'Foreigners who spend time in Russia soon learn that there are actually two Russias - one public and the other private. The public Russia is typically cold and dark, backward and wary. The private Russia - the Russia of tea at a friend's kitchen table or of sautéed mushrooms in a village dacha - is almost unfailingly cosy and kind' - From the Introduction Travel to the author's Russia on a journey that takes you to a springtime bliny festival and Easter feast, to a small Russian village to discover nature's bounty, on a mystical quest for autumn mushrooms, and to Red Square for New Year's and Christmas celebrations. Stop along the way for a vegetarian dinner in a communal apartment, a birthday party, a baptism, a tea party and a Russian wedding. A fascinating behind-the-scenes view of Russia and its people and a quest to rediscover a family's cultural heritage, Jones reveals how forty of its finest dishes have been preserved and passed down through the feast days of the Russian Orthodox Church and the gentle rhythm of country life.

When people think of Russian food, they generally think either of the opulent luxury of the tsarist aristocracy or of post-Soviet elites, signified above all by caviar, or on the other hand of poverty and hunger—of cabbage and potatoes and porridge. Both of these visions have a basis in reality, but both are incomplete. The history of food and drink in Russia includes fasts and feasts, scarcity and, for some, at least, abundance. It includes dishes that came out of the northern, forested regions and ones that incorporate foods from the wider Russian Empire and later from the Soviet Union. Cabbage and Caviar places Russian food and drink in the context of Russian history and shows off the incredible (and largely unknown) variety of Russian food.

100 traditional yet surprisingly modern recipes from the far northern corners of Russia, featuring ingredients and dishes that young Russians are rediscovering as part of their heritage. IACP AWARD FINALIST • LONGLISTED FOR THE ART OF EATING PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND FORBES “A necessary resource for food writers and for eaters, a fascinating read and good excuse to make fermented oatmeal.”—Bon Appétit Russian cookbooks tend to focus on the food that was imported from France in the nineteenth century or the impoverished food of the Soviet era. Beyond the North Wind explores the true heart of Russian food, a cuisine that celebrates whole grains, preserved and fermented foods, and straightforward but robust flavors. Recipes for a dazzling array of pickles and preserves, infused vodkas, homemade dairy products such as farmers cheese and cultured butter, puff pastry hand pies stuffed with mushrooms and fish, and seasonal vegetable soups showcase Russian foods that are organic and honest--many of them old dishes that feel new again in their elegant minimalism. Despite the country's harsh climate, this surprisingly sophisticated cuisine has an incredible depth of flavor to offer in dishes like Braised Cod with Horseradish, Roast Lamb with Kasha, Black Currant Cheesecake, and so many more. This home-style cookbook with a strong sense of place and evocative storytelling brings to life a rarely seen portrait of Russia, its people, and its palate—with 100 recipes, gorgeous photography, and essays on the little-known culinary history of this fascinating and wild part of the world.

A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations “Delicious . . . A banquet of anecdote that brings history to life with intimacy, candor, and glorious color.”—NPR’s All Things Considered Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at school, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, naively joyous, and melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return. Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, Anya and her mother decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience. Through these meals, and through the tales of three generations of her family, Anya tells the intimate yet epic story of life in the USSR. Wildly inventive and slyly witty, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly

Introduction -- The land and its flavors -- Hardship and hunger -- Hospitality and excess -- Coda : post-Soviet Russia.

T-Bone Whacks and Caviar Snacks is the first cookbook in America to focus on the foods of the Asian side of Russia. Filled with fascinating food history, cultural insights, and personal stories, it chronicles the culinary adventures of two intrepid Texans who lived, worked, and ate their way around Siberia and the Russian Far East. Featuring 140 traditional and modern recipes, with many illustrations, T-Bone Whacks and Caviar Snacks includes dozens of regional recipes from cooks in Asian Russia, along with recipes for the European and Tex-Mex dishes that the author and her husband cooked on the “Stoves-from-Hell” in their three Russian apartments, for intimate candlelight dinners during the dark Siberian winter and for lavish parties throughout the year. You'll learn how to make fresh seafood dishes from Russia's Far East, pine nut meringues and frozen cranberry cream from Irkutsk, enticing appetizers from the dining car of a Trans-Siberian luxury train, and flaming “Baked Siberia” (the Russian twist on Baked Alaska). And here's the bonus: All of these recipes can be made with ingredients from your local supermarket or your nearest delicatessen.

Introduction: setting the table -- Governance, or, How to solve the grain problem? -- Production -- Consumption, or, The Perestroika of the quotidian -- Nature -- Conclusion: vulnerabilities.

In Russia, food has a hugely important role in political, symbolic, and practical terms. In this illuminating history of Russian food in the modern age, Catriona Kelly – a leading cultural historian and keen amateur cook – reflects on this and an environment where what you eat (and drink) indicates how patriotic you are. Kelly argues that an expectation of 'feeding' is embedded in attitudes to the state as provider, and that rationing systems have traditionally replicated and even enforced social hierarchies. The book looks at how Russian food is intimately connected with family and friends, and was an important source of delight even in the Soviet period, when official culinary provision and practices ostensibly sought to promote nutrition above all, and food was often short. Russian Food since 1800 traces these complex and contradictory associations. It also examines various shifts in diet and cuisine over the last three centuries, including the ways in which old traditions such as pickling and jam-making sit alongside wider world influences from the vast imperial hinterland in the Baltic, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, as well as Western Europe and America.