Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing

It was nice to have stories of how the recipes came to be so culturally iconic. The recipe titles are quirky and instructions are clear and easy to follow. No pictures. A great addition to my broad range of ethnic cooking. Ironically most recipes are similar to Ukranian cooking.

A great book, written by a gifted author who can truly convey a sense of family life (and cooking) in the Soviet Union.

I read this book over my Christmas holiday. Anya Von Bremzen's moving, funny, and intimate journal explores the history of 20th century Russia through the framework of cuisine. Although her story is a personal one, it is concurrently the story of a nation and its struggles with the daily realities of life. Although late Czarism is touched on, the author focuses mainly on Soviet times, in particular the 1930's (High Stalinism) and the 1960's and 70's (Era of Stagnation). She also gives some great insights into modern Moscow, including a little mini-memoir of her travels there in 2011. What makes this book much more than a mere family memoir is the author's ability to pepper her tale with germane political commentary, literary references, and cultural tidbits that the casual as well as more Russo-oriented reader will appreciate. She mentions blat (the system of patronage in the Soviet Union), the Central House of Writers where the devil dines in "Master and Margarita", Soviet medicine, Gogol and Chekhov's sumptuous food descriptions, empty shelves in the 1990's and 40-dollar pizzas in Putin's Moscow. She weaves a mighty tapestry of references and associations which elevates this book above a simple memoir to something that speaks to a world that despite deprivation, also had some charm.If you are interested in exploring the subject further, I recommend two other volumes: one discusses Moscow culture in the 1930's "Moscow: the Fourth Rome" by Katerina Clark  Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941  and the other, "Food in Russian History and Culture" by Glants and Toomre  Food in Russian History and Culture (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies) , discusses numerous topics related to culinary history and culture in Russia and the Soviet Union, from Medieval times to Soviet Times. For another quirky suggestion, please check out the 1980's Soviet Film "Baltazar's Feast"  Baltazar's Feasts or The Night with Stalin/ Piry Valtasara ili noch so Stalinym  about Stalin's banquets in his later years- hard to find, but worth it.Overall I highly recommend this sumptuous overview of Russian cuisine and recent history, told from an impassioned and very personal point of view. Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941Food in Russian History and Culture (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies)Baltazar's Feasts or The Night with Stalin/ Piry Valtasara ili noch so Stalinym

I just learned a new word, "toska", "that peculiarly Russian ache of the soul", and it certainly runs through this memoir - do not let the title make you think it is a cookbook. Covering the author's family and their lives from tsarist Russia through the Soviet era, the cold war, Glasnost and to 2011 Putin times, I found it intensely fascinating.Growing up in Norway in the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet was a large, menacing presence to the east. We heard of bread lines and bombs and saw pictures of grave-looking men in the Kremlin in the news, but ordinary people were not part of our consciousness of Soviet. Certainly not their food, did they have any at all? My first trip there was in 1990, to then Leningrad, and my main memory were the empty shops, and for us privileged tourists the eternal chicken. I was 17, and knew far too little of the realities...From her mother's table in New York, Anya von Bremzen recounts her family's lives as privileged in some eras, shunned in others - the mosaic is rich and the food imagery brings it out for me. Unlike other reviewers, I found the topic well matched to the amount of detail given, and would wholeheartedly recommend this to those interested in a bygone time. Perhaps the "larger picture" isn't always there or sometimes seems divorced from the historical accounts included, as she tends to focus on the microcosmos of her own family or apartment building, but since she is recording her own experiences from childhood, it rings true to me. Intimate and distant in even measures, lovely.

This is a memoir of growing up with the deprivations of the Soviet Union and then the immigrant experience of living in the US, it explores the ideas of food and nostalgia. A few recipes, but be aware this is NOT a cookbook.