From my tenderest youth, my slavophile professor parents threw raucous Russian Club parties at our home for their students, for which my mother spent hours cranking beef and softened onions through a meat grinder she’d lugged back from a Moscow study trip. Although I’m American, devoid of any jot of Russian blood, an accident of birth assured that taste memories of borscht, poppy-seed cake, and the soft, meat-filled buns called pirozhki romp through my psyche. Reading Anya von Bremzen’s one-of-a-kind culinary and sociopolitical memoir, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, a nostalgically anti-nostalgic tribute to 20th century life and food in the land once known as the Soviet Union, I thought of that gustatory paradox. It means “very tasty ” and it simply never is-that is, not to those unaccustomed to the flavors of the Slavic palate. One of the most misleading phrases in the Russian language is “ Ochen’ vkusno!” which is invariably said any time you sit down to a meal in Russia that a hostess has gone to some effort to prepare.
0 kommentar(er)
