Salade Olivier

"Salade Olivier"
By Svetlana Rukhelman
For as long as I can remember, there was always the salade Olivier. It consisted of boiled potatoes, carrots, eggs, bologna and pickles diced into tiny cubes and mixed
into a giant enamel pot together with canned peas and mayonnaise. It was considered a delicacy, and prepared only on special occasions such as birthday and
dinner parties. But it was also a ritual, the only component of the first course which was never absent from a dinner table, no matter which of our relatives or friends
was throwing the feast.
Ironically, the salade Olivier was never my favorite food, though the attitude of my taste buds to the dish did evolve through the years. In my earliest childhood, I
favored the compliant potatoes, then began to lean toward the pickles and bologna
– that sweet-and-sour, crunchy-and=soft combination that never loses its appeal – and next passed a phase in which the green peas appeared so abhorrent that I would spend twenty minutes picking every pea I could find out of my serving. Only recently did I resign myself to the fact that all the ingredients must be consumed
simultaneously for maximum enjoyment as well as for the sake of expediency.
It may seem odd, then, to be writing in such length in praise of a dish one does not particularly like. But culinary memories are determined not so much by whether we found a food tasty, but by the events, people, and atmospheres of which the food
serves as a reminder. In my mind, the very making of the salade has always been associated with the joyful bustle that accompanied the celebrations for which the dish was prepared: the unfolding of the dinner table to its full length, the borrowing of chairs from neighbors, the starched white tablecloths, simmering crystal
wineglasses, polished silverware, white napkins, delicate porcelain plates of three
different sizes stacked one on top of another, the aroma floating from the kitchen all
through the apartment, my father taking me on special shopping errands, the
wonderful dilemma of "what to wear?" and myriad other pleasant deviations from
the monotony of everyday existence. Though simple in theory, the preparation of
the salade Olivier was a formidable undertaking which occupied half the morning and all but one of the stove burners. At first it was my responsibility to peel the
boiled potatoes == the one task which did not require the use of a knife or other
utensil, and one which I performed lovingly, albeit inefficiently. As I sat at the
kitchen table, my five-year-old fingers covered in several layers of potato skin, my mother and I would lead heart-to-heart discussions, whose topics I no longer
remember, but of which I never tired.
Eventually, my mother introduced me to the Dicing of the Potatoes, and then to the
Dicing of the Bologna, the Dicing of the Pickles, the Shelling of the Eggs and the Stirring in of the Mayonnaise as well. But there was one stage of the process I found
especially mesmerizing. It was the Dicing of the Eggs, carried out one hard-boiled egg at a time with the help of an egg-cutter. Nothing was more pleasing to the eye than the sight of those seven wire-like blades, arranged like prison bars, slicing
through the smooth, soft ellipsoid.
Today, we still make the salade Olivier on some formal occasions, and, as before, I
sometimes participate. And every time I see the eggslicer or smell the pickles, I am reminded of our Kiev apartment, of those much-anticipated birthday parties, of the
joy I felt as I helped my mother cook: of all the things which made my childhood a
happy one. ANALYSIS
This essay seeks to introduce us to the author via a description of the author's childhood conditions and family experiences as well as experiences from the
author's cultural heritage. The salade Olivier, a delicacy in both Ukranian and
Russian diets, serves as the central organizational motif for this description.
The essay's power comes from its amazing descriptive qualities. The reader is given a vivid and detailed picture of both the salade and much of the author's childhood.
The essay also entices the reader by deliberately omitting a description of the
salade's cultural origins until the very end of the text. This technique forces the
reader to move through the essay with puzzling questions about the salade's origins and the reader's unfamiliarity with such a dish, motivating the reader to remain
engrossed in the work and seek out the answers of interest. Only in the end are things revealed, and even then the reader may not be fully satisfied.
Despite the essay's great descriptive power, however, the reader is given few
specific details about the author or the Unkrainian culture that serves as the
backdrop for the author's childhood. Including more such details could dramatically increase the essay's strength, especially given the unfamiliarity of most readers
with the culture that stands at the core of the author's heritage.