This year we are starting with Soviet-era decorated salads early in the season. This one is called “Snow mounds”. Boiled potatoes, beef, mushrooms, boiled carrots, garlic and herb stuffed eggs, shaved parmesan, and the substance for the ingestion of which all Soviet recipes existed. (Whoever knows what substance I mean wins).
Too easy, mayonnaise
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“shaved parmesan”
Does not sound very soviet…. what was used instead?
Last year in Malta for the holidays (going back this year too) I asked for mayonnaise in the restaurant and the guy I asked (who seemed local) had no idea what I was asking for a few minutes
“Manis?” he asked.
Only after a few minutes of this did the lightbulb go off…
“Mayonnaise!” he said (pronouncing it in three syllables somehow)
“Yeah, mannaise!” I answered, only at that moment realizing I pronounce it with only two….
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Definitely no parmesan in the USSR. We were lucky if we could get something called “Moscow cheese” once a year.
And I still haven’t learned to pronounce “mayonnaise” the American way.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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