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mollygartland

Celebrating Food in Girl from the Hermitage

Updated: May 25, 2020


A friend of mine just finished reading The Girl from the Hermitage and it inspired her to make a Borodinsky bread. This is my favourite Russian bread, dense dark rye with fragrant whole coriander seeds. Linda has been a bread baker for years, not one of these up-jump lockdown bakers and her Borodinsky is as good (or better!) as any you would get in Russia. It is a shame she lives so far away as I would like to get a loaf from her.

Inspired by Linda and in celebration of launch of the ebook, I am going to prepare some of the food mentioned in the novel and write about them in this blog post. Food is an essential theme throughout the novel so it will be interesting to explore this further.


First up, a delicious, chubby, cake-like cookie, priyaniki. I always loved priyaniki when I was living in Moscow but I had never made them before. This recipe from Olga’s Flavour Kitchen is wonderful. I chose it because it had the dark, well-spiced dough like I remembered. The house smelled divine as they baked.

I followed Olga’s recipe for the most part. I added extra spices and I ran out of honey so substituted maple and golden syrup. But they still turned out really well. They are a real treat and I am sure I will make them again.

Tomorrow on the menu is a dish that requires lots of hands on deck. Glad the kids are home to help me!






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pamboudreau44
Apr 30, 2020

Where did Linda find her Borodinsky recipe? Looks fabulous. As an up-jump lockdown baker , I could use her expert advice.

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