4 comments about Luba Gurdjieff: A Memoir with Recipes.

1. Luba Gurdjieff's memoir is a delightful reflection on her life with a most unique family that included her Uncle G.I. Gurdjieff. For those of us keenly interested in the philosophy of Mr. Gurdjieff, you may find yourself wanting more reflections on her remarkable Uncle and less on her joys and tribulations of operating a bistro in London for many years. Yet for those who love the Gurdjieff Work, any stories and memories of that remarkable social experiment known as the Priory, relish any memories of those heady days. And for this alone Luba's memoirs are enough. Only Thomas & Olga deHartmann's "Our Life With Mr. Gurdjieff" comes as close to providing that feeling of domesticity & intimacy with the great man as this book does. Moreover, she conveys an earthy appreciation & savor of life itself (very much her Uncle's neice)in her approach to feeding the bodies and souls of those who came her way. The cuisine is standard European bistro fare, with the odd exception of corn on the cob! Her borsht recipe is one of the best I've had, as well as her remembrance of her Uncle's famous salad recipe is a joy to read. This book is a delight for both gourmet & gourmand, but it's real quality is the warm, open hospitality of the old world that shines in every page.



2. This is a padded-out excuse to present a few anecdotes about Gurdjieff, plus some old photos and such and make a few bucks off the Gurdjieff cultists who must have every book pertaining to him, but so what. It does give another perspective, however insignificant, to the events of three-quarters of a century ago, something that is sorely needed in the environment of true believers of various stripes with the entrenched positions about the man they worship as a living god or dismiss as a charlatan. The truth is somewhere in between, and this work is one of the few that seems to reflect that. And it is quite well presented.



3. Luba's book is enjoyable in many ways. The recipes, like the memoirs, are down to earth and represent good honest cooking, most of it Luba's and not her uncle's.

   Luba tells of the ups and downs in her life and demonstrates how in spite of difficulties with the help of her fighting spirit she made it. Her life-span takes us through both of the World Wars. The first caused the family to emigrate, the second required a great deal of hard work to survive.

   Full of life and laughter, and reminiscent of her uncle, she tells of her visit to Coombe Springs, run by J. G. Bennett, two years after she left the place. She came there at tea time and was looking for her friend:

   "...they were all sitting around on their bottoms, the legs all cross. I said, "Hey, everybody - anybody know where is Nottie?" It was as if nobody was there. Nobody even looked at me. They were all concentrating, or constipated - I don't know what they were. Just sitting there. I started clapping my hands, shouting, "Wakey, Wakey!"




4. George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff's All and Everything was unashamedly vast in concept: a 1238 page magnum opus. Catholicity, thematic and stylistic, remains the hallmark of today's burgeoning `Gurdjieffian' oeuvre. Even so, these slim, unindexed paperbacks - by his niece Luba and by Henri Tracol, Institut Gurdjieff President - make extraordinary companion pieces. "Of course", concedes Tracol, "in any kind of ascesis, there is always an element of apophatism". Or as Luba exclaims: "I was fed up with caviar".
   
   Eldest daughter of Gurdjieff's worldly brother Dmitri, Luba garnishes her free-wheeling autobiographical sketch with slapdash bistro recipes for galubtzy, custard sauce and "Rabbit à la Sylvie" (cf. The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book). Her cameos of Gurdjieff's Prieuré circle in the 1920s and 1930s reach us as patently uncensored reportage: rich dumplings of naïveté, warmth, vitality and candour, likely in vulnerable constitutions, to induce cardiac arrest.
   
   Tracol's infinitely more judicious book comprises a dozen or so disparate texts ranging back 50 years - broadly `philosophical' modules, spared from their author's hypothesised "wild and vengeful bonfire". Tracol's youthful resolution to live out Malraux's injunction "transform into consciousness as wide an experience as possible", presaged decades of globe-trotting incident and discriminating reading, which here guarantee a quiver of intriguing adductions: Pueblo Indians, French cinema, the Fisher King's castle, Manichaeism, macrobiotics, meta-linguistics, Sengai's Zen drawings, and so forth ...Acute individual insights not only abound (Tracol's International-Airport-as-analogue-of-psychic-dispersion would adorn Barthes' Mythologies) but, more importantly, cohere - eloquent witnesses to his long spiritual Odyssey in the Gurdjieffian tradition.
   
   Luba, sensing perhaps that her famous uncle dwarfs his apologists and detractors alike, breezily pre-empts our objections: "Silly. I'm a silly woman. I laugh too much. I love too much. I have too many friends who love me". Her ensuing Niagara of ungrammatical indiscretion seats an opéra bouffe Gurdjieff in a child's electric-powered car; displays him hiding Easter eggs under rose bushes; and - extrapolating a minor grievance over royalties - comes perilously close to misconstruing the raison d'être of the post-Gurdjieffian Foundations ... Yet Tracol, high in that movement's pantheon, personifies disinterested Gallic intelligence, fastidious, erudite, perspicacious, he glides on the subtlest of dialectics towards ever more quintessential and rarified truths; agree with him or not, his authenticity is bankable.
   
   To history's validated roll-call of VIP visitors at Gurdjieff's Fontainebleau Institute Luba adds, without a peppercorn of embarrassment or evidence, the young Franklin D. Roosevelt: "It was all done so hush-hush. When he left, and he became President of the United States ... I said `Gosh! It's Teddy'. Is Tracol similarly a-historical? Never in Luba's Monty-Pythonesque mode. Yet a fine nose for chronology is essential to sniff one's way through this sacred literary grove to the paradigmatic evolution at its heart ... The Tracol who met Gurdjieff in October 1940; who found himself "standing before him ... confronting the exacting benevolence of his gaze"; who thenceforward for nine years stoicly met the rigours of group work in German-occupied and post-war Paris - this Tracol emphasised a "voluntary concentration on struggle". The Tracol of serene old age (palpably closer to Simone Weil) also leans touchingly on higher and transcendent forces.
   
   Luba, offering umpteen hostages to fortune, innocently trumpets her uncle's all-too-human aspect but curiously misses the `superhuman' Gurdjieff of insights, powers, and real ideas; she cannot conceive that her magpie family hatched out an eagle. Tracol, by contrast, rejoices in antennae which instantly pick up Gurdjieff as avatar. Less tangible in his book, however, is his master's Rabelaisian alter ego, the creature of surreal incident and ribald humour so brilliantly evoked in Fritz Peter's autobiography Boyhood with Gurdjieff.
   
   Is Henri Tracol himself perhaps an unringed falcon? Certainly the voltage of his intellect is not disgraced by those of the moderns who crop up in his discourse: René Guénon, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Stephane Lupasco, Paul Mus, Wolfgang Pauli, Pitirim Sorokin, etc. Fed at Gurdjieff's `ideas-table', Tracol has feelingly repaid with the lifetime's service of a first-rank mind ... Luba's idiosyncratic tribute to her Uncle George issues from unmodulated emotions and calls to the emotions: "He loved life ... He was more alive than anyone I've ever seen. I loved him. I like him. I admire him. He was fantastic". The sheer discrepancy of these two approaches conveys something of their begetter's universality. The fiftieth anniversary of Gurdjieff's death has come and gone yet he remains `X the unknown quantity'.
   
   James Moore is Gurdjieff's biographer.
   He undertook the Gurdjieff module in the
   Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism.

3 comments about The Best of Russian Cooking (Hippocrene International Cookbook Classics).

1. Great book with great recipes. But again one can get recipes for free off the internet. Russian cooking videos are the best. There is one that gets sold on EBay which actually demonstrates these techinques.



2. You may have difficulty getting to the recipes, because Alexandra Kropotkin's narrative is so engaging, you'll want to read it through for all of her insight into pre-Soviet Russian life and manners, especially the life and manners of the upper class. It seems as though Ms. Kropotkin had a not-insignificant position at one point (in fact, the man who wrote the forward calls her "Princess"), and she had to flee to England when the revolution came, and she learned to make traditional Russian meals using the ingredients found wherever she happened to be.
   
   If you focus on the narrative, however, you will miss the fabulous food. The food is all very rich, and none of it is made with pre-prepared over-processed food, but good solid ingredients like milk and eggs and flour, and of course, sour cream and dill and turnips. Though some of the recipes are time-consuming (the 'yellow consomme' used to make cabbage soup simmers for three hours, for example), they are all accessible to cooks with even a little bit of experience. Princess Kropotkin talks you through the recipes like a good friend or a mother might, leading you every step of the way.



3. It was in depth and very easy to follow recipes. It also provided recipes in an historical perspective.

2 comments about A Wine Journey along the Russian River.

1. . . . . which flows into the Pacific Ocean north of San Fransisco, is a marvelously varied strip of wine country. The river itself, as author Steve Heimoff makes clear, cuts its way through many different wine areas, and so this geographical feature--rather than winemaking itself--constitutes the unifying theme of the book.
   This book which is filled with the sense of place, could be just another great American travelogue. But contrary to expectation, Heimoff abandons the river for a chapter on clones and the politics of American Viticultural Areas.
   Now before your eyes glaze over, I have to agree with Heimoff that the business of creating new grape varieties and cloning them may be at the heart of the improvement in American wine for the next several decades. He is one of the first popular wine writers to recognize this and explain it all in layman's terms.
   These two achievements-making the region come alive and explaining the mystery of the clones, make this a must-read for developing students and lovers of wine.



2. Steve Heimoff has written a wine book, a geology text, and a history lesson all in one volume. A superb treatment of several complex subjects, he writes with an intense love of his subjects....and has obviously spent an enormous amount of time researching each facet of it. It should be a must for anyone interested in California wine.

3 comments about The Armenian Table: More than 165 Treasured Recipes that Bring Together Ancient Flavors and 21st-Century Style.

1. Ms. Victoria Jenanyan Wise, a highly experienced cookbook author from an Armenian family has successfully blended traditional products of the Armenian terroir with modern California style and market to give us a taste of what Armenian cuisine tastes like in our American setting. As this objective is not the same as a faithful evocation of the native Armenian cuisine, it is important you do not buy this book with the intention of faithfully recreating your own Armenian culinary heritage. Ms. Wise is giving us her Armenian culinary heritage, not an anthropological document.

   She is delightfully successful in evoking the Jenanyan memory of Armenian cuisine with recreations of Armenian recipes, family interpretations of Armenian recipes, and her own deft experiments with Armenian methods and ingredients as interpreted by what is available in the California marketplace.

   Ms Wise scores her first points with me by including a map of the historical Armenia and its surrounding lands which primarily includes Asia Minor (Turkey), the Caucasus, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Armenia today is on the eastern edge of Turkey, with parts of ethnic Armenia being in Azerbaijan. One of the little mysteries of the book is how this terroir can be considered `Mediterranean' since it is a good 500 miles from the Bosporus, where the Black Sea empties into the Mediterranean. Although the author doesn't invoke this justification, she is in good company, as Paula Wolfert has included Georgia, which is north of Armenia and even further from the Mediterranean in a book of Eastern Mediterranean cuisines. Wise rationalizes the importance of Armenian cuisine by pointing out that the Armenian highlands are very fertile, a rich land for growing wheat, and possibly the historical origin of wheat culture.

   Armenia shares some major culinary elements with lands bordering the Mediterranean such as yogurt, wheat, lamb, and eggplant. On the other hand, olives and olive oil, the cornerstone of Mediterranean cuisine is less important than butter, especially clarified butter, in Armenian cooking.

   Since this is neither genuine Armenian nor purely Mediterranean, what is the attraction of this book. In a word, it is variety. If you are especially fond of the cornerstone Armenian ingredients (yogurt, lamb, eggplant, bulgar and legumes, and you are tired of your Italian, Greek, and Levantine sources, this is the book for you. The chapter subjects are a mix of the traditional and the quintessentially Armenian. These are:

   Yogurt - Ms. Wise gives us the whole picture, including a reliable recipe for making homemade yogurt, and yogurt substitutes for staples such as fresh cheese, crème fraiche, and bechamel sauce. She also gives us the important caution that although you can start a yogurt culture from a commercial yogurt, the dry yogurt starter from a health foods store will give you better results. Take that Alton Brown.

   Armenian Mazas - The Armenian take on the Greek and Turkish Meze cuisine. The stars here are eggplant, chickpeas, tomatoes, onions, pickling cucumbers, and zucchini. One surprise is in the recipe for string cheese.

   Breads and Savory Pastries - The signature product here is `Lavosh', the Armenian Cracker Bread which is dry like matzo, but leavened with yeast like pita, and baked with a covering of sesame seeds. Pita and Armenian `pizzas' are also present, along with several fillo based Greek / Turkish like savory packets.

   Salads - Old World style, but New World ingredients are emphasized here. Legumes and spinach are the stars here, along with the old war-horse Taboulleh.

   Kufta - One of the most distinctly Armenian dishes in the book. This is less a dish than a whole family of dishes, closely related to the Georgian dish, Kibbeh, described in Paula Wolfert's `The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean'. Part of what makes Wolfert's book great while this volume is merely good is the fact that Wolfert gives detailed, diagrammed instructions on techniques for making Kibbeh while Wise simply gives us many different recipes and a small sidebar of tips. Both Kufta and Kibbeh are a style of cooking which puts all sorts of different ingredients, from meats to barley to bulgar to legumes into a stuffed or not stuffed `meatball'.

   Lamb and other Meats - This is how to do Shish Kebab right, and other tales of lamb cookery. An interesting ethnic tidbit here is that while Armenians were Christian, Muslim lands surrounded them, so they had little interest in pork, even if they had no religious inhibitions against it.

   Poultry, Game, and Eggs - This is a chapter that will give relief to a tired inventory of poultry recipes.

   Fish and Seafood - Another Old World style blended with modern techniques and sensibilities. Focus is on fresh water fish and shellfish.

   Vegetables - Eggplant, Eggplant, and more Eggplant. I just wonder how okra got to Armenia from Africa.

   Pilafs - Bulgar, rice, lentils and nuts.

   Sweets - Baklava is the headliner, even though the author admits it is no more Armenian than Pizza. Filo dough, peaches, apricots, almonds, walnuts, and pistachios star here. Great source of nut nutrition here.

   Like many other ethnically oriented cookbooks by skilled culinary authors, this one offers new, nutritious, dishes to Armenians, foodies on the lookout for novelty and vegetarians on the lookout for novelty. This is a very good book that succeeds in its objective, but it is not a great book. The anecdotes of family history are pleasant, but do not have the evocative power of, for example, some of the stories told by Gennaro Contaldo in `Passione'. On the other hand, `Gourmet' magazine has declared Eastern Mediterranean cuisines as one of the next big things in eating. This book is as good a source as many.

   Highly recommended for those with an interest in this cuisine and in Eastern Mediterranean food in general. Relatively easy recipe methods. Very good price for the quality of the content.




2. Though this book made my friend cry with happiness, there was a burn mark in the inside cover. I didn't have time to send it back and wait for a new one so I made a joke about it.



3. My mother's father was Armenian, but very little of the Armenian cuisine or culture got passed down from him to her or to me. It wasn't until about ten years after his death that I started trying to reconnect with the food, music, and history of Armenia. This book was a present from my boyfriend, along with a dinner he prepared using the recipes in the book. I've made a number of the recipes in here at this point. They've turned out very well. Wise makes the instructions quite clear. Within and in between the recipes, she gives a glimpse of her family's relationship to their culinary heritage and traditions. It's insightful and entertaining. Thanks to this book, I've discovered bulgur, begun a love affair with plain yogurt, found out how versatile pomegranate molasses can be, learned the secret to great shish kebab (excellent meat and simple preparation), and I've started to feel like the traditions my grandfather's family brought with them from Gesaria/Kayseri aren't lost after all.
   
   Recommended recipes:
   
   Lamb and rice stuffed dolmas
   Salad with pomegranate vinaigrette
   Bulgur pilaf
   Tarkana
   Homemade madzoon (yogurt)

No comments about Tasting Along the Wine Road Cookbook: A Collection of Recipes From Wineries of the Russian River Wine Road (Volume 1).

5 comments about Classic Russian Cooking: Elena Molokhovets' "A Gift to Young Housewives".

1. I'm really just beginning with this book, but it is already frustrating. Some reasons: Measurements are given oddly, like 1/2 pound flour, 2 glasses water. There will be an instruction to "bake" without mention of temperature or time. There will often be ingredients in the list which are not mentioned in the instructions. It seems to me that it was written as a technical reference for someone that already knew what they were doing in this cuisine. I strongly recommend that in future editions there be some editing and clarification done along with translation.



2. My grandmother immigrated to Canada from Russia well over a century ago and lived to the age of 104. With her she brought many authentic Russian recipes, but alas, they remained in her head and not on paper. This cookbook comes very close to the recipes I, as a child, can remember her preparing. Yes, it is true, that some aspects of the recipes found here are lost in the translation, particularly when it comes to measurements; however, in reality, that is how my grandmother, and many Russian homemakers in her time, prepared a meal. There was no such thing as a teaspoon of this or a cup of that. Accurate meansurements would have meant nothing to my grandmother, for like many immigrants in the 1800's she had little scholastic education. Her education came from the "school of hard knocks" and life's experiences. Measurements included "a little of this a small handful of that." I can remember her placing three fingers in a small cup and when the liquid reached the top, that was how much one used. Confusing? Yes, for the traditional chef, it would be. However, as one becomes experienced with Russian cooking, the delicious recipes found here will not seem like such a challenge to prepare - trial and error is often the best way of learning.



3. This is such a classic that it was intended, in the past, to be given to young housewives to be a much-used reference. As such, in addition to the predictable recipes for coulibiac (fish in pastry crust), sturgeon, borscht, kasha and Russian sweets, there is a wide variety of household food preservation and preparation you just don't find in today's cookbooks. Such as--butchering a pig and then portioning out, preserving and preparing the resulting meats. NOT for vegans or the fainthearted, believe me. Also, there are recipes for improving the flavor of homemade vodka (including how to make birch charcoal for the purpose.) And how to make imitation butter from mutton fat, how to get rid of the off-flavor in butter that is going rancid.

   If you are a home-brewer, this is a surprisingly good book for making such things as mead and fruit wines and liquers. One caveat for the whole book; measurements are either baffling, in Russian terminology that has no English referent, or "two wineglasses" , etc. And for brewers, it requires some basic knowledge of the process.

   For cooking, there are a lot of beef and fish recipes but the borscht recipes were disappointing as there were only of few of these and there are LOTS of ways to make borscht. However, for interesting reading on food history and technique, and for some authentic Russian cooking, this book is absolutely fascinating reading.




4. I found this book recommended to me by my Russian professor, and after eating at a Russian dinner hosted by my university's Russian club, I decided I really had to have this book. It has an excellent introduction which covers a large variety of topics on Russian cooking through the years. Another thing I like about it is that it uses mainly ingredients that are commonly available today. Although a few of the ingredients used are highly unusual today (like dried backbone of a fish), they appear in relatively few of the recipies. I am anticipating cooking recipies from it!



5. I seriously dislike when translators change the nature of books by seletive translation. "Oh, I don't think this sections is interesting. Let's not bother translating it." This book only includes 25% or the recipes in the original. The book is still valuable for the historian who wants to know more about life in Russia 100 years ago. For the cook who wants to cook Russian food you just have to accept that the translator removed 75% of the recipes. So it looks like we will have to wait for the full translation of this book.

1 comments about The Food & Cooking of Russia: Discover the rich and varied character of Russian cuising, in 60 authentic recipes and 300 glorious photographs (The Food and Cooking of).

1. THIS IS A WONDERFUL COOKBOOK THAT I ESPECIALLY APPRECIATE GIVEN MY
   RUSSIAN HERITAGE. EXCELLENT SERVICE ALSO!

No comments about The Food and Cooking of Russia (At Table).

2 comments about The Best of Ukrainian Cuisine (Hippocrene International Cookbook Series).

1. Excited to find the best of Ukrainian cuisine won't work with this book unless you're still on a farm in some other decade. Or you like cooking with lard, grinding meat, and of course removing organs and bones from pigs - oh, yum! The author's translations in the back of the book from English to Ukrainian for ordering meals are worth a laugh. However, I think he's serious. Pass this book up.



2. An American with family members who make regular trips to Ukraine, I have some knowledge of the hearty and delicious cuisine of that wonderful country. I love this book because it presents the cuisine as it actually is in the towns of Ukraine. You are not presented with bastardized, Americanized recipes, but with the authentic cookery you would experience during a visit to a normal, middle class home.

   The book starts with a brief foreword on Ukrainian food traditions. In the back there is an 8-page bilingual dictionary of food terms and phrases to use in restaurants. In between, the book is packed with both traditional and contemporary recipes for everything from appetizers to main dishes to sweets and even a substantial section on beverages both alcoholic and not, and recipes for making several different kinds of beer.

   I highly recomment this book.

5 comments about Russian, German&Polish Food&Cooking.

1. I spent over two years studying in Russia and Poland. I've spent a couple months in Germany. I've been looking for recipes from this region for quite awhile. This is a great collection. It has many of the dishes that I became familiar with while I was there.
   
   In particular, I recommend:
   Hungarian Gulyas (pg 119)
   Fish baked in Dough (pg 210)
   Pampushki (pg 63)
   Lamb Plov (pg 43)



2. I really love this cookbook! I bought it for the countries mentioned in the title, but it actually covers a wider geographical range that touches on the Greek-ish foods of the Adriatic Sea. The recipes range from simple and easy to very labor-intensive dishes that take hours to prepare. In all cases, the instructions are thorough and easy to follow, and the work-in-process photographs are extremely helpful. I'm no expert in the kitchen, so that level of clarity is important to me. Another thing I like about this book is that, unlike other books in this international series, the recipes do not contain a lot of difficult-to-find ingredients or obscure cuts of meat. With very few exceptions, the components to these dishes can be found at any supermarket. So far I have personally cooked about 30 of the recipes in the book. My favorites are the Torte Varazdin (magnificent!), Bigos (a Polish classic), and Hungarian Goulash (delicious and easy to make). It's particularly strong on stews and desserts. There are also a lot of fish dishes, which I have not tried. Not every dish in the book is a winner, but the masterpieces far outnumber the disasters.



3. I have got this book as a BD present and was sceptical at first - I am a very strict cook-book critic. But this book is amazing! Not only it's full of pictures and very clear instructions, but also all recipes I've tried so far worked wonderfully.
   Just as mentioned in an earlier review, ingredients are very reasonable - and you get amazing taste from very basic products. It's also nice that in each of three parts there is a special section on Vegetable dishes - for those, who strive for healthy lifestyles.
   I'm buying a copy for my friend's BD today!



4. "Russian, German & Polish Food & Cooking" is an absolutely excellent cookbook. It gives traditional food recipes from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Included are, about, 185 recipes from Germany, Austria, Poland, The Czech Republic, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the east Adrriatic Sea, and other countries in a huge area of central and eastern Europe. Published in 2005, it has 256 pages and 750 pages.
   
   The recipes are fully described and the photos are beautiful. This is a terrific book for cooks who may want to expore a different set of cusines than most Americans know. The dishes are beautiful and taste great. If you cook your way through this cookbook, you may want to concentrate on one or more specific nationalities. Each of these countries has hundreds or, even, thousands of food recipes from which to choose.
   
   However, start with this terrific book. Choose a simple set of dishes to start. Then work your way into the more difficult dishes. Do you want a nice, simple, dessert for a fancy pot luck? Try the Polish Honey Cake.
   
   I recommend this book, highly. I hope the publisher offers a new printing, soon.



5. My MIL is Polish and has taught me some of her family recipes which my husband loves. I just received this book today and am so impressed. It has beautiful pictures and great sounding recipes. Can't wait to get into the kitchen and create.