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Book ReviewsPlease to the Table : The Russian Cookbook |
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Book: Please to the Table : The Russian Cookbook
Written by: Anya Von Bremzen John Welchman |
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Average Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5
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Great book!
Rating:
5 / 5
I have many cooking books including Russian, Ukrainian, and Georgian. None of them come even close to this one. Every dish I've made turned delicious. And, been born in St. Petersburg, Russia, I can say that many recipes in this book represent what folks in Russia serve to their families and friends. Thank you for the great book!
Great food, wonderful information!
Rating:
5 / 5
I love this cookbook. I have been to Russia as an exchange student and then as a visitor, and have missed the food on upon returning. This cookbook is complete and informative. I finally have a good recipe for pelmeni and for zhulien! Anybody who knows true Russian cooking will love this book.
A great book from the end of a peculiar period in history
Rating:
5 / 5
This is not a Russian cookbook, first of all. It is, I believe, one of the very few Soviet cookbooks ever written in the English language, and it's a gem.
It dates to the late 80s, the era of Glasnost and Perestroika, and while it presents the highlights of Russian cuisine, it also shows the resourcefulness of day-to-day life in the dying days of the Soviet Union, with dishes like Moscow Cod (with mayo, cheese and onions) and kotleti (Russian hamburgers) that could be made into haute cuisine easily but would lose something in the translation from simple working-class food.
It also shows the culinary heritage of the former Soviet Union -- Middle Eastern and Persian influences from the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as the down-home Central/Eastern European food of Ukraine and Belarus and what was apparently a much loved variant of rye bread from Riga, Latvia. Beef Stroganoff and Borscht are presented in the most glorious forms possible, so lavish that they might not even be recognizeable in the poverty of modern Russia; conversely, the old haute cuisine fish pie kulebiaka is brought down to earth in a form that tries to split the difference between modern bastardizations and tsar-era glory.
Like any good ethnic cookbook it also presents slices of life from those days -- from a cramped apartment in downtown St. Petersburg (or should I be calling it Leningrad?) or Moscow to the open land of Soviet Central Asia to the party-loving Georgians. (Armenia is somewhat short-shrifted, but it is represented.) The stars of the show are rib-sticking Ukrainian Borscht and the many-splendored forms of Pilaf, often made in the central Asian republics with aromatic basmati rice, with its own rituals surrounding it. Von Bremzen's particular experience as a Soviet emigre to the United States, as well as a native Russian in a country of widely varied ethnicities, plays into the richness of the book, allowing her to describe the experience of Soviet cuisine as both insider and outsider.
If you want to know about Russian food, and want to appreciate life as it was in the last days of the Soviet Union and the cultural heritage that Communism squandered, check out this book.
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