A tech CTO living in New York, he spent the first half of his life in Russia. My friend, Stanislav “Stas” Nikiforov, agrees. Pastila’s popularity springs from the long-held Russian love of apples.
Pastila comes in all different shapes and colors. The name, she says, comes from the Slavic postel, or bed, likely due to the mixture’s fluffy appearance in the wooden trays used to dry it. What she does know is that it started out as fruit leather, sweetened with honey and dried in an oven. According to her, pastila is hundreds of years old, though she hesitates to name an exact era of origin. Her many cookbooks include pastila recipes. And she’s been obsessed with pastila for decades. Goldstein, one of the foremost experts on Russian cuisine and the founder of Gastronomica magazine, knows what she’s talking about. “But it has that quality of softness that you get inside some soft meringues.” “Some people have compared it to a marshmallow, but it’s not as chewy and it is not crisp like a meringue,” she explains. To Darra Goldstein, though, pastila stands apart from both meringue and marshmallow. What results is, for lack of a better description, a pale, caramel-colored marshmallow or meringue that’s exquisitely apple-flavored. Next, this soft cream is gently spread into pans and baked at a low temperature for hours. The earthy apple gloop transforms into a gleaming white cloud, as light and soft as a goose-down comforter. What happens next is improbable but stunning.
To make it, apple puree-essentially, applesauce-egg whites, and sugar are leavened with lots and lots of air that’s forced into the mixture with hard whisking. Sweet, fluffy pastila was a classic afternoon tea snack at aristocratic Russian soirees of the 19th century. It was once the quintessential Russian dessert: pastila. Sofia Tolstaya, Tolstoy’s long-suffering wife and assistant, made it.
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