Last night we had an evening of delicious conversation with former Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award-winner Caroline Eden as she spoke to Olia Hercules about her new book Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Journeys.
‘With its union of practicality and magic, a kitchen is a portal offering extended range and providing unlikely paths out of the ordinary. Offering opportunities to cook, imagine and create ways back into other times, other lives and other territories. Central Asia, Turkey, Ukraine, the South Caucasus, Russia, the Baltics and Poland. Places that have eased into my marrow over the years shaping my life, writing and thinking. They are here, these lands I return to, in this kitchen.’
A welcoming refuge with its tempting pantry, shelves of books and inquisitive dog, Caroline Eden finds comfort away from the road in her basement Edinburgh kitchen. 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 heart breaking, 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.
Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Journeys is available now for £18.99. All our copies are signed by the author while stocks last.
About the speakers:
Caroline Eden is a writer and book critic, contributing to the Financial Times, The Guardian and The Times Literary Supplement. Her 2020 book, Red Sands, won the André Simon Award in 2020 for the best food book, and was ‘a book of the year’ for The New Yorker. It is a reimagining of travel writing, using food as an exploration of Central Asia. Its predecessor, Black Sea, winner of multiple awards including the 2019 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award’s Travel Food & Drink Book of the Year, explores the interconnecting culinary cultures between three great cities across the Europe/Asia border: Odesa, Istanbul and Trabzon. She has also written forewords and introductory essays to several books, including They Went To Portugal by Rose Macaulay (Daunt Books) and Through Khiva to Golden Samarkand by Ella Christie (John Murray).
Olia Hercules is a London-based Ukrainian chef, food writer and food stylist. In response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine she initiated a programme of fundraising, for individuals and for UNICEF. Her books include – Summer Kitchens, Home Food, KauKasis and Mamushka.