Author: Rubinstein, Nela
Title: Nela's Cookbook : She has dazzled family and friends in the musical world for more than fifty years with her delectable cooking-- and now she shares her secrets.
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Place: New York
Date: (1983)
Edition: first ed
ISBN: 039451761X
Pages: 414
Binding: Hardback
Condition: VERY GOOD very good dj. Lower edge of covers has some surface spotting. Not noticeable unless you turn the book upside down
Illustrator: Fela Krance
Book Id: MAIN000886I
Details: Introduction, index
About the book: After years of producing superb meals for Maestro Arthur and their family and friends the world over, Nela Rubinstein has at last put down in this charming and inspiring cookbook her most coveted recipes, her refreshing thoughts on menus for all sorts of occasions (and non-occasions), and her joyous memories of cooking for those she loves. Her style in the kitchen is a combination of the old-world Polish cooking on which she was raised with touches of the cuisines of France and Spain, where the Rubinsteins lived, and of the easy American ways that she made her own during their years in California and New York.
Nela's food is earthy, sensuous, and direct; she makes no distinction between party food and family food, elegant and plain. The dishes she likes best are drawn largely from old family notebooks (she grew up on a huge farm-estate in Lithuania): wonderful pickley soups, borscht with deliciously filled pierogis and other stuffed surprises, succulent cutlets made of ground meats, baked and jellied carp,salt herring with blinis, hunter's stew of pork and sausages and sauerkraut, raisin-studded Easter bread, mazurkas, honey and spice cakes, steamed coffee pudding, walnut and almond tortes dishes that are richly satisfying but become miraculously lightened in Nela's deft hands. Then there are the recipes Nela has improvised, inspired by what she would sample in posh restaurants on tour with the Maestro her sense of taste, like perfect pitch, enabling her to decipher ingredients and recreate the dish even more harmoniously at home (a navarin of lamb unlike any other, a lemon chicken en chaud-froid, squabs in grapes and raisins, pheasant smothered in cabbage, and so on). Nela's Cookbook is packed with all the savvy that an inventive cook accumulates over the years; it is full of invaluable tips: sticking a lemon peel or a whole walnut in the pot to eliminate cabbagy odors... how to make a soufflé wait... a home remedy for a cough (children love it)... how to remove garlic smells from your hands... how to synchronize a party for sixty (even in a cramped hotel kitchen).
She tells wonderful stories, remembering funny (or touching) occasions among them, a morning of crayfish hunting on the Los Angeles River (Arthur in Panama hat, carnation boutonniere, and pearl stickpin) or the time she made bigos for a party for her actor son, John Rubinstein, and all the cast and crew of Children of a Lesser God. Her superb recipes, her ease in the kitchen, the gift for good cooking even with scant equipment and provender (which served her so well in the gypsy years of concert tours), her spontaneous inventions and variations on classic dishes, and, above all, her real pleasure in food make Nela's Cookbook a rare delight for the uncertain beginner as well as the seasoned cook.
Nela Rubinstein, the youngest daughter of the Polish conductor and musician Emil Mlynarski and his wife Anna Hrynewicz, was born on her mother's Lithuanian family estate. She grew up in Warsaw, where she studied dance, and in 1932 she married the pianist Arthur Rubinstein. During their fifty years of marriage they had four children and made their homes chiefly in Paris, Los Angeles, and New York. The Rubinsteins traveled all over the world together, and Mrs. Rubinstein now lives in Paris and New York and spends summers in Marbella, Spain.

In praise of Nela's Cookbook "Nela's Cookbook is a shimmering reflection of the incomparable Nela herself, which means that it is original, imaginative, creative, entertaining, practical, beguiling, sensual, witty, magical, surprising, delectable!' CARSON KANIN "If I could only relive those years I was privileged to spend in Nela's kitchen, watching her prepare incomparable recipes, while sharing her creative enthusiasm. It was watching a unique genius at work!" MILDRED KNOPF "One of the great pleasures of visiting the Rubinstein home, apart from being in the master's company, was having a meal cooked by Nela, who not only mastered the Polish cuisine but, having lived in Paris for so many years, served the best from the French and East European worlds. ZUBIN MEHTA "No matter how many cookbooks you may already possess, my wife and I happily recommend your adding Nela Rubinstein's to your collection. It's indispensable" CARY GRANT