Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Damn you, The Fuzzy, my library has it.....Aarrrggghhh!

So much for cookbook quotas; is my freezer project similarly doomed?????

The CCCP Cookbook is not one you cook from. It's not that the recipes are bad, exactly; it's that they are chosen for their iconic nature rather than with gustatory pleasure in mind. The result is a range of recipes from the unpalatable (fish cakes in aspic) to the impractical ("This cake recipe takes 2-3 days to make"). There are a few can't fail basics like blini, but in general it's not to be cooked from.

What it's for is reading. The authors are Muscovites who've assembled a list of 50 or so recipes which represent iconic foods of the Soviet era from the 1920s to the 1990s. Each recipe is accompanied by a fascinating story about why the food is historically important -- maybe it was a ration stretcher during WWII, maybe it was associated with a famous dissident writer, maybe it was a favorite treat of Soviet youth -- which is what the book is really for. There are also great photos of food taken from historical Soviet propaganda, cookbooks, and literature, so the mid-century style lover will find a lot to like.

The book was originally written in Russian, and was well-translated by Fuel Publishers for the American market. Inexplicably, they chose to shrink the original book by 40% in every dimension ... resulting in text which is almost unreadably small. If your eyes are going, skip this; you won't get more out of it than the pictures. But otherwise ... buy or borrow it, it's a fascinating read.

So, two ethnic cookbooks, thanks to the Multinomah County Library.

LIMA The Cookbook, by Martinez and Bianchi, most decidedly does not live up to its subtitle of "Peruvian Home Cooking". This is Peruvian restaurant cooking, by two accomplished restaurant chefs. If you want to know how to make ceviches, causas, barbecued meats, and cocktails like you'd get from top Peruvian restaurant, this cookbook lays it out for you. The photography is stunning. Recommended for catering, fancy parties, and people who really love ceviche.

The really poorly titled Istanbul And Beyond by Ekhardt is a superb Turkish regional cookbook, highlighting seven cuisines from around Turkey. Despite being mostly rustic home cooking, it contains many appealing recipes I hadn't seen before (example: brown butter eggs), and I own four other Turkish cookbooks. Recommended for anyone who has a basic Turkish cookbook, and wants to learn more.