To Russia With Love
Texas author Sharon Hudgins talks about living—and cooking a Tex-Mex meal—in Russia.
texasmonthly.com: The biographical summary in your book, The Other Side of Russia: A Slice of Life in Siberia and the Russian Far East (Texas A&M University Press, 2003), says you lived abroad for twenty years, but your address is listed as McKinney. When did you return to Texas?
Sharon Hudgins: Between 1970 and 1995, my husband, Tom, and I spent twenty years working outside the U.S.—in Germany, Spain, Greece, Japan, Korea, and Russia. Most of that time we were teaching for the University of Maryland's overseas programs at U.S. military bases abroad. I also worked as the food writer for the Stars and Stripes newspaper and several magazines in Europe.
After teaching for three semesters in Russia, during the early post-Soviet period, we returned to the United States at the beginning of 1995. We decided it was a good time for us to reenter the American job market, after having been away from the U.S. for so many years. We came back to Texas because both of us were born here, we knew the state well, and there were good job opportunities.
texasmonthly.com: What drew you to Siberia?
SH: I've been interested in Russia ever since I was a child in Texas in the fifties. When I went to the University of Texas at Austin in 1964, I majored in government with a specialization in Soviet and East European studies. And when I earned my first master's degree, from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, it was in the field of political science, with a specialization in U.S.-Soviet strategic relations. Even though my career subsequently took a turn away from Russia (I became a photographer, filmmaker, film professor, and culinary writer), I always maintained an interest in Russia. So I jumped at the chance to teach in Siberia during the early years after the collapse of the Soviet regime.
texasmonthly.com: Siberia is a land about which few of us have extensive knowledge, but about which most of us have preconceptions. Were you surprised by what you found?
SH: My academic background in Soviet studies prepared me well for life in Siberia. Since I had already studied Russian language, history, and politics, I didn't go there with necessarily stereotyped views about that country. Also, I had traveled extensively in several Eastern European countries, from Poland to Yugoslavia, during the eighties and early nineties. So I had a pretty good idea about what to expect in Russia. Still, many things caught me by surprise. In The Other Side of Russia, I describe some of the things I never expected to see in Siberia: hot-air balloons, hydrofoils, Buddhist temples, tennis courts, French poodles, cowboys on horseback, and even air conditioners!
texasmonthly.com: What was the biggest challenge you faced?
SH: The biggest challenge every day was living in huge, high-rise apartment buildings that often lacked dependable water, electricity, and heat. Imagine living where water from the taps ranged in color from clear to amber to purple to black—and smelled of petroleum, sewer gas, ham, rotten eggs, or fish. Picture trying to prepare cold meals by candlelight, in the middle of the winter, because the electricity has been cut off (which happened almost daily in Vladivostok). Or taking a shower by candlelight, in a dark, unheated apartment, when all the water is suddenly cut off, and you're left standing there covered with soap and with hair full of foamy shampoo? Think about what it's like to live in such a place when all the water, heating, and electricity are cut off at the same time—and you have to go to work the next morning, well dressed and fresh looking for another day at the office. That was typical of daily life in Russia—and many Russians still have to cope with such living conditions today.
texasmonthly.com: What was the most interesting thing you witnessed in Asian Russia?
SH: In The Other Side of Russia I describe a traditional feast prepared for us by Buryat Siberians in a small town north of Irkutsk. Tom and I were the honored guests at a dinner where the hosts slaughtered and butchered a sheep in their back yard, then cooked the various parts of the sheep in a big iron cauldron outdoors over an open fire. When the sheep's liver was removed, fresh and steaming, from the carcass, the raw liver was cut into chunks and distributed among the guests as a special treat.
Tom was also served the boiled sheep's head, wet wool and sightless eyeballs still attached. I was served the sheep's stomach, which had been filled with a mixture of sheep's blood, cow's milk, garlic, and spring onions, then tied up with the sheep's intestines and boiled in the cauldron with the rest of the meat. I told myself that I was going to eat that repulsive blob without throwing up. I did succeed in getting down a soupspoon full of it, before the Buryats saved me by digging in to eat the rest of it themselves.
However, I should point out that this feast was not at all typical of the many excellent meals that we ate in Siberia and the Russian Far East—meals that compare favorably with the best of American and European home cooking and even good restaurant cuisine. I think that readers of The Other Side of Russia will be surprised to learn how well we dined in Asian Russia.
texasmonthly.com: What was your mission in writing The Other Side of Russia?
SH: I wanted to answer the questions that people asked me about Siberia after I returned to the U.S. Even more important, I wanted to dispel the many misconceptions that most people in the West have about Siberia. In the Western media, the Asian part of Russia is usually depicted as a place of frozen tundra, snowy steppes, dense forests, icy wastelands, and grim prison camps. Yes, Asian Russia encompasses all of these, but it's also a region of great natural beauty, thriving cities, and proud people. Most people in the West are surprised to learn that Siberia and the Russian Far East are home not only to reindeer herders and ice fishermen, but also to millions of Russian citizens who live and work in modern metropolises, attend technical schools and universities, own cars and dachas (country cottages used especially in the summer), and have a rich social and cultural life.
texasmonthly.com: The book covers a variety of foods and customs that people here may find bizarre and unfamiliar. Was it difficult to write about a culture in a way that an American audience could understand?
SH: It wasn't at all difficult for me to write about another culture in a way that a U.S. audience could understand. Since 1983, when I first became a food and travel writer, I've been explaining other cultures to people from different countries, including Americans.
I worked for six years as the food columnist for the Stars and Stripes in Europe—writing about the foods of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, for an audience of American military personnel and their families, stationed abroad, who lived in places such as Iceland, England, Germany, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and Bahrain. So when I began writing The Other Side of Russia, I addressed my American audience in the same way that I had always done.
texasmonthly.com: I hear that you carried a suitcase full of tortillas from Texas back to Russia with you for a Tex-Mex party. How did your guests receive the food of Texas?
SH: When we first moved to Russia in the summer of 1993, we knew that we wouldn't be able to find many of the ingredients that we were accustomed to cooking with, including some of our favorite spices. So we went to Pendery's Chile Supply in Fort Worth and stocked up on ground chiles, Texas chili powder, curry powder, and a variety of dried whole chiles. We also carried two bottles of Tabasco sauce with us to Russia—one of which froze solid and burst on a Trans-Siberian train when we were traveling in the winter (a real loss!).
In Russia we made several of our favorite Tex-Mex and Mexican dishes—including turkey mole—with those chiles from Texas and with Russian ingredients available locally. But we really missed corn tortillas, which were impossible to get in Siberia. In the summer of 1994, we returned to Texas for a short visit and to stock up on supplies for the next semester in Russia. Just before leaving for the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, we filled all the extra spaces in our suitcases with bags of Mission brand yellow and white corn tortillas. I was afraid that they'd be confiscated by the customs agents when we landed in the Russian Far East, but nobody cared about those strange flatbreads in our luggage. We filled the freezing compartment of our refrigerator in Vladivostok with those tortillas—and rationed them out during the next several months in Russia.
One of the funniest stories in The Other Side of Russia is about a Tex-Mex dinner that we cooked for Russian, Bosnian, and Serbian friends in Vladivostok. All of our guests were adventuresome eaters and good cooks themselves, but turkey mole enchiladas were totally alien to them. You'll have to read the book to find out how that disastrous dinner party ended.
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