A Recipe for Belonging: The Draniki Connection

I never expected my draniki post to go viral, but it did, and now there’s no turning back. My life will never be the same again — it led me home. I guess I ought to explain. First, to all the non-Belarusians out there, I should probably start by telling you what draniki actually are, yeah? 

Well, if you go to Wikipedia, it will lamely redirect you to the ‘Potato Pancake’ page. This is madness. Surely it should have its own page? Putting that aside, yes, I guess it’s accurate to say that it’s some sort of potato pancake, but I reckon it’s closer to a hashbrown, although it’s so much more than that. 

The root word of draniki is drat’, which means to tear to pieces. And this is what you need to do to potatoes to turn them into draniki. So, first you peel and grate potatoes as well as an onion. Then you mix it with some other stuff, including, importantly, sour cream, and then you fry them. Serve with sour cream. Okay, I know you didn’t ask for the recipe, but I have ADHD so bear with me. 

Back to my photo. It went viral. And then somebody contacted me from the Wellington City Council. They were organising a multi-cultural cooking competition and wanted me to take part! Me? Can you believe it? I can’t even cook very well; I just posted the draniki photo because it happened to be heart-shaped! And it’s so simple to make. But I panicked and said yes. 

And so there I was one windy Saturday morning with 11 other contestants representing their countries at the Waterfront where they had set up portable kitchens for us, trying to recreate my draniki. In the interest of time, I’ll skip ahead. I don’t know how, but somehow, I made it through to the final. The other people must have been quite bad. So, all that was standing between me and an all-expenses-paid trip to the Cook Islands were Erlanka from South Africa and Malati from India. 

***

Erlanka seemed convinced that her milk tart would win. Her confidence/arrogance was a bit off-putting, to be honest. I admit that, physically at least, she was my type, but I wasn’t even sure she was queer (okay, not true, she had clear gay vibes). Besides, personality is much more important. And I don’t want to be mean, but her milk tart didn’t look especially impressive. It’s basically just milk, cinnamon and eggs mixed together; how hard could that be? Granted, my recipe isn’t exactly intricate either, but at least I’m honest about it. I thought that Malati should win; she had the most complicated dish, chicken biryani. She had to start much earlier than Erlanka and me in order to finish on time. And it smelled so good! 

In the week leading up to the final, the cooking show organisers took the finalists to various tourist spots in Wellington, which is what brought us to the bucket fountain in Cuba street. There are as many opinions about this fountain as there are people in the world, I believe. 

“It’s so quirky, I love it!” I said. 

“Really?” Malati asked. “I think it’s lame. It’s so annoying when it splashes you.”

“I saw a drowned pigeon in it once,” Erlanka said, deadpan. “Shame. But I quite like it.”

“It’s unique, all right, a Wellington icon. We definitely don’t have something like it back home,” Malati said. 

We continued our stroll up Cuba street. 

“How long have you two been living here?” I asked. 

“Two years,” Malati said. 

“Six. What about you, Lena?” Erlanka asked. 

“Three. It still doesn’t feel like home. Is that normal?”

“I don’t know. What is home to you?” Erlanka asked. 

I moved from Belarus to New Zealand in search of a better life. I’m not particularly fond of my homeland. In fact, I don’t miss it at all. There’s a reason I moved away, after all. But still, I liked making foods from home now and then; it was comforting. It’s not an easy thing, emigrating. It’s like you lose a part of yourself. You gain things too, yes, but it doesn’t fill the gap that was left; it fills a different one. 

“Maybe draniki are home to me?” I said, but I think I was trying to convince myself. “When I eat them it’s like I’m transported back to my childhood.” This was true, but not necessarily a good thing; we rarely had enough to eat when I was growing up. 

“I know what you mean,” Erlanka said. “I feel the same about bobotie, boerewors, and biltong. Oh, and milk tart, of course!”

“I can totally relate!” said Malati. “There’s nothing like home-made food made the right way! Which for me means how my mom makes it. I think home is where you were born, where you grew up. I might not always live there, but India will always be my home. Everywhere else I go I always feel like an outsider no matter what.”

“Hmmm, I don’t think I ever felt about Belarus that way. From as far back as I could remember, I had wanted to get the hell out of there! And isn’t it quite arbitrary, where you’re born?” I had gone back recently for a visit, and it didn’t feel like I was home. But when I came back it didn’t quite feel like I was coming home, either. Did I not have a home anymore? Did I ever have one? I’m so jealous of people who happened to be born in developed countries and didn’t know the difficulties associated with having the ‘wrong’ passport. 

“I don’t know,” Erlanka began. “Maybe I’m somewhere in-between. I love South Africa and I miss it a lot sometimes. But this is my home now. For me home is where you feel safe. I never felt safe there. The last straw was when we had a home invasion, it was so scary.”

“Oh, that’s terrible!” I said. I could relate, in a way. Maybe not regarding physical safety as such, but freedom, which I guess comes down to the same core desire. “I thought I would feel at home when I had freedom. Maybe I will when I get my New Zealand citizenship one day and won’t have to worry about my visa expiring anymore!”

***

The next stop was the top of Mount Victoria, where the organisers conducted interviews with us. They asked us to share why we had chosen our respective dishes. 

“Well, to be honest,” I began, “I didn’t really choose mine; it sort of chose me when my draniki post went viral. But it’s quite apt, as it’s the national dish of Belarus. We love all potatoes, but draniki have a special place in our hearts. We usually eat it for breakfast, but it also goes well with beer!”

“I chose milk tart because it reminds me of my grandmother and how much she loved me,” Erlanka said. “My sister and I used to visit her during the school holidays, and she always had a fresh batch ready! Milk tart dates to Dutch settlers coming to the Cape in the 1600s, but by now it’s very much a South African institution.”

“If I close my eyes, I can still smell my mother’s legendary chicken biryani as if I’m right there,” Malati explained. “We used to eat it every Sunday with the whole extended family. I’d be playing with my siblings and cousins in the backyard, laughter and chatter all around, and delicious aromas wafting in from the kitchen. It was such an innocent time; I wish I could experience it again.”

On the way back, Erlanka kept trying to strike up a conversation with me, asking about my draniki recipe and life in Belarus. I couldn’t help but wonder about her sudden interest in me. Was it mere curiosity, or did she have ulterior motives? 

“So, what exactly brought you to the land down under?” she probed. 

I scoffed, surprised it was even necessary to ask such a question. Who would want to live their entire life in Belarus if they could live literally anywhere else? 

“I wanted a better life,” I started, choosing my words carefully, wondering how much I should be sharing. “But it’s deeper than that. You know, I never quite felt like I fit the mould they wanted me to.” As I spoke, there was an unexpected ease in opening up to Erlanka, despite my initial reservations. “The harsh winters bite into your bones. Everyone imagines a winter wonderland, but there are maybe three days like that in a year; most of the time it’s just dirty. Imagine waking up every day for months to a landscape that’s more slush than snow, more grey than white, most days. In Wellington, everything is green! And my family… they love me, but they’ve never truly understood me and my dreams and ambitions. And of course, then there’s Lukashenko… it makes me laugh when people complain about the government here!”

***

The day of the final had arrived and there was no wind for a change, but were there winds of change about? Quite the crowd had turned up and my nerves were shot. We had so little time in which to do our dishes and everything was taking me longer than usual because I wanted everything to be perfect. I had finally finished grating all the potatoes and my hands were numb. I picked up an egg and it dropped to the floor. When I cleaned it up something smelled off. I checked the others — they had all gone bad. I wondered if it was Erlanka who sabotaged me. I didn’t know what to do. There was no time to buy new eggs. 

“Here, have some of mine,” Erlanka offered with a smile. 

“Are you sure?” I definitely wasn’t. What if she injected them with something? Or was I being paranoid? I didn’t really have a choice other than to accept the offer and hope for the best. “You have enough?”

“Yeah, go nuts! I’m all good.”

Erlanka’s eggs seemed okay and my draniki came out pretty good. No heart-shaped ones this time around, sadly. One did come out crooked and the judges seemed to think that I had intentionally made it in the shape of New Zealand. I came second and not surprisingly, Malati won. Erlanka didn’t seem too upset about losing. Had I been judging her too harshly? 

“Wanna exchange some draniki for a piece of milk tart?” I asked Erlanka.

“Sure! But mine didn’t come out so well.”

She wasn’t kidding. It looked awful and had no consistency; it looked more like porridge. It didn’t taste terrible, but it wasn’t nearly as yummy as the ones I had previously tried. 

“Jeez, what happened? A bit off your game today?”

“Well, yeah. Actually, I’ve been a bit distracted this last week… But also, uh, it’s missing a key ingredient.”

“Yeah, which one?”

“Eggs.”

“Erlanka! You said you had enough!”

“Well, I lied. Sorry. I just didn’t want your draniki to be a flop.”

“I can’t believe you did that! And why have you been distracted? Everything alright?”

“Uh, because of you, actually.” 

“Me?”

“Yeah, uh, well, I was wondering whether you’d like to come over to my place sometime? I’ll make proper milk tart with all the required ingredients. And you can bring your draniki. I’d love to taste you and get to know them better. Uh, sorry, I mean the other way around,” she said with a blush. 

***

And that, kids, is how I met your mother. Your mother, who has become my home, my safety, my freedom. 

And if you’ve been following me for a while, you’d know that by kids, I mean our feline overlords, Marvin and Trillian. 

I wonder if this post will go viral, too?