Publisher Description
“Riveting—a delicious odyssey full of history, humor, and jaw-dropping stories. If you want to understand the making of modern Russia, read this book.” —Daniel Stone, bestselling author of The Food Explorer
A high-spirited, eye-opening, appetite-whetting culinary travel adventure by an award-winning Polish journalist that tells the story of the last hundred years of Russian power through food
In the gonzo spirit of Anthony Bourdain and Hunter S. Thompson, Witold Szabłowski has tracked down—and broken bread with—people whose stories of working in Kremlin kitchens impart a surprising flavor to our understanding of one of the world’s superpowers.
In revealing what Tsar Nicholas II’s and Lenin’s favorite meals were, why Stalin’s cook taught Gorbachev’s cook to sing to his dough, how Stalin had a food tester while he was starving the Ukrainians during the Great Famine, what the recipe was for the first soup flown into outer space, why Brezhnev hated caviar, what was served to the Soviet Union’s leaders at the very moment they decided the USSR should cease to exist, and whether Putin’s grandfather really did cook for Lenin and Stalin, Szabłowski has written a fascinating oral history—complete with recipes—of Russia’s evolution from culinary indifference to decadence, famine to feasts, and of the Kremlin’s Olympics-style preoccupation with food as an expression of the country’s global standing.
Traveling across Stalin’s Georgia, the war fronts of Afghanistan, the nuclear wastelands of Chornobyl, and even to a besieged steelworks plant in Mariupol—often with one-of-a-kind access to locales forbidden to foreign eyes, and with a rousing sense of adventure and an inimitable ability to get people to spill the tea—he shows that a century after the revolution, Russia still uses food as an instrument of war and feeds its people on propaganda.
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This book will make your mouth water. Witold Szablowski’s delicious dive into Russian imperial history comes complete with recipes for Stalin’s favorite Georgian Walnut Jam, the Blockade Bread that people ate during the World War II Siege of Leningrad, and the Turkey in Quince and Orange Juice served to Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt in Yalta in 1945. A fascinating and insightful culinary extravaganza that explores how the way to the famed Russian soul has always been through the collective stomach.
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Kristen R. Ghodsee, author of Everyday Utopia, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, and Red Hangover
