Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing by Anya Von Bremzen

  • Fish, rice, and mushrooms in pastry (Kulebiaka)

    Fish, rice, and mushrooms in pastry (Kulebiaka)

    from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya Von Bremzen

    • Categories: Pies, tarts & pastries; Rice dishes; Main course; Entertaining & parties; Russian
    • Ingredients: active dry yeast; sour cream; butter; all-purpose flour; salmon fillets; cod fillets; onions; wild mushrooms; cooked rice; dill; parsley; vermouth; chicken stock; nutmeg; breadcrumbs; eggs
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Reviews about this book

  • Food52

    ...she manages to write (recipes) in a way that is simple to follow. We thoroughly enjoyed the book -- not only in a culinary context, but historically as well.

    Full review

  • The Recipe Club

    Q&A with author Anya Von Bremzen.

    Full review

  • Food52

    Q&A with author Anya Von Bremzen.

    Full review
  • ISBN 10 0857520237
  • ISBN 13 9780857520234
  • Published Jul 05 2012
  • Format Hardcover
  • Page Count 320
  • Language English
  • Countries United Kingdom
  • Publisher Doubleday

Publishers Text

Born in a surreal Moscow communal apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen, Anya von Bremzen grew up singing odes to Lenin, black-marketeering Juicy Fruit gum at school, and longing for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy and, finally, intolerable. In 1974, when Anya was ten, she and her mother fled to the USA, with no winter coats and no right of return. These days, Anya is the doyenne of high-end food writing. And yet, the flavour of Soviet kolbasa, like Proust's madeleine, transports her back to that vanished Atlantis known as the USSR. In this sweeping, tragicomic memoir, Anya recreates seven decades of the Soviet experience through cooking and food, and reconstructs a moving family history spanning three generations. Her narrative is embedded in a larger historical epic: Lenin's bloody grain requisitioning, World War II starvation, Stalin's table manners, Khrushchev's kitchen debates, Gorbachev's disastrous anti-alcohol policies and the ultimate collapse of the USSR. And all of this is bound together by Anya's sardonic wit, passionate nostalgia and piercing observations. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is a book that stirs the soul as well as the senses.

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