Iska’s grandmother, ‘Lally’, is a slight lady now and much less adept at getting around than she once was. She wears thick glasses and struggles to make out shapes. Still, her dress sense is impeccable and she has an air of refinement about her that can be quite intimidating (much like Iska), regardless of her age.
She may well have been born in Germany to German parents but not a trace of her heritage remains in her accent. A clipped received-pronunciation English betrays nothing of her past, which spilled out over a weekend spent sipping tea and chopping ‘granny carrots’ with her in her bright, modernist-feeling Exeter home in the UK.
While Iska and our photographer, Ella, fiddled with food styling in the kitchen (you don’t want to know what happened to that beer to keep it fizzy for the photo), Lally and I took to the living room for a brew. I couldn’t have prepared for the emotion that our chat would solicit from me. It wasn’t the Nazi stories, the nostalgia over a first boyfriend, or the cruelty she faced after fleeing Germany that led to my locking myself in the bathroom and bursting into tears. It was the way she described the loss of the husband she had held so dear and the moment she walked into the room to hear the nurse say his heart had stopped beating. ‘That was like an explosion,’ she told me, and my own heart felt an aftershock from that impact.
(Anastasia on Iska’s grandmother)
Red Cabbage
Feeds 4–6
Takes 1 hour
Ingredients
100g butter
½ white onion, finely sliced into half-moons
1 red cabbage, quartered, with heart removed and leaves finely shredded
½ cooking apple, grated
2 garlic cloves, finely sliced
generous pinch nutmeg
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp brown sugar
5g (or small handful) whole juniper berries
juice of ½ a lemon
Method
Put the butter into a pan on medium heat to melt. Add the onions and soften (around 10 minutes).
Next, add all the red cabbage and carefully stir to coat in the butter.
Add all the other ingredients, season, stir and leave to cook on a low–medium heat with the lid on for 40–50 minutes, until soft.
Stir every so often to ensure the cabbage doesn’t burn on the bottom of the pan. Taste and adjust seasoning, if needed, before serving.
Schnitzel
Feeds 4
Takes 30 minutes
Ingredients
4 pork leg escalopes
2 tbsp plain flour
1 egg, beaten
6 tbsp white breadcrumbs
100g butter
Method
Blot the pork with kitchen towel to ensure it’s dry.
Use a meat mallet or rolling pin to bash the meat all over on both sides to flatten. It should be around 1 cm thick, or less.
Prepare three plates; the first with flour, the second with beaten egg and the third with breadcrumbs. Season the breadcrumbs with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Get a spare dish ready and begin to pass each of the escalopes through the flour, egg and breadcrumbs, making a finished pile on the plate.
Melt a knob of butter in a large frying pan and sizzle the schnitzels for 3–4 minutes on each side, or until golden brown and cooked through. You may need to do these in batches; if so, keep the finished schnitzel warm until ready to serve.
Granny carrots
Feeds 4–6
Takes 30 minutes
Ingredients
150g butter
½ white onion, diced
6 carrots, peeled and cut into small 0.5cm squares
1 tbsp granulated sugar
juice of ½ a lemon
handful fresh parsley, finely chopped
Method
Gently melt the butter in a pan and cook the onion for around 10 minutes, until nice and soft.
Add the carrots, sugar and lemon juice, all the other ingredients, plus salt and pepper, stirring to coat.
Cook on a medium heat with the lid on for 15 minutes, or until the carrots have softened but still have a little bite to them. Stir in the parsley and serve.
Read Lally’s interview here