are set in the early years of the 20th century.
Both are prisoners of their past. And they meet only in my imagination, meditating over the flavours of the mind and heart across the dining table of fiction. Their fondness for fine dining and wines takes on a mythical quality. The Russian Count is lost in the fabled depths of a bouillabaisse, the French soup made of the riches of the Mediterranean sea and terrain. The Indian prince, who has studied at Eton and is a part-time detective, finds solutions in a glass of Manzanilla Olorosa, the deep ruby-red sherry from Spain.
Each sips from the past and becomes a master of the universe. One of them becomes Don Quixote silently riding the lift in a legendary Moscow hotel, clutching The Essays of Montaigne , the only book he is allowed to possess; the other uses expensive pomades to wax the points of his martial moustache into points. When he looks into the mirror, the reader detects a certain resemblance to the polymorphous Hercule Poirot.
Golden fortress
Maharaja Sikander Singh, ruler of Rajpore, in Ghaind’s book, is a pukka prince trapped in his golden fortress in the penultimate years of the Raj. The year is 1909. Ghaind could be described as a murder ‘mystorian’. He gives you as much historical information about the era as he does about the Maharaja’s Rolls Royce (Silver Ghost, of course) and his European inspired accoutrements. Do we complain that Ghaind got one detail of his product placement wrong when he talks of a perfume called ‘Shalimar’? Describing a tender moment between the Maharaja’s Parisian mistress, Helene, whom he cannot marry, Ghaind writes: She pulled away, leaving his nostrils filled with her intoxicating smell, that sweet perfume of Yardley’s soap and Guerlain’s Shalimar . But the famous oriental perfume Shalimar by Jacques Guerlain was created in 1922. The earlier version was called Jicky.
But never mind, the grand unravelling of the murder mystery takes place across a magnificent dining table where all the suspects are gathered and served à la russe , where each dish is served one course at a time, accompanied by its own vintage of wine. It was the only decent idea Napoleon took back with him after his disastrous Russia campaign.
Count Alexander Rostov enters the scene in A Gentleman in Moscow in 1922. At the beginning of this epic and highly romantic saga, Count Rostov has just managed to escape the firing squads of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The author, Towles, is a New Yorker with an extraordinary talent for recreating the tumultuous period that engulfed the Russian people right up to World War II, the Stalinist Era and the Cold War. In this book, Count Rostov manages to survive by being incarcerated in a tiny attic room of the Hotel Metropol. Visitors to Moscow today may still enjoy the charms of the Metropole in the heart of the town square, literally a balletic leap from the famed Bolshoi Theatre.
By reinventing himself as the head-waiter of the hotel’s fine-dining restaurant, the Boyarsky, Count Rostov remains a prisoner of the state, never venturing outside the hotel doors. By forming a troika with the staff, most significantly with Chef Emile and Maître d’ Andrey, he inspires them to heights of culinary experimentation in what becomes one of the highlights of the book. This was in an era when Russians were lucky if they could get a bowl of boiled cabbages and turnips, if at all.
The troika’s great coup was to one evening assemble, after months of planning, the basic 15 ingredients required to make a bouillabaisse. What makes this peasant style soup so famous? To begin with, as far as the troika was concerned, the secret ingredients — saffron, fennel and orange peel — were nearly unobtainable in the post-Bolshevik Moscow. Plus, it’s basically a creation of the port city of Marseille, which has access to all the delicacies of the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s difficult to find two recipes that will agree on what goes into a good bouillabaisse, because obviously it depends on what the fishermen have trawled that day, leaving behind the less-vaunted bi-valves and uni-valves and unprepossessing shoals of spiny fish.
Bouillabaisse: what makes this peasant style soup so famous?
My parents, who were young and adventurous in the mid-20th century, lived in a Paris still reeling from the War. They would talk of how, after an evening listening to the famous cabaret singers of the era, Juliette Gréco, perhaps, they would go for a bowl of bouillabaisse to the night markets. “It tasted just like rasam, with shellfish and the leftovers of the fish market,” my father explained, “but it was rich and very satisfying.”
For the troika, who have had to dodge and dissimulate to assemble the exotic ingredients, the making of the bouillabaisse and its consumption create a burst of Europe’s culinary riches in one spoon. To quote a sentence from the book: In other words, with the very first spoonful one finds oneself transported to the port of Marseille — where the streets teem with sailors, thieves, and madonnas, with sunlight and summer, with languages and life. “Magnifique,” says the Count.
No less magnificent is the dinner the Maharaja serves his guests at the finale of his search for the murderer of the British Resident of Rajpore. It starts with a platter of Oysters Katharine served with “an airy Chablis”. Queen Victoria’s favourite soup arrives next, flavoured with saffron and pepper, accompanied by a dry Oloroso. Don’t ask how they managed to get a Dover sole as the fish course paired with a Muscatel. There’s a honey game cock served with a pilaf, a roast saddle of mutton stuffed with truffles, each with its own wine, and finally for dessert, Nesselrode pudding. This last was named after Count Nesselrode, a Russian diplomat, and was created by Carême, the famous French chef, as a moulded pudding made of a puree of chestnuts, raisins and currants in cream. The last course was, of course, Stilton cheese with crackers and cognac, though by this time — the murderer having been unmasked — not many were left on the table for the ‘smelly Stilton’.
We shall leave the two gentlemen to continue with their feasting, secure in the knowledge that soon at least one of them is due to appear in a cinematic version.
SUNDAY RECIPE
Crêpes Suzette
(Instead of bouillabaisse, here is my mother’s version of her favorite dessert, Crêpes Suzette, pancakes served in an orange syrup flavoured with Grand Marnier or Cointreau.)
Ingredients
1 cup flour
1/4 cup milk with a tbsp of water
2 eggs
2 tbsp + more melted butter
Caster sugar
1 tsp orange juice freshly squeezed and some shards of orange zest
1 tsp lemon juice
Salt to taste
1 tbsp Grand Marnier
Method
1. Whisk together flour, milk, eggs, salt, sugar and butter and let it rest in the fridge. Make it just as you have finished your dinner.
2. Spread the batter quickly in a pancake pan with butter at the base and roll it around till it fills the pan. When the pancake shows small blisters or bubbles, flip it over quickly for a second and place it in a serving dish. Repeat till you have the right number, maybe four pancakes.
3. Make the orange syrup by combining judicious amounts of just barely caramelised sugar with the juice of oranges, a tiny drop of lemon juice and finally a glaze of butter.
4. Gentle pour the syrup over the pancakes and while it’s still warm, pour a teaspoon of Grand Marnier warmed over a silver ladle if you have one and set aflame so the liqueur dances over the pancakes.
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