Communist Gourmet

Communist Gourmet presents a lively, detailed account of how the communist regime in Bulgaria determined people’s everyday food experience between 1944 and 1989. It examines the daily routines of acquiring food, cooking it, and eating out at restaurants through the memories of Bulgarians and foreigners, during communism. In looking back on a wide array of issues and events, Albena Shkodrova attempts to explain the paradoxes of daily existence. She reports human stories that are touching, sometimes dark, but often full of humor and anecdotes from nearly one hundred people: some of them are Bulgarians who were involved in the communist food industry, whether as consumers or employees, while others are visitors from the United States and Western Europe who report culinary highlights and disappointments. The author made use of the national press, officially published cookbooks, Communist Party documents, and other previously unstudied sources. An appendix containing recipes of dishes typical of the period and an extensive set of archival photographs are special features of the volume.

How did people exist and resist in their daily lives under Soviet control in the Cold War period? Shkodrova's monograph shows how in communist Bulgaria many women passionately exchanged recipes with friends and strangers, to build substantial and impressive private collections of recipes. This activity was borderline contraband in going against the general disapproval of home cooking that formed part of the ideology of communism, in which home cooking was considered household slavery and an agent of patriarchalism. Private recipe collections were by far the preferred written source of culinary information, more popular than the state-approved commercial cookbooks. Shkodrova shows how these recipe collections held many different meanings for the women who collected them, from helping to navigate the communist economy, to enabling new friendships to be developed while engaging safely in power relations, and cultivating a sense of individual identity in a society where collective existence was prioritised and exalted. Drawing on primary sources including scrapbook cookbooks and working from the establishment of cookery classes before communism and their obliteration thereafter, Shkodrova presents a structured outline of the meanings of recipes exchange and home cooking for Bulgarian women under communism.

In recent decades, many Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union have settled in Germany and Israel. In Food for Thought, Julia Bernstein conducts a widely interdisciplinary investigation into the ways in which such immigrants manage their multiple, overlapping identities--as Jews, Russians, and citizens of their newly adopted nations. Focusing in particular on the packaging, sale, and consumption of food, which offers surprising insights into the self-definitions of these immigrants, the book delivers one of our most detailed looks yet at complicated and important aspects of immigration and national identities.

Born in a surreal Moscow communal apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen, the author grew up singing odes to Lenin, black-marketeering Juicy Fruit gum at school, and longing for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy and, finally, intolerable.

Die Reihe Europäisch-Jüdische Studien repräsentiert die international vernetzte Kompetenz des »Moses Mendelssohn Zentrums für europäisch-jüdische Studien« (MMZ). Der interdisziplinäre Charakter der Reihe, die in Kooperation mit dem Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg herausgegeben wird, zielt insbesondere auf geschichts-, geistes- und kulturwissenschaftliche Ansätze sowie auf intellektuelle, politische, literarische und religiöse Grundfragen, die jüdisches Leben und Denken in der Vergangenheit beeinflusst haben und noch heute inspirieren. Mit ihren Publikationen weiß sich das MMZ der über 250jährigen Tradition der von Moses Mendelssohn begründeten Jüdischen Aufklärung und der Wissenschaft des Judentums verpflichtet. In den BEITRÄGEN werden exzellente Monographien und Sammelbände zum gesamten Themenspektrum Jüdischer Studien veröffentlicht. Die Reihe ist peer-reviewed.

The bewitching story of Rome teaching a lonely scholar how to discover himself, "Satyr Square"--part memoir, part literary criticism, part culinary and aesthetic travelogue--is a poignant, hilarious narrative about an American professor spending a magical year in Rome.

Through an interdisciplinary approach that shows how food can reflect a culture and time, this book whets the appetite of students for further research into history, anthropology, geography, sociology, and literature. Food is a great unifier. It is used to mark milestones or rites of passage. It is integral to the way we celebrate, connecting a familial and cultural past to the present through tradition. It bolsters the ill and soothes those in mourning. The dishes in this text are those that have come to be known within a part of the world and culture, but also have moved beyond those borders and are accessible and enjoyed by many in our ever-smaller and more-interconnected world. Featuring more than 100 recipes and detailed discussions of dishes from across the globe, Global Dishes: Favorite Meals from around the World explores the history and cultural context surrounding some of the best-known and favorite foods. The book covers national dishes from more than 100 countries, including large nations like Mexico and small countries like Macao. There is also coverage of foods beloved by Indigenous peoples, such as the Sami of Scandinavia. Traditional favorites are offered as well as newer dishes.

Chinese cuisine has had a deep impact on culinary traditions in Southeast Asia, where the lack of certain ingredients and access to new ingredients along with the culinary knowledge of local people led Chinese migrants to modify traditional dishes and to invent new foods. This process brought the cuisine of southern China, considered by some writers to be "the finest in the world," into contact with a wide range of local and global cuisines and ingredients. When Chinese from Southeast Asia moved on to other parts of the world, they brought these variants of Chinese food with them, completing a cycle of culinary reproduction, localization and invention, and globalization. The process does not end there, for the new context offers yet another set of ingredients and culinary traditions, and the "embedding and fusing of foods" continues, creating additional hybrid forms. Written by scholars whose deep familiarity with Chinese cuisine is both personal and academic, Chinese Food and Foodways in Southeast Asia and Beyond is a book that anyone who has been fortunate enough to encounter Southeast Asian food will savour, and it provides a window on this world for those who have yet to discover it.

Winner, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards - Food - Food Heritage - USA Nominee, Book Award in Food Issues and Advocacy, James Beard Foundation The Italian political right is outraged by halal tortellini and a pork-free lasagna served at the Vatican. In India, Hindu fundamentalists organize attacks on Muslims who sell beef. European anti-immigrant politicians denounce couscous and kebabs. In an era of nationalist and exclusionary movements, food has become a potent symbol of identity. Why has eating become so politically charged—and can the emotions surrounding food be redirected in a healthier direction? Fabio Parasecoli identifies and defines the phenomenon of “gastronativism,” the ideological use of food to advance ideas about who belongs to a community and who does not. As globalization and neoliberalism have transformed food systems, people have responded by seeking to return to their roots. Many have embraced local ingredients and notions of cultural heritage, but this impulse can play into the hands of nationalist and xenophobic political projects. Such movements draw on the strong emotions connected with eating to stoke resentment and contempt for other people and cultures. Parasecoli emphasizes that gastronativism is a worldwide phenomenon, even as it often purports to oppose local aspects and consequences of globalization. He also explores how to channel pride in culinary traditions toward resisting transnational corporations, uplifting marginalized and oppressed groups, and assisting people left behind by globalization. Featuring a wide array of examples from all over the world, Gastronativism is a timely, incisive, and lively analysis of how and why food has become a powerful political tool.