I have previously reviewed The Food and Cooking of Russia, and I am finally ready to tell you about Chamberlain’s companion volume, The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe. Both are reissues of books initially released in the 1980s. This later book, however, was released at the end of the decade, rather than the beginning, and, while it was intended to perform the same service as the earlier Russia, illuminating and sharing the culture and history, specifically food culture and history, of countries under the thumb of the Soviet regime, lo and behold, on publication in 1989, up rose the Iron Curtain, down went the wall.
Nevertheless, it’s a noble sentiment, and, like Russia, the political atmosphere under which Eastern Europe was written lends a degree of intrepidness to its author, and the same view towards culture, family, and celebration — which food is often at the centre of — as a way of taking the pulse of the life of a country and people. We seem to have an image of grey bread and slop, in a colourless industrial landscape, all the flavour gone out of life. This is largely Western propaganda, but it’s also true that political and economic hardships tamp down on the vibrant aspects of life, and exploring the history of these countries, and comparing what was to what is during current hard times resonates with this idea of a faceless government crushing the people’s very souls.
And even as Chamberlain argued in Russia, that despite what “free” Westerners may have thought, life went on in these mysterious faraway places, and she thought to preserve their culinary richness in the face of possible extinction as much as she wished to show that the vibrancy of everyday life and love and celebration still continued, if to a lesser degree.
As in Russia, there is much more to this volume than a cookbook. Rather than a simple and consistent format of recipe name, list of ingredients, instructions, followed immediately by the next recipe, this book contains a thorough initial introduction to the book and introductions not only to each section (Appetizers, Soups, Meat, Fish, etc.), but even to short series of particular kinds of recipes, or even to individual recipes. She discusses agricultural history of individual countries and the evolution of cooking as a result of a country’s geographic location, natural resources, climate, or religion.
Recipes in the book come primarily from the former East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, and Yugoslavia, but also include either recipes from, or influenced by, many other countries or former countries, like Transylvania, Macedonia, Serbia, and many more. Reading this book, you will get a fairly decent primer of many of these former and current states as they existed before the fall of the Soviet Union, and even their history much further back than that.
The blending and branching off of distinct cultural milieus is something that I find increasingly fascinating. Just as phylogenetic analysis can show the history of human populations and origins, similarly in culture we can identify memetic blendings in language, culture, literature, and yes, in food. Chamberlain is clearly fascinated by the histories and possible futures of these many countries, and seems as interested in exploring the roots and evolution of their individual culinary arts as their current incarnations, as exemplified by catalogues of recipes themselves.
So what of the recipes? I read through the book fully before touching a measuring cup — reading about the histories of individual countries, their style of cooking, the feel and taste of their food, the way of appreciating it — and almost felt that I could taste the fish specialty of some Balkan diner, feel the jolt of strong Turkish coffee. I was blown away at the shocking variety in this group of small countries as Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Slavic, and even Asian influences combined with local ingredients and each other for a series of very distinct, and yet sometimes interrelated styles. I made careful note as I went along of dishes I wanted to try, and then, over the course of several weeks, got to cooking.
Some of my initial attempts were failures. My girlfriend and I stayed at a charming bed and breakfast in Western Ontario during the early pre-spring this year. The operator there made us breakfast each morning from old recipes left him by his German grandmother. One morning he created for us a delicious type of sweet pancake or crêpe. It was eaten with either sour cream or cottage cheese on the side, the sourness tempering the sweetness, and resulting in a delicious and incredibly satisfying meal. Coming across a similar recipe for a sweet-cheese pancake in this book, we had to give it a shot. Including curd cheese, pancake mix, eggs, sour cream, raisins, and sugar, we wrapped the altered pancakes around the filling, and the result was strong, but not entirely pleasant. The delicate balance achieved by the devoted grandson and his ancestral recipes was lost on us.
At this point I recruited my Ukrainian uncle, a far greater cook than either of us, and we endeavoured to see what these recipes might be capable of in the hands of a skilled interpreter. I quickly realized how much of these recipes was not written on the printed page and the necessity of someone more familiar with cooking in general, and ideally, European cooking in particular, to fill in the blanks.
In sampling Russia, not every recipe was a success. I complained about the confusion of ingredient measures, the necessity of a scale for weighing, and the sometimes very brief descriptions of complicated steps. The author assumes a degree of expertise on the part of the would-be cook, and through a combination of carefully chosen recipes, and a bit of luck, we hit on some successes. This time, although Eastern Europe actually included conversion scales and some useful notes on ingredients, the recipes in some cases remained just as opaque. When my uncle brought out his scale for weighing, I realized I had chosen the right person to illuminate them.
As one example, my uncle explained to me about a particular type of term used in soup-making, a roux, whereby some bit of ingredients are fried with perhaps oil or some other liquid component, then flour is added, and stirred and combined in a very particular way that he showed me, followed by dilution with water or the main broth itself, and then finally is carefully returned to the soup. The instructions were simply “fry x with y, add flour, dilute with soup, return to pan.” This isn’t enough information for someone who isn’t previously acquainted with making a roux. I realized, additionally, that pan meant pot. This mistake was repeated in more than one soup recipe we tried. Other unusual terminology threw us off. Bacon rashers, as in slices of side bacon, is one example.
Nevertheless, with my uncle’s prior knowledge, we created a potato soup in this way, and the result was amazing, amongst my all-time soup favourites. We served it, as instructed, with rough bread and sour cream, adding a dollop of sour cream to the soup without mixing it, and taking a small bit of it with each spoonful.
Other dishes we made include a Serbian bean ciorbă (another flavourful soup), and a relatively simple fish gyuvech, using local pickerel and garden vegetables.
My uncle, though very difficult to impress as regards culinary experiments, was very pleased with the results on each recipe we tried. The potential is clearly there. Given a skilled cook and good ingredients, these are good recipes, and they do live up to the dishes of my imagination from when I initially paged through the book. And, I should emphasize, these are different and unusual recipes. My uncle, for all his multi-cultural food experience and culinary experimentation, paged through the book and often said, “Hmm, that’s different.”
We are even still cooking from both books, but it was time I got this review finished. Next we will be making another fish dish, and some sorrel soup. Sorrel cannot be bought in any of our local stores, and the same is true for most of North America, but further proof that I have the right cooking partner: my uncle grows it in his garden (edit: the sorrel soup was wonderfully satisfying).
But I feel I should be clear about who these books are for. They are not beginners’ cookbooks. They are, in fact, not even thorough by my uncle’s standards, who did well at filling in the blanks, but was a little surprised at the necessity of doing so. Somebody who does not have a firm grasp of basic principles of cooking will have trouble with some of these recipes. They cannot simply be followed as a step-by-step instruction manual.
Some time spent in a cooking class, or under the tutelage of a skilled relative, will better allow a novice cook to achieve the desired results with these recipes. If you already know a little something about cooking and are looking to explore something new, however, dive into this rich cultural milieu with your mouth open. There’s good stuff here for those who know how to get it.
(Bison Books, 2006)
