Absolutely brilliant, the last word in Russian cookbooks

books:

	• Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook Anya Von Bremzen, John Welchman Workman Pub Co, 1990 - 659 pages average customer review:based on 37 reviews
	for more information click here

highly recommended

buy this book!

If you like Russian food, this one is a winner! I've only tried about a half-dozen or so recipes so far, but they were all very good and relatively simple. The instructions are clear, and serving sizes are accurate.

We do not use it very often

As a family of emigrants from Russia living in the US, we've been exposed to Soviet cooking all of our lives. This book has a pleasant collection of recipes coming from all over the former USSR, and it is indeed a great reference for someone who enjoys cooking and has a lot of free time to do it. However, we find that most of the recipes are over-complicated. We make "kotlety" and "bortsch" quite often, and we have tried the recipes listed in this cookbook for testing. The results were good enough, but not much better than the usual, if at all. The recipes also required much more time and attention to detail than we are used to in making these dishes, and that extra effort didn't seem to pay off. Not a good reference for someone who's into Russian cooking on a day-to-day basis.

for more information click here

Absolutely brilliant, the last word in Russian cookbooks

You can really tell the effort that the authors of this cookbook took to research thoroughly all the various cuisines of Russia. They spent three years researching and traveled halfway around the world, interviewing, tasting, cooking. It really shows.

I wish everyone else gave that kind of effort in writing every book written. The quality of world literature would skyrocket.

If you have even a passing interest in Russia, or food, or cooking, or even history, look no farther. This book will entertain you.

As a cookbook, though, be advised: This isn't "Russian Cooking for Dummies". Russian dishes frequently require hard to find ingredients, specialized hardware, lots of time, and a great deal of culinary skill. I consider myself a good amateur chef, and I dare not try the more complex recipes provided. Russian women evidently have lots of time to prepare meals and have a great deal of experience and skill.

If you have never read a cookbook just for fun, that's about to change. You won't regret it.

for more information click here

Very interesting, but in need of re-editing

This is a book that I really really wanted to like, but which has some irritating quirks of format, editing, and omission that could have been avoided with some better editing.

STRENGTHS:
* Unlike all too many books out there, the author(s) went to the commendable effort of discussing the regional differences in cuisine amongst the many countries that used to comprise the USSR, and they provide recipes for each in separate chapters. Major kudos for that. I wish that other all-in-one type books on Chinese, Italian, Indian, and (to a lesser degree) American cuisine were as diligent. Such nuances add clarity and focus to one's comprehension of foreign cuisines.

WEAKNESSES:

* First of all, the title is a little off. This is a book about SOVIET cooking, because it covers many regions within what (at the time it first came out) was still the USSR (of which Russia is was only one country among many).

* FORMAT/LAYOUT: I think the publisher went a bit overboard in trying to stretch the page count to make the book appear far more encyclopedic than it actually is. Through a combination of recipe headings printed in oversize fonts, wasteful margins, a plethora of useless sidepanels that add little of value, and overly generous line spacing, the publisher managed to stretch this book to 659 pages. If they'd used the same layout and font size used by Julia Child, this book would probably be well under 250. A page count of 659, in order to cover 400 recipes, most of them fairly modest in length and complexity, represents a lot of needlessly wasted paper, and it reduces the book's readability. The New Joy of Cooking, for instance, has almost 4x as many recipes in roughly the same page count. In this book, a recipe that SHOULD be less than 1 page is stretched out to 2 or 3.

* TABLE OF CONTENTS: There doesn't seem to be a convenient list of recipes anywhere in the book - there's only the table of contents (which merely overviews each chapter in general terms), and the index (which is arranged by searchable ingredients).

* GAPS: Despite the commendable efforts by the authors to cover many of the provinces of the old USSR, there are still some gaps - some small, some gaping. Some of the smaller gaps involve having dedicated too little space to pickled dishes (only 17 pages), and dressed cold salads (19 pages), both of which are FAR more prominent and commonplace in working-class Soviet cuisine that the book would have you believe. A particularly glaring gap is a total void regarding caviar. All that you'll find in this book is 3-4 call outs for cooked or smoked sturgeon meat, and 2 recipes that call for salmon roe, even though the caspian is the virtual culinary homeland of sturgeon caviar. A book on russian cuisine that omits caviar is lie a book on American cuisine that omits apple pie. At least the authors covered borsht and infused vodka.

In my opinion, this book would benefit from some fairly substantial re-editing and layout optimization to refine its focus, eliminate wasted space, improve indexing, and fill in some culinary gaps.

for more information click here

Great Variety - NOT for beginners

As 1st generation Russian I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Variety of dishes is delightful. There is something for every occasion, from deserts to dinner dishes and breakfasts. Some of the favorites like pelmeni and sirniki I remember from my childhood.

However, I do have 3 Big problems with this book:
1 - most of the recipies here are NOT for traditional Russian dishes. Former Soviet Union nations like Georgia and Armenia have really tasty food but it is very different from the type of things ethnic Russians eat. If you're looking specifically for Russian dishes, this book doesn't give that many options.

2 - this book is for cooks with A LOT OF TIME ON THEIR HANDS! Busy Russian women just don't spend all day to make borscht from two dozen ingredients. If you don't have all day to cook, you will get pretty frustrated with huge ingredient lists.

3 - many recipies require ingredients that aren't easily found in grocery stores. If you don't live in a major city where there many ethnic and specialty grocery stores, be aware, you may have to improvise or order things on-line

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Discover the entire continent in this classic collection of 400 recipes. Please to the Table is the first book to interpret the joyous cacophony of Russian flavors, techniques, ingredients--even rituals. Winner of the 1990 James Beard Food and Beverage Book Award. Illustrations throughout.

hot