A Pie Filled With Nostalgia

Like the Caucasus, the Crimea has long captured the imagination of Russian writers and artists. The poet and painter Maximilian Voloshin (see page 28) lived for many years near Theodosia, in the town of Koktebel, on the shores of the Black Sea. His house became a magnet for many writers, including Osip Mandel-shtam, Andrei Bely, Mikhail Bul-gakov, and Marina Tsvetaeva. The glorious landscape there enchanted them all, but many Russian visitors were also enthralled by the foods they discovered. Their Crimean sketches often mention shaurma (lamb roasted on a vertical spit). Even more frequent mention is made of the deep-fried meat pies known as chebureki, which Mandelshtam immortalized in his 1925 poem “Theodosia”:

Идем туда, где разные науки