Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking

This book is 50% Russian/Soviet history, 49% personal family history and 1% food. Not the ratio I signed up for.

Really interesting read, although a cumbersome read, to see the history of the USSR through the eyes of food. From deplorable times of great famine to times of plentiful, food says a lot about the condition and politics of a nation. And in this nations case; totally bonkers ... und yet one can imagine why people long back to the USSR.

I wanted to read something else about the U.S.S.R. after finishing Midnight in Chernobyl, when I realized that I had very little grasp on Soviet/Russian history. This was a pretty good choice, as it covered roughly 100 years of historical events without falling too deep into any one part.

Mastering the Art is not so much a cookbook, though it does have recipes at the end. Rather, it's a memoir with the perspective of one family that encompasses a lot of different viewpoints on the Soviet Union — whether von Bremzen's strict-Party-line grandfather; or her dissident mother who rejected all that Stalin stood for; or von Bremzen herself, torn between benefiting from Party education and meals and suffering the poverty that permeated every other aspect of her childhood.

Of course, as von Bremzen is now a cookbook author and food writer, the history includes plenty of thoughts about food — its scarcity and how families would stretch ingredients during the famine years, the hypocrisy of the Party leaders and their feasts to show off the Soviet bounty to other world leaders, the national obsession with mayonnaise and the kotleti (hamburger patties) Stalin's food minister “brought back” from a tour of the U.S., and how the food evolved through the decades as leadership changed and the Soviet Union eventually collapsed.

There's a lot here, obviously, as Russia encompasses such a big hunk of the planet, and this is such a broad look at it, and a lot of different ethnicities and cultures and cuisines are present. It was really good, and I enjoyed von Bremzen's storytelling a lot.

I know the reason it doesn't include more about the more recent years is because von Bremzen and her mother emigrated to the U.S. in the '70s and then only went back for visits once the borders opened to travel to and from Russia, but I do wish it had included a little more about how she became a food writer, even though it's not strictly pertinent to this story. It was just a little surprising to read that she was writing a cookbook of Russian cuisine (ok sure, makes sense), then winning a James Beard award for it (what! how!), and there was little else about her career other than snippets of travel and restaurants. Small complaint.

Looking at family and recipes through the lens of Soviet history is apparently not that interesting to me.

What better way to tell the story of Soviet life for the past one hundred years than through the food of the time? Anya Von Bremzen brilliantly intermingles stories of her family with food stories and recipes to create this excellent book.Cautionary note: This is just my very-humble opinion) I didn't see a single recipe, unfortunately, that I wanted to try or even copy down. Lots of food that was as bleak as the gray Soviet lives.