Anya Von Bremzen

Evokes a mid-20th-century Soviet experience, as the author traces her upbringing by an anti-Soviet mother, her witness to the political events surrounding the empire's collapse, and her parallel food universes that included both simple and sumptuous fare.

A Memoir of Love and Longing

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking

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.

recipes inspired by the private restaurants of Cuba

Paladares

Recipes, articles, and photographs capture the zesty flavors of Latin food and the tradition of Latin hospitality, presenting such dishes as pollo al Jerez and skewered garlic shrimp and celebrating the culture of Spain and South America.

A Celebration of Latin Hospitality

Fiesta!

John Welchman

Recipes from the Pacific Rim combined with Western foods.

Terrific Pacific Cookbook

More than 350 recipes from all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union offer samples of the country's vast diversity--from the robust foods of the Baltic states, to the delicate pilafs of Azerbaijan

Anya Von Bremzen

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