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Book Summary and Reviews of Cold Kitchen by Caroline Eden

Cold Kitchen by Caroline Eden

Cold Kitchen

A Year of Culinary Travels

by Caroline Eden

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Published:
  • Jan 2025, 256 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From the author of Red Sands, a New Yorker "Best Cookbook 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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Delectable journeys...Eden gently invites readers into those other worlds and, graciously, into the warmth of her fragrant kitchen. A lyrical, captivating memoir." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Eden...recreates dishes and evocatively recounts the journeys to the Baltics, Central Asia, and the South Caucusus that inspired them...As for her titular kitchen, if it gets chilly due to weather, worry, and a fallen friend, it is ever warmed by Eden's efforts and memories, so generously shared." ―Booklist

"In Cold Kitchen, Caroline Eden shares my love of travel and food and writes about both so beautifully. I don't know many other writers who have visited Uzbekistan and Georgia, as I have, and I loved returning there again through her writing. Utterly charming!" ―Ann Hood, New York Times bestselling author of Fly Girl, Kitchen Yarns, and Comfort

This information about Cold Kitchen was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Caroline Eden

Caroline Eden is a writer and book critic contributing to the Financial Times, The Guardian and The Times Literary Supplement. Her books include Samarkand, Black Sea and most recently, Red Sands, winner of the prestigious André Simon Award and a 'book of the year' for The New Yorker.

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