Black Sea
Dispatches and Recipes Through Darkness and Light
by Caroline Eden
photographs by Ola Smit and Theodore Kaye
Quadrille
Quadrille
2018
Black Sea is a book that seems to deliberately defy classification. First and foremost, it's travel writing, cataloging author Caroline Eden's trip around the Black Sea coast, starting in Odessa, Ukraine, passing through Romania and Bulgaria, then crossing Turkey, from Istanbul in the west to Trabzon in the east.
Admittedly, travel writing is always an eclectic genre, mixing narration of the author's voyage with tidbits of local history and current events, and it's often combined with food writing, as in this case, where Eden seemingly describes every meal as she travels the coast. But Eden's emphasis on food goes beyond a secondary focus - you could also think of this as food writing that happens to describe travel. She even includes recipes between each stop, usually 2-4 from each place she visits, adding up to dozens over the course of the book. So this is also kind of a cook book.
It's also also kind of a photo book. There aren't images on every page, and the book itself is novel-sized, not coffee table, but there are a lot of photos, usually getting a full page or two-page spread each. In a lot of travel books you get none, or else a few pages of color plates in the center. I don't usually talk about the physical qualities of the book I'm reading, but Black Sea is gorgeous. The hardcover has silver foil and an embossed surface making the wave pattern. The pages are edged in ink so that the closed book is a solid block of black. The paper is heavy, and the photography crisp and attractive.
And the thing is, this genre hybrid, this eclectic mix, it works. Eden marches on her stomach, and you follow along, eating your way from Odessa to Trabzon. There are local variations, but the recipes often involve garlic, rice pilaf or bulgar wheat, yogurt or cheese, honey, leafy greens, hazelnuts or chestnuts, and lots of fish, especially sardines and anchovies, which are beloved across the region. She buses between cities and has local guides and drivers in each one, eating at a mix of restaurants and hospitable family homes. Like me, she's curious about the famous 'mad honey' made from rhododendron pollen, said to be intoxicating in small doses, toxic in large, but she doesn't manage to try any.
Besides food, Eden's other big interest is immigrant communities. She writes about the Jewish and Italian communities in Odessa, Swiss farmers in Romania, Russians loyal to the tsar fleeing Lenin in Istanbul, and Turks who came back to Trabzon after generations in Russia. She's arguably more interested in these smaller communities, their culture and food, than she is with the majority population anywhere she goes. Eden gives special attention to writers, mostly but not only Russian authors exiled by the Soviets, so it would be easy to compile a reading list from books she mentions along the way.
Eden is not, for the most part, interested making any overt comments about politics. There's an obvious reason her journey doesn't start in Crimea or make it out of Turkey into Georgia or Russia - but she never mentions it. Ceausescu only comes up to explain why so few Anglophone travel writers have visited Romania. The Russian seizure of Crimea and territories in East Ukraine, the attempted Turkish coup and Erdogan's authoritarian crackdown afterward - Eden mentions them only in passing, and only when absolutely necessary.
I say this not to cast judgment, just as a description of what she wrote. There's a new edition of the book coming out this year with some supplemental writing about Putin's full invasion of Ukraine. It's hard for me to imagine this won't feel tacked on and dissonant with what's already there. Another writer, or perhaps even Eden herself, could write all about the historical and present-day conflicts and injustices in the countries surrounding the Black Sea, but I feel like that would belong to a different book, a different way of experiencing the region than what we get here.
Admittedly, travel writing is always an eclectic genre, mixing narration of the author's voyage with tidbits of local history and current events, and it's often combined with food writing, as in this case, where Eden seemingly describes every meal as she travels the coast. But Eden's emphasis on food goes beyond a secondary focus - you could also think of this as food writing that happens to describe travel. She even includes recipes between each stop, usually 2-4 from each place she visits, adding up to dozens over the course of the book. So this is also kind of a cook book.
It's also also kind of a photo book. There aren't images on every page, and the book itself is novel-sized, not coffee table, but there are a lot of photos, usually getting a full page or two-page spread each. In a lot of travel books you get none, or else a few pages of color plates in the center. I don't usually talk about the physical qualities of the book I'm reading, but Black Sea is gorgeous. The hardcover has silver foil and an embossed surface making the wave pattern. The pages are edged in ink so that the closed book is a solid block of black. The paper is heavy, and the photography crisp and attractive.
And the thing is, this genre hybrid, this eclectic mix, it works. Eden marches on her stomach, and you follow along, eating your way from Odessa to Trabzon. There are local variations, but the recipes often involve garlic, rice pilaf or bulgar wheat, yogurt or cheese, honey, leafy greens, hazelnuts or chestnuts, and lots of fish, especially sardines and anchovies, which are beloved across the region. She buses between cities and has local guides and drivers in each one, eating at a mix of restaurants and hospitable family homes. Like me, she's curious about the famous 'mad honey' made from rhododendron pollen, said to be intoxicating in small doses, toxic in large, but she doesn't manage to try any.
Besides food, Eden's other big interest is immigrant communities. She writes about the Jewish and Italian communities in Odessa, Swiss farmers in Romania, Russians loyal to the tsar fleeing Lenin in Istanbul, and Turks who came back to Trabzon after generations in Russia. She's arguably more interested in these smaller communities, their culture and food, than she is with the majority population anywhere she goes. Eden gives special attention to writers, mostly but not only Russian authors exiled by the Soviets, so it would be easy to compile a reading list from books she mentions along the way.
Eden is not, for the most part, interested making any overt comments about politics. There's an obvious reason her journey doesn't start in Crimea or make it out of Turkey into Georgia or Russia - but she never mentions it. Ceausescu only comes up to explain why so few Anglophone travel writers have visited Romania. The Russian seizure of Crimea and territories in East Ukraine, the attempted Turkish coup and Erdogan's authoritarian crackdown afterward - Eden mentions them only in passing, and only when absolutely necessary.
I say this not to cast judgment, just as a description of what she wrote. There's a new edition of the book coming out this year with some supplemental writing about Putin's full invasion of Ukraine. It's hard for me to imagine this won't feel tacked on and dissonant with what's already there. Another writer, or perhaps even Eden herself, could write all about the historical and present-day conflicts and injustices in the countries surrounding the Black Sea, but I feel like that would belong to a different book, a different way of experiencing the region than what we get here.
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