Buckwheat

Buckwheat is a trigger food for me. If I was born in a James Bond film that would be my trigger to KILL! But I was born in Moscow and so it reminds me of granny, my childhood and all that good stuff. Buckwheat is very rich in iron and zinc, so if you don't have a lot of money, or are a vegetarian, it's a good energy food to balance out your diet. And it tastes really good, nutty but not too strong.
The kind I buy is from Eastern European shops and the grains are a darkish brown, but you can also get it from healthfood shops and some supermarkets - I saw a bag in Waitrose a few weeks ago, and it was greenish, almost untoasted. This is probably better for you, but I grew up on the shelf stable stuff, so that's what we're going to cook.
The method is very similar to cooking rice - for every cup of buckwheat you need two cups of water. You must wash it to stop it from turning mushy, but instead of putting it in a colander and running water through it, just pour it in a bowl and swirl it around with your hand, then drain. Bring to the boil and turn the heat down so it cooks very gently. I always use a pan with a glass lid for it so that I can spy on what's happening without opening the pan up and letting all the steam out. When there is no more liquid left on the surface, switch the heat off - it needs to steam to completion. What I do at this point is sprinkle it with salt and put about two tablespoons of butter in to slowly melt and trickle in, this flavours the buckwheat and gives a light fluffy texture.
Oh and I take back what I said about foraging a couple of weeks ago.
Serve with a giant creamed Bolete your dad found in the forest. Yum yum

Kartoshka Cake Pops

Yay! It's my birthday in a few days - this is definitely the year that I get that pony...
The boyfriend and I are having a little party and wanted to get a big ass cake to feed the mob we invited. There is a bakery near by our new flat so we casually sauntered in, all cool, like we knew what we were doing, and I told them what I wanted

Make custom Glitter Graphics



They told me that it was going to be both impossible and out of our price range - amateurs!
So I suppose I'll have to figure something else out.
Cupcakes are kind of old hat, and my new oven is too tiny to make them in significant amounts so I'm totally joining the newest new band wagon and going the cake pops route. A cake pop is a piece of cake, mushed together with icing, shaped into a ball and served on a lollypop stick. If that sound retarded that's because it is, but I'm going to use a Russian recipe for the best cake in the world, so should be fine.
I remember these little dumplings from when I was little, they're called Kartoshka, which means 'potato' because presumably calling a cake 'little shit' wasn't a very Communist thing to do. You basically bake a sponge cake, break it up into crumbs, mix in some condensed milk and cognac, form into 'potato' shapes (feel free to draw on 'sprouts' with whipped cream if you feel like it) and serve to little kids. If memory serves, three or four of these are meant to make you very drunk. I got the recipe from this book, good luck with that
I didn't take a picture of the cake because as soon as it came out of the oven and I put it on a wire rack to cool, the boyfriend came along and started cutting himself a slice in a very matter of fact way. Obviously I hit him over the head with the rock I always carry around, and then had to drag his lifeless body out of the door, down the stairs, across the road, and dump it in the canal behind the house. That took like 40 minutes, so by the time I came back and wiped all the blood off the floor, the cake was cool. I don't have a food processor yet so I used a cheese grater to crumble it. Here are the ingredients by the way
At this point you're meant to mix in some sweetened condensed milk, one cake should take about 3/4 of a tin. Or if you're feeling fancy you can cook it down into a dulce de leche, always very nice, or if you're in a really good mood you an use this amazing goat's milk dulce de leche. There are no words in the English language to describe how delicious this stuff is. It's sweet but also a little tangy from the goat's milk, and there is white wine in the ingredients list which adds a bit of sourness, this is probably the nicest thing I've ever put into my mouth. They boyfriend got it for me in a Mexican grocery store in Bethnal Green. I miss him so much...
You might also notice a bottle of genuine Armenian 5 star cognac in the background, trust me, that's the shit, those Frenchies don't really know what they're doing when it comes to alcohol. I ended up pouring in about a cup, trust me (again) that's the correct amount, if that seems like too much to you then get back to me when you grow a pair (I might also be interested in hearing from you when you grow a pear).
Form the mix into little balls and leave to firm up in the fridge overnight. This gives you enough time to call the police and confess, assure them that if he makes it he won't be pressing charges, visit him in the hospital and tell him that you hope he learned his lesson.
Result:
Here's the mugshot, OMG yummo. For the party I will dip them in melted chocolate and coat in sprinkles, but for now I'll enjoy them in the manner they were meant to be consumed - for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Pirojki

Yeah I got a place where I get this stuff. I shouldn't really talk about it, it's just something to take the edge off, you know?
Nah mate, that's not Charlie, just a bit of yeast.
Live yeast is pretty amazing stuff, I got this in a Russian shop within Wood Green shopping center and really it's the only place in London I've seen it for sale, out in the open at least. I'm sure you can probably stroll into a bakery and ask for some but that doesn't really guarantee anything. Most people who bake use dry yeast, which doesn't like me very much and almost always refuses to work.
Anyway, yes, I'm baking.
I finally decided to see if the oven at the new place works properly, and of course I had to do it in the most stressful way possible. I invited a couple of girls from work for dinner and planned to serve them a big bunch of Russian stuff, which pretty much meant I was shopping, cooking and cleaning all day on Saturday and Sunday - you know, woman's work. I switched on the oven to preheat it for a cake, and got a noseful of the most revolting burnt bleach smell, the landlady hadn't cleaned it properly, so gross. It took the boyfriend all afternoon to scrape it clean, and I ditched the cake idea and went out for a little stroll instead.
These are the ingredients for dough for little hand pies, pirojki in Russian. Usually when I make these I'll buy a pack of shortcrust pastry from the supermarket and a pack of puff pastry and squish them together, but now that I'm almost a real adult I guess it's time to learn how to make it from scratch. The packet on the right is of kefir, a cultured milk drink that's totally good for hangovers. The way to make it is of course pretty nasty, you have to get a special kind of mushroom and dump it in a pint of milk and the next day you get a slightly thick, tangy load of kefir. You fish out the mushroom, give it a rinse and pollute another pint of milk with it, the kefir is your to drink. I actually have a friend who has one and she keeps threatening to give me the offshoot, once you get it you're pretty much obligated to keep it alive with a fresh supply of milk every day. I'm thinking about it.
Anyway, the dough, I got this recipe from a blog and the woman who posts it recommends putting the bowl with the dough in a basn on warm water to rise - such a good idea. After two hours it goes from this
to this
You then roll it out into little circles, if like me you left your mother's beautiful marble rolling pin behind when you flew the family nest, then use an empty wine bottle (or a full one, if such a thing is to be found in your house) and fill them up. I made half with cabbage and half with beef and egg. Bake them in the oven for a bit, serve, and get a wrist fetishist to take the photo (yeah, that's a thing)
Result:
Well I tasted the dough before it was baked and it was pretty delicious, tangy almost meaty with a warm yeasty flavour. So I was a little disappointed that once baked it turned super dry, but stayed soft. I think I need to try again...

Sauerkraut

Now that I have my own (almost) flat, it's time to start turning my kitchen into a science experiment. The boyfriend and I kind of have an unspoken understanding that I won't go into the box room/office and he won't go into the kitchen. I literally couldn't sleep last night thinking about all the smelly projects I'll finally be able to embark upon. So lets start with something easy, sauerkraut. This is my dad's recipe and the results are always amazing. All you do is shred a head of white cabbage and a couple of carrots, and then layer them in a clean jar, sprinkle each layer with a teaspoon of salt and kind of scrunch it down with your knuckles, try and compress it as much as possible. The salt and friction with tear the first layer of skin off of your knuckles, which is very cool if you're going to a party later. People will ask you what happened to your hand, and then you can slam your drink down and scream 'Stay away from my man, bitches!' and everyone will want to be friends with you.
Anyway, after the final layer you cover the top of the jar with an unshredded cabbage leaf and figure out a way to weigh the whole thing down somehow, next time I go to the beach I'll look out for a nice big rock. Now, I've seen recipes for this that require you to top the whole thing with water to make sure all of the cabbage is submerged, this is wrong, and the best way to make sure your sauerkraut rots instead of fermenting. If you've used enough force the cabbage should start reacting with the salt immediately and releasing enough liquid to cover it completely. Should look like this. At which point, try and stir in a big spoon of sugar
Leave it for at least a week on your counter, poke it around a bit every day to make sure a bit of oxygen gets to all the layers, and then eat or store in the fridge (if you have a fridge that's big enough to store a jar in. I currently don't).

Uha

Well I'm back from Moscow now, and moved into my new flat (!) so I'll try and get all the old stuff out of the way before I regale you with fascinating accounts of eating beans out of a can - that's all I'll be able to afford to do for the next couple of months.
Anyway, Uha is a simple fisherman's broth made with fish heads and anything else you have on hand (or in sink), kind of like a stock really.
I kept the sturgeon's head and tail and boiled it up with an onion and a potato for a couple of hours, if you have a bay leaf throw that in too, if you want to. The result is a thin, cloudy broth, but the taste is rich and very satisfying. The amazing thing about sturgeon is that it has no bones, it's all muscle/flesh and cartilage, no scales and the flavour is earthy, meaty and fresh at the same time. Best fish head to make soup out of, but just look at that photo. I'm going to have a new tag to attach to posts that feature something that looks like something else, if you get my drift. I think I've managed to produce the most unappetising food post in the world today.
By the way, no internet in the new place yet, so now I have an excuse for being so slow.

Moscow: VDNH and sturgeon

Well here I am in Moscow. Dad and I had to come in for a week to do some work and we're staying in his wife's flat in VDNH. That's pronounced ve-de-en-ha, not V.D.N.H, and stands for Exhibition of the Accomplishments of National Agriculture and is basically a gigantic park built in the 40s to showcase mighty Russia's power and glory, with all of the (now former) republics displaying their best in a glorious pavilion each, with about a hundred other pavilions dotted around the entire area - and I can't overestimate how huge this park is, you can walk around for a couple of hours without seeing all of it, You'll get tired by the Film Exhibition Hall, you'll want to turn back by the spaceship commemoration Gagarin's ascent into orbit, but you'll be too tempted by the Exotic Bird House and carry on. Did I mention that all of these are out of use and in a general state of disrepair? Unfortunately with the fall of communism the state stopped supporting the permanent exhibition and as entry had always been free there was simply no point or fiscal possibility of carrying on. But the buildings themselves are amazing, most of the facades still have their original ornamentation, well worth taking a look at. Some have been taken over by shitty clothes shops and general toot stores, and some still have authentic products for sale, like the Armenian Pavilion has a huge selection of cognac. If you're in Moscow, even though this is kind of out of the way, you should plan a visit.
Anyway, there's a really great indoor food market near by with old ladies selling their home made cottage cheese (no jokes, seriously, be nice), a Tajik bakery with every kind of lavash freshly made in a huge clay oven and the most gorgeous samosas (lots of cumin, and so light!), butchers with seemingly every cut of meat you can dream up in your most perverted fantasies (I saw a large pile of lamb balls in the window of one, and a packet of chicken necks), a Korean kimchi stand (there are tons of North Korean immigrants in Russia) selling my two favorite things - shaved preserved carrot with chilli, and something called 'sparja' which is actually pickled yuba and I'm totally making both when I get home. And finally a fish stall. Moscow is landlocked to the point that fresh fish is impossible to obtain, whatever is on the menu in restaurants is alway almost 100% guaranteed to have been frozen, you can sometimes find salmon steaks lying around but the only way to make sure your fish is fresh is to buy it live. The bigger fish counters have tanks of live carp around (packed in like a pile of shit, that's why they always taste so bad), and sometimes pretty big crayfish, but today was a first for me, and I saw a tank full of sturgeon, bloody expensive compared to everything else, but I doubt I'll ever have the opportunity again. The lady behind the counter (fish girl?), deftly fished out the liveliest specimen, threw him on the floor and hit him on the head with a hammer before quickly gutting him. Maybe it's a consequence of feeling nostalgic for my homeland, but I thought this was all very romantic. I paid my money, took the bloody bag and strolled on home.
Incidentally I read a whole series a little while ago on the Japanese fish killing technique Ike Jima, and it pretty much proves that the manner of slaughter affects the taste, but also, interestingly, that fish doesn't always taste best the second it's killed and gains something from 'resting' for a day (much like any other meat, so makes sense.
Obviously I didn't have recourse to any fish anesthesia, but I cut the head and tail off when I got home and bled the fish in ice water for half an hour before putting in the oven. No sharp knives so I didn't even pretend to bother filleting.
Result:
There are many different kinds of sturgeon, from the mighty caviar laden ones up north, to the piddly kind clogging up the waterways. It's a freshwater fish, and a bottom feeder so was expecting the earthy dirty taste, but while this definitely had that it was also sweet and meaty. Very meaty, in fact while I was looking around for a recipe I came across a blog that praised it as a superfish as it's apparently almost impossible to overcook, it's quite fatty so always stays moist. Texturally it was almost like red snapper. Yum!

Divine Liturgy

This is Hastings.
Magical, isn't it? By the time I made it to the beach I was so exhausted I could barely move, let alone look for something interesting to take a photo of. I didn't know what to expect from the weekend, but nothing prepared me for what happened...

We arrived late on Friday night, rushing home after work to pack a few things and then piling into the car for the 2 hour drive. I'd been there before for Easter, but since then they have built a new kitchen plus an open sided extension with another oven in it, I was show around and then slumped back to the B+B for a few hours sleep. We came back at 8 am on Saturday (I made loads of jokes about how I didn't realize that there was an 8 o'clock in the mornings as well hahaha) and after a little breakfast I was whisked away and put to work. For the next 13 hours I washed mountains of dishes - the hard core way, no gloves, no washing up liquid (an organic mix of mustard powder and baking soda, works quite well), I peeled and chopped 10 kilos of onions for the onion and barley soup we were to have for dinner that night. And then another 10kg for tomorrow night's soup, along with carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, celery and one of those giant bags of lentils. The knives weren't very sharp and I got a blister on my hand from all the force I had to use (very Anthony Bourdain on his first night as a chef). I got things stick under my nails, minor burns, cuts and scrapes. I lost all feeling in my feet, and I still can't get the smell of onions off my hands. But the feeling was incredible, I felt so useful, a vital part in a functioning machine. I took along my fancy camera to take pictures of everything I was doing, but of course there wasn't time. This is the only paparazziing I was able to do.
I finally sat down to have a bowl of soup for lunch at 4pm. The composition is horrendous. This is Katya, the incredible organiser, coming to ask if I wouldn't mind peeling a million tons of potatoes. Just behind her you can see the giant 30 liter vat for the soup, even empty I could barely lift it.
A word on Katya, I've never met anybody who compares to her, when I grow up I want to be just like her. She seemed to survive on no sleep and no food, and still had limitless energy. She lives in the diocese part time and also has a flat in London and works in the city. She's in charge of all the administrative duties and making sure the practical aspects of the property run smoothly. She had to answer to the nun who lives there full time and ministers to the spiritual mandates. At every minute of the day, somebody would come up to Katya and ask a stupid question, this is the scourge of modern religion - the church volunteer. Mostly older devout ladies, these people had very original interpretations of the concept of being useful, if I was in the same positions, I would be very tempted to lose my temper, empty my entire vocabulary of sarcasm on their heads and storm off. Katya obviously did none of these things and exhibited the most inhuman amount of patience I've ever seen. What is a stupid question? May I please have 11 olives to garnish the salad?
Yes garnishes aren't dead! Jump back!
Apart from the soups I also helped make some traditional Russian salads which are wheeled out for every special occasion and which everyone from the old country loves loves loves.

There's Olivie - often served in Spanish restaurants as Russian salad - a delicious amalgam of cooked, cubed potato, carrot, and egg, along with peas, gherkins, sometimes apple, and either ham or prawns, held together with lashings and lashing of mayonnaise.

Seledka Pod Shuboi - Salted herring layered with cooked potato, carrot and beetroot (held together with lashings of mayonnaise) which in my house arrives at the table as a glorious purple orb, but here was a canvas for an amateur Kandinsky to decorate with wild combinations of swirls, rectangles and circles, rendered lovingly in peas, strips of carrot and dill.

Korean carrot - the most delicious application for carrot in the world. Pickled lightly in cider vinegar with onions and cayenne. Not a native dish, but some kind of bastardization of kimchi, gleaned from all the North Korean immigrants in Russia. When I was making the lentil soup I put a few chillies in it and was immediately reprimanded by some old lady who told me that devout Orthodox Christians like plain food. If I had to, observing lent for 6 months of the year, eat vegetarian food and not be allowed to spice it up, I would kill myself. But then I'm not very devout.

One thing that really struck me over the weekend was the way members of the religious community talk to their underlings. As a very very occasional volunteer I was spared from most of this, but witnessed an incredible amount of criticism for the smallest infractions. For example, at one point there was no more counter space and Katya put a heavy cooking put on the floor instead. The nun walked in, had some kind of a fit, and basically tore her a new one. This was completely bizzare to me, but my stepmother eventually explained. She said that when she first started volunteering in her local church choir 20 years ago she had the same romantic view of the church, you know, all smiles and warm hand shakes, brandy with the vicar and teary eyed gratitude. Instead she was pretty much told that she wasn't really welcome, and who the hell did she think she was, anyway? After a few days of thinly veiled hostility she decided that this wasn't for her and was all but ready to quit when during a chat with the priest (something about Jesus) she realized that this was all a test. The Orthodox Church wasn't there to bow and scrape in front of her for a bit of singing here and there. A lot of people think these days that organised religion is on the ropes and will be glad of anything they can get, so subsequently whoever shows up often has an attitude and tends to think that they are 'it'. And the point of the mindless criticism and hostility is to force people into humility, and to try and improve themselves. If you walk around thinking that you're so great, there's no room or motivation to try and better yourself, and at the same time you have to realise that there are things and situations that are bigger than you and that you can't control. I love this, the approach really tickles my masochistic, servile streak, and I know I would be responsive to it. But it's not for everyone, I explained it to the boyfriend and he said it sounds like a brainwashing cult (is there any other kind?) which is pretty preposterous considering he's a Catholic!

Anyway, after an exhausting day I crawled back to the B+B, had a shower and passed out until 7am the next day.
Sunday was even more hard core. Gone was the gentle pace of chopping veggies and deflecting stereotypical female cattiness (yes, I know you have a family recipe for this, it's famous and you're amazing, but back off!!), the wasn't time to dawdle as everything had to be plated up whilst the Divine Liturgy service was going on, punctuated by mad dashes out of the kitchen to confess and receive sacrament. I stood by the giant pot of bubbling soup filling terrines with a giant ladle until I though my arm was going to fall off. Then rushed around the cramped dinning room collecting up the empty plates and depositing dishes of salad. What I wouldn't give for Nigella's asbestos hands!
Finally by around 2pm it was all over. I sat on some garden steps with a plate of potatoes, wild eyed and hungry for my first meal of the day, washed down with a glass of kvas. I never knew how tiring just standing up is.
I have no idea what my brother, dad and his wife were doing all of this time apart from choir practice. They could have been shoveling cement or catching butterflies, I'll never know and I don't want to know. We drove to the beach and I lay there reading Charlotte Roche's Wetlands as an antidote to all the spiritual work I'd done over the weekend. Everything was good. Amen.

Special Soup Weekend

Back in March I spent a weekend helping out at the Diocese of Sourozh with their Easter shenanigans (so disrespectful and inappropriate to refer to it as shenanigans, but go with me here). I'm not particularly religious, but when we were younger my brother and I were summarily dispatched to the summer camp run by the Orthodox Church in London to meet up with other Russian kids and get out of our parents' hair, so yeah, it's all connected.
So back in March I was invited to return in July to help out with their celebrations of the Divine Liturgy, I totally said yes, came home and immediately forgot about it. Imagine my puzzlement when contrary to all the social norms I live by they decided to remember my promise and hold me to to it! And on the weekend that I've been invited to a really cool fancy dress party too! (no, that's not an oxymoron, shut up, you guys)
Bof, who cares. Needs must, and to Hastings I must go. I picked up this little number a couple of days ago, and since one of the things I'll be doing on Saturday is making soup for 80 people, I thought I might as well leaf through it to clue up on cooking, spirituality, and an old man's take on modern life.
Bad! Wrong decision!
There isn't really anything wrong with the book, but going through it I got the same feeling I had when I read Diana Athill's 'Somewhere Towards The End' which was that I'm intruding on somebody's stream of consciousness. Maybe as a twenty year old I just can't grasp an 80 year old's frame of reference. Or maybe when you go off on a tangent in the middle of a narrative it's just jarring.
Here's a couple of other gems:
On women doing the cooking - The emancipation of women is a thing of great good, as long as it does not divorce the priestess from her altar. That is the way divorces start.
Odd mash-up of Eastern and Western religious ideologies - The penitent thief was promised Nirvana because he recognised the Buddha nature in Jesus.

I'm going to stop bitching, there's nothing wrong with the book it just isn't my style, but there are a few recipes in here for seafood, soups and curries. Just make sure you're not a vegetarian because every recipe has pork or mutton in it. And try if you possibly can to live in the countryside instead of being 'imprisoned' in an apartment, that way you'll be able to cook over a wood fire and forage for herbs in the surrounding woods. Just like you're supposed to.
Helpful to me in no way.

Saffron Kulich

Well it's Easter time! And naturally, since I'm Russian, I am making the traditional Orthodox Kulich, which is a kind of cake, I suppose.
To be honest I don't have much of a choice, the recipe is from this publication I picked up at the airport the last time I was in Moscow, ominously titled "Calendar of the Orthodox Housewife: Lenten and Modest Meals for Every Day In Accordance With The Holy Church", it's set out almost like a calendar with one or two recipes for every day. This is not only seasonal and observant of the mandates of Orthodoxy, but also eliminates any indecision and allows you to plan your meals... a year in advance.
Did I mention that my step-grandmother is staying with us for a couple of weeks? Well needless to say everyone is totally psyched with the whole Easter thing so this ended up being a team effort. Here's a story in pictures... and words.
Here's the business, raisins to be soaked in rum (yum) overnight, and this is also my first ever time working with yeast.
The prep work extended into the living room.
The messiest the kitchen has ever been.
This is the one where I almost fell of the chair I was standing on to take the picture. I started helping after that.
The recipe calls for 10 egg yolks, so while the dough was rising for an hour I decided to make meringues.
Mine on the right, my brother's on the left. Mine are obviously better.

Result: OK, so since the prep work took such a long time, and the dough had to be left to rise twice, by the time it was ready for the oven, it was way past midnight. Everyone went to bed, I put in an episode of Gossip Girl, and waited the recommended 40 minutes 'without opening the oven door, or the kulich won't rise'. So what result do you think I got? It was burned, of course!
Burned and hard as a rock on the outside (but cooked really well on the inside, obviously). Here's what it's supposed to look like, by the way
And here's what ours looked like.
Was it entirely my fault? Maybe. Did the whole 'too many chefs in the kitchen' thing have an effect? Possibly. Did I finally rectify the situation but totally buying a delicious substitute from an Italian Deli the next day? Sure, why not.

Kissel

I'm going to preface this post by admitting that I'm pretty stupid. Really stupid. Stoooopid actually. This is part two of my battle with Larousse Gastronomique and I seem to be pinned down on the floor again...
Kissel is a drink I remember getting as a treat for good behaviour when I was little, the texture mystified me and I always assumed this was one of those things that my grandma alone knew how to make and there wasn't really a recipe for. Larousse has it all, I almost fell out of my chair when I saw it and I knew there and then that I would do whatever it took to make it, I've been really good this year! This task was complicated by the fact that I can't read properly.
Here's the part of the recipe that I found most confusing: Mix 50g potato flour, cornflour or tapioca into the juice. I spent literally weeks hunting all of London for potato flour, I know I could have ordered in online, if I wanted a 5kg bag, but Internet shopping, there's nothing more satisfying than having the thing right there in your hand (and also all the Christmas present buying I've done made me a little apprehensive about using my credit card, ahem ahem). I finally found the stuff in Planet Organic, which I'm really beginning to hate. Every time I can't find an ingredient in a regular supermarket, it's always there. I don't know why this convenience annoys me, but it does. Bunch of stuck up bastards, who do they think they are!?
Don't mind me, I'm only lashing out because of my own inadequacies. When I finally got down to business it struck me that there is quite a big difference between the words or and and. Really, instead of running around, chasing after potato flour (and tapioca) wildly I could have been relaxing in my kitchen with my safe boring old box of corflour. So now I have a useless overabundance of starch in my kitchen, duh.
Result: I'm serving it in my Moomin mug to liven up something that is basically thickened fruit juice (I can't believe how excited I used to get over this, I guess I really am that stupid).
The book suggests serving it warm or cold, but I remember correctly, the proper way to drink this is as soon as it's made - scalding hot so it burns the roof of your mouth. And then you stick your finger in the cup so a skin forms around it. Yum!
The cranberries are still really sour, all the sugar does is take their tartness away, you can taste all the Vitamin C, as my brother puts is. It really takes me back :). Now all I have to do is figure out how much tapioca pudding I can get away with making...