Mrs Lenin and I

My brain tends to retain the oddest facts. In the late 1830s I studied Russian language, literature and history at university, and plenty of it stuck. As I was cooking last night a strange thing came back to me. I once read that when the Lenins were living in Switzerland Vladimir Ilyich was driven from their block of flats by the smell of his wife's cabbage soup, the beleaguered beardo rushing off to do revolutionary plotting with the blokes down the pub. After a few pints I likewise tend to think I have the solutions to the world's problems, but that's by the by. Mine, in case it's of interest, don't involve the deaths of millions.


That detail was meant to illustrate what a poverty stricken and miserable life the exiles had. But had the book from which the anecdote came been written by someone with more culinary experience they may have put a different slant on it. Last night's main course, soft food again given that the Dear Leader (a great dictator in her own right) is still suffering with her jaw, was a version of cabbage soup. And it was utterly delicious, though I say it as shouldn't.


There is no reason why relatively mean ingredients should not result in something wonderful, and in this case they did. Half a white cabbage shredded, a carrot, two small potatoes, and two onions chopped, plus the magic ingredient of half a small pack of smoked pancetta cubes (Aldi's, and so much better than the pasty-faced efforts from Sainsbury's). A bit of butter and oil to lubricate them as they cooked gently before the cheating chicken stock was added, and then the pot left to simmer for half an hour. Though it was unnecessary a final flourish did lift the soup further - a few tablespoonfuls of cream, added just before serving.


The pre-cream soup was carefully liquidised (rather than liquidated, like the Mensheviks), and actually tasted more like split pea than cabbage (traditional Russian cabbage soup is called Shchee by the way), with a gorgeous smoky background from the posh bacon. The lot cost by my estimate less than £1.50. It was a very cheap great leap forward in culinary terms, though only altered a little from a Lindsey Bareham idea.