Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
by Anya Von Bremzen
- Used
- Very Good
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Very Good/Fair
- ISBN 10
- 0307886816
- ISBN 13
- 9780307886811
- Seller
-
Missoula, Montana, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
With startling beauty and sardonic wit, Anya von Bremzen tells an intimate yet epic story of life in that vanished empire known as the USSR — a place where every edible morsel was packed with emotional and political meaning.
Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at school, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy — and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return.
Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, in its full flavor, both bitter and sweet, Anya and Larisa, embark on a journey unlike any other: they decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience — turning Larisa's kitchen into a "time machine and an incubator of memories." Together, mother and daughter re-create meals both modest and sumptuous, featuring a decadent fish pie from the pages of Chekhov, chanakhi (Stalin's favorite Georgian stew), blini, and more.
Synopsis
Anya von Bremzen is one of the most accomplished food writers of her generation: the winner of three James Beard awards; a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure magazine; and the author of five acclaimed cookbooks, among them The New Spanish Table , The Greatest Dishes: Around the World in 80 Recipes , and Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook (coauthored by John Welchman). She also contributes regularly to Food & Wine and Saveur and has written for The New Yorker, Departures , and the Los Angeles Times . She divides her time between New York City and Istanbul.
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Details
- Bookseller
- The Vespiary Book Restoration & Bindery (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- SQ1944697
- Title
- Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking
- Author
- Anya Von Bremzen
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Fair
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0307886816
- ISBN 13
- 9780307886811
- Publisher
- Crown Publishing Group
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2013-09-17
- Keywords
- soviet union, russia, cooking, memoir
- Bookseller catalogs
- Food/Cooking;