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.

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

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.

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.

This is a book that I really really wanted to like, but which has so many irritating quirks of format, editing, and omission that the overall feel is that of a good book ruined by a bad editor.

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.

GRIPES:

* First of all, as was pointed out by another like-minded and observant reader over on Amazon, the title is totally wrong. 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). Just a guess, but I'm sure the authors knew better, but the editor/publisher probably forced the issue. If so, how ironic that 'russian' style management should come into play regarding the title of a cookbook on "Russian" cuisine.

* FORMAT/LAYOUT: Just like some other notorious books I've criticized (re: alton brown and steve raichlen), the publisher went hog wild in trying to gratuitously stretch the page count to make the book appear far more encyclopedic than it actually is. Through a combination of recipe headings printed in grotesquely oversize fonts, creative use of wasteful margins, a plethora of useless and annoying sidepanels that add little of value, not to mention overly generous line spacing, the publisher managed to stretch this book to 659 pages. In actuality, if they'd used the same layout and font size used by Julia Child, this book would probably be well under 250. Can you say RIP OFF ? Good. A page count of 659 in order to cover 400 recipes, most of them fairly modest in length and complexity, is ridiculous. 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 gratuitously stretched out to 2 or 3. It's annoying, and it makes the book less readable. Pity all the trees that died needlessly, just for the sake of annoying readers and collecting dust.

* TABLE OF CONTENTS: There doesn't seem to be a conveient list of recipes anywhere in the book - I flipped through it again briefly last night, and there's only the table of contents (which merely overviews each chapter in general terms), and the index (which is arranged by searchable ingredients). A recipe book without a list of recipes. Duh. If their goal was to render an otherwise interesting book as difficult to use as possible, they succeeded.

* 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 grossly inflated at that), 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. Uh, hello ? The caspian sea is THE homeland of all things caviar ... but 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. It boggles the mind. Picture if you will a book on American cuisine that omits apple pie, and you'll understand my disbelief. At least the authors remembered to spend a few pages covering staples like borsht and infused vodka. Sheesh.

The authors of this book desperately need to get it re-organized and re-printed under a different publisher, in a leaner, meaner, easier to read and better indexed format. In it's current form, it's gratuitously padded and poorly indexed to the point of near uselessness.

This is a book that I really really wanted to like, but which has so many irritating quirks of format, editing, and omission that the overall feel is that of a good book ruined by a bad editor.

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.

GRIPES:

* First of all, as was pointed out by another like-minded and observant reader over on Amazon, the title is totally wrong. 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). Just a guess, but I'm sure the authors knew better, but the editor/publisher probably forced the issue. If so, how ironic that 'russian' style management should come into play regarding the title of a cookbook on "Russian" cuisine.

* FORMAT/LAYOUT: Just like some other notorious books I've criticized (re: alton brown and steve raichlen), the publisher went hog wild in trying to gratuitously stretch the page count to make the book appear far more encyclopedic than it actually is. Through a combination of recipe headings printed in grotesquely oversize fonts, creative use of wasteful margins, a plethora of useless and annoying sidepanels that add little of value, not to mention overly generous line spacing, the publisher managed to stretch this book to 659 pages. In actuality, if they'd used the same layout and font size used by Julia Child, this book would probably be well under 250. Can you say RIP OFF ? Good. A page count of 659 in order to cover 400 recipes, most of them fairly modest in length and complexity, is ridiculous. 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 gratuitously stretched out to 2 or 3. It's annoying, and it makes the book less readable. Pity all the trees that died needlessly, just for the sake of annoying readers and collecting dust.

* TABLE OF CONTENTS: There doesn't seem to be a conveient list of recipes anywhere in the book - I flipped through it again briefly last night, and there's only the table of contents (which merely overviews each chapter in general terms), and the index (which is arranged by searchable ingredients). A recipe book without a list of recipes. Duh. If their goal was to render an otherwise interesting book as difficult to use as possible, they succeeded.

* 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 grossly inflated at that), 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. Uh, hello ? The caspian sea is THE homeland of all things caviar ... but 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. It boggles the mind. Picture if you will a book on American cuisine that omits apple pie, and you'll understand my disbelief. At least the authors remembered to spend a few pages covering staples like borsht and infused vodka. Sheesh.

The authors of this book desperately need to get it re-organized and re-printed under a different publisher, in a leaner, meaner, easier to read and better indexed format. In it's current form, it's gratuitously padded and poorly indexed to the point of near uselessness.

This is THE cookbook for spoiled, Americanized Russians who never paid any attention to what went on in the kitchen because their mothers were such great cooks. Turns out we didn't need to...

After visiting Russia, I decided to order this cookbook. I use this cook book on a regular basis. As a frequent traveller, I seem to collect a variety of cookbooks and most of them collect dust. I am constantly using recipes from this book.

I bought this book as a gift for my boyfriend. I have the same book in my home and use it often as my mother was Russian and I remember all the wonderful food she used to make. It has good recipes and since my friend is of Swiss and Russian origin and a good cook he really appreciated it. The most often used recipe by me is during Easter when I bake Kulich (Russian Easter bread) and make the cottage cheese spread called Paskha. Thumbs up!

I loved nearly all the recipes I tried from this cookbook. It has all the classics like Borscht, stuffed cabbages, varenekis, beef Stroganoff, plus other dishes I'd never heard of previously. This book also contains a great deal of information about the history of different cultures within the Soviet Union. What I love best about this book is how authentic the recipes taste. I'm half Ukrainian and the aromas that fill my kitchen when I use this cookbook remind me of being back in my Ukrainian grandma's house.

Good food from the mother country! Esy to follow and delicious recipes.

This is an amazing book, containing
+ recipes, hundreds of them, from all parts of the former Soviet Union
+ essays about the foods of each of the former Soviet republics
+ comments about the food from famous people, i.e., Lewis Carroll. Anton Checkhov, Alexander Dumas, and more.

THe most comprehensive book on Russian cuisine I have ever seen, and it is a joy to plan a meal using this book as a resource.

Another former Russian major checking in to sing the praises of this fabulous cookbook. I have nine, count 'em, nine Russian and Soviet cookbooks, but this one easily outclasses them all. Years after it was given to me, I still find myself reading it for pleasure as well as looking up recipes. The recipe for "Guest-at-the-Doorstep" Apple Charlotte is easy and quick and is alone worth the price of the book. My favorite, though, has to be the Blini, which have become a Shrove Tuesday tradition in my family! Thank you, Anya von Bremzen, for this labor of love.

This is not a Russian cookbook, first of all. It is, I believe, one of the very few Soviet cookbooks ever written in the English language, and it's a gem.

It dates to the late 80s, the era of Glasnost and Perestroika, and while it presents the highlights of Russian cuisine, it also shows the resourcefulness of day-to-day life in the dying days of the Soviet Union, with dishes like Moscow Cod (with mayo, cheese and onions) and kotleti (Russian hamburgers) that could be made into haute cuisine easily but would lose something in the translation from simple working-class food.

It also shows the culinary heritage of the former Soviet Union -- Middle Eastern and Persian influences from the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as the down-home Central/Eastern European food of Ukraine and Belarus and what was apparently a much loved variant of rye bread from Riga, Latvia. Beef Stroganoff and Borscht are presented in the most glorious forms possible, so lavish that they might not even be recognizeable in the poverty of modern Russia; conversely, the old haute cuisine fish pie kulebiaka is brought down to earth in a form that tries to split the difference between modern bastardizations and tsar-era glory.

Like any good ethnic cookbook it also presents slices of life from those days -- from a cramped apartment in downtown St. Petersburg (or should I be calling it Leningrad?) or Moscow to the open land of Soviet Central Asia to the party-loving Georgians. (Armenia is somewhat short-shrifted, but it is represented.) The stars of the show are rib-sticking Ukrainian Borscht and the many-splendored forms of Pilaf, often made in the central Asian republics with aromatic basmati rice, with its own rituals surrounding it. Von Bremzen's particular experience as a Soviet emigre to the United States, as well as a native Russian in a country of widely varied ethnicities, plays into the richness of the book, allowing her to describe the experience of Soviet cuisine as both insider and outsider.

If you want to know about Russian food, and want to appreciate life as it was in the last days of the Soviet Union and the cultural heritage that Communism squandered, check out this book.

This book contains great recipes for the foods that my grandmother fed me as a kid (she left Russia in 1922), as well as the foods that I ate there as an exchange student (in 1995).

This book covers a wide variety of foods and regions. I noticed that there were some reviewers complaining that this book calls for ingredients that aren't used in Russia. Not so. The Russian Empire has incredibly varied regional cuisine. In an empire covering more than 6 million square miles, not everybody is going to make the exact same dishes, nor make similar ones the exact same way. Heck, they don't even all speak the same language. When visiting the south-east, you'll find a heavy "asian/oriental" influence, the use of soy and ginger; In the north-west, more of a European influence; and in the south-west, more of a "middle eastern" influence. This book has a nice sampling of all three of these, as well as many others. 'Pomegranate Grilled Lamb Chops' shows the middle eastern influence of Azerbaijan, 'Roast Pork Paprikash' shows the influence of Eastern European Moldavia... and the preponderance of rice throughout the book shows the influence of the Southern Asian countries.

I have bought every Russian cookbook I have been able to lay my hands on over the years, and this is the first one I reach for when I want to look something up. It's logically arranged, has a comprehensive index, and some great anecdotes. A wonderful addition to any international food lovers' library.