So Many Recipes, So Little Time
Bigos is one of those Eastern European dishes that has as many versions as borscht. And debate about its origins can only be compared to arguments what pizza is better. It is also one of those meals that can go a Rolls-Royce route or a pickup truck one. A few years ago, for a family…
This is a compilation of my mussels experience and a result of my constant craving for Southeast Asian flavors, plus a result of the complaint that we don’t eat enough mussels. Why do I always feel they cannot make a proper satisfying dinner? Is it because they are so small? But we always end up…
The house south of us has always been a home to great cooks. First owner taught cooking classes and had quite a collection of cookbooks. During the moving purge, many of these cookbooks ended on the curb. Back then, in the previous century, I did not have too many of my own and was picking…
From the mostly autobiographical novel “This is Me — Edichka” by Eduard Limonov which protagonist is a Russian immigrant abandoned by his wife living on welfare in New York (translation is mine — forgive me, Edichka): “If, between 1 and 3 pm, you happen to be walking along Madison Avenue where it’s cut by 55th…
Why is this building on Petrovsky Boulevard in Moscow so important to us? Here, in the 1800s, when it was the famous restaurant “Hermitage,” a Russian chef of Belgian and French descent, Lucien Olivier concocted his famous salad. Butchered and bastardized, the salad has become a centerpiece of every Soviet holiday table and is now…