30 JANUARY 2020
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The New Old Russian Cuisine Darra Goldstein’s
new cookbook, Beyond the North Wind, celebrates
Russia’s ancient traditions. By Emily Gould
A COOK AND A BOOK
DARRA GOLDSTEIN’S FASCINATING and deeply researched new
book about Russian cuisine, Beyond the North Wind, deserves
serious attention, but I have to admit that my initial response
was to interpret it as a reproach, almost a book-length subtweet,
of a new generation of restaurants offering updated reinterpre-
tations of Russian classics. Goldstein, a culinary scholar who’s
spent decades traveling and living in Russia, probably didn’t
intend it as such. But I couldn’t help but think of my attempts to
cook an updated version of salat olivier (potato salad) that used
fresh (not canned) vegetables and homemade (not Hellmann’s)
mayonnaise for my Russian in-laws. (They were nonplussed.) Or
of a recent time when, dining out, I tried a flight of vodkas—all
small-batch brands—being poetically described by our server.
They all tasted pretty much like vodka.
That Goldstein, a professor emerita of Russian at Williams Col-
lege and founding editor of the food journal Gastronomica, takes
on her subject with rigor isn’t surprising. But her strict focus
is less expected. Her approach eschews both Soviet kitsch and
19th-century French-inflected grandness, along with foods from
former Soviet republics like Uzbekistan, Georgia, and Ukraine
that most consider “Russian,” like plov, shashlik, and borscht.
Instead, she celebrates Russia’s ancient traditions, preserved
in literal ice in its remotest villages. The sanctions on importing
food imposed after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 have also
been a boon for culinary authenticity, Goldstein writes; along
with economic turmoil, they spurred entrepreneurs to go back
to the land and rediscover traditional foodways.
She posits that New Russian cuisine is analogous to the New
Nordic food movement: reaching both back in time and forward,
using the most modern techniques possible (powders, ashes,
etc.) as well as traditional ones to celebrate and reinvent local
ingredients like marsh-raised lamb, all manner of fish and sea-
food, foraged mushrooms and berries, and even humble cereal
grains like buckwheat and oats. The book is also full of Stefan
Oven-Braised Veal
Stew with Black
Pepper and Cher-
ries. opposite:
Beyond the North
Wind by Darra
Goldstein; Tarragon-
Mint Vodka
photography by VICTOR PROTASIO
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