Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels - Hardcover

by Caroline Eden (Author)

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A cozy, thoughtful memoir recalling food and travel in Eastern Europe and Central Asia from a basement Edinburgh kitchen, featuring a delicious recipe at the end of each chapter.

"With its union of practicality and magic," Caroline Eden understands a kitchen as a portal, "offering opportunities to cook, imagine and create ways back into other times, other lives and other territories."

A welcoming refuge with its tempting pantry, shelves of books, and inquisitive dog, Caroline Eden's basement Edinburgh kitchen offers her comfort away from the road. Join her as she cooks recipes from her travels, reflects on past adventures, and contemplates the kitchen's unique ability to tell human stories. This is a hauntingly honest, and at times heartbreaking, memoir with the smell, taste, and preparation of food at its heart.

From late night baking as a route back to Ukraine to capturing the beauty of Uzbek porcelain, and from the troublesome nature of food and art in Poland to the magic of cloudberries, Cold Kitchen celebrates the importance of curiosity and of feeling at home in the world.

Author Biography

Caroline Eden is a writer, book critic, and the award-winning author of Red Sands: Reportage and Recipes through Central Asia, from Hinterland to Heartland, a New Yorker Book of the Year; Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes-Through Darkness and Light; and Samarkand: Recipes and Stories from Central Asia & the Caucasus. She has travelled extensively to countries such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, and Bangladesh, documenting her experiences across multiple publications including Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Times Literary Supplement, as well as on BBC Radio 4's "From Our Own Correspondent." She lives in Edinburgh.