Customer Reviews

Food Culture in Russia and Central Asia (Food Culture around the World)

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I enjoy reading about food and food culture from all over the world and so the title of this book appealed to me. Unfortunately, the content did not. I was rather expecting the sort of book I usually enjoy which is essentially an illustrated cookery book with a lot of supplementary material about the cuisine in question. This book, however, while it did contain a handful of recipes near the very end, read more like a master's thesis on the culture, economics, and history of Russia and Central Asia (albeit with a particular slant towards the general regional eating habits). It was, in consequence, rather dry and not very enjoyable. To be fair to the authors, of course, my disappointment stemmed primarily from my misguided expectations rather than the merits of the content but, again to be fair from an alternative perspective, I rather feel that I would also have been disappointed had I instead been looking for a more erudite and in depth look at the `food culture' of the region. This book contains only 260 pages so to attempt such a vast and complex topic in so little space inevitably means that each aspect of the subject is given short shrift indeed. Some may find this book useful but it did not interest me very much.