A Gentleman in Moscow by Amos Towles with Recipe by Gemma Austin
Author
Now living with his family in Manhattan, Amor Towles was born somewhere around Boston went to some great schools and graduated from Yale where he worked hard to earn his MA in English from Stanford.
From what I’ve read, Amos had wanted to earn his living from writing from around the age of seven, although it wasn’t until many, many years later that he actually took the plunge.
Reading was never high in the things he loved to do as a child, he recounts when he was younger, he wasn’t keen to read the longer books his father gave him.
To get him more interested his father did what would work, and gave him money to read the thicker books such as Moby Dick and Lord of the Rings set. Because of this, he discovered One Hundred Days of Solitude , which became an inspiration to him and his writing, and has stayed one of his favourite books.
Inspiration for a career can come from anywhere, and when he was as a child living in the Boston area, a writer of young poetry arrived at his school and read from his books.
Towles has said he was amazed by the whole experience and hung on David McCords play on words and the imagination he showed through his writing.
This, he said in an interview, was when he knew for sure, he wanted to earn his living by writing.
Spotted for his talent by Peter Mattiessen (the co-founder of The Paris Review) during a seminar he attended at Yale, Peter agreed to help cultivate his talent, but still not ready to move into writing, wanting to please his father, Amos went to work in the financial industry on wall street.
Over the years, financially, it turned out to be a good decision, making him a very rich man, but even in those years making himself a fortune, he worked on his writing.
During this time, he made a rule which he carried through to his writing of A Gentleman in Moscow.
Through trial and error, he discovered his best writing was done within the first year, so, he made a decision to spend as much time as necessary on research and planning, and then to spend no more than a year setting the story to the pager.
A Gentleman in Moscow, six hundred pages, was written this way.
His books and short stories have sold more than eight million copies, translated into forty languages and if that’s not enough, it’s recorded that Bill Gates and Barack Obama included some of his work on their annual book recommendations list.
A Gentleman in Moscow 2016, was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years and was named one of the best books of 2016 by Chicago times, and other notable news outlet like the Inquirer and San Francisco Chronicle.
In 2024 paramount released a mini series based on the novel, staring Ewan McGregor.
Book and recipe this month.
Book
Starting in 1922, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, Amos Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow, follows Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocrat who is sentenced to house arrest in the luxury Moscow hotel.
A man of privilege and great refinement for over thirty years, the Count stays confined to the attic room in the Metropol Hotel for over thirty years where he forges deep and valuable friendships with members of the staff and visitors to the hotel.
Outside, Russia undergoes a huge revolutionary change.
A Gentleman in Moscow
What I Think
At first thought, a book about a man who is confined to a hotel for his entire adult life, doesn’t sound like a story I’d want to read. So wrong.
A Gentleman in Moscow is about Count Rostov, an aristocrat forced to live entirely in the Metropol Hotel by a political party back in the 1922.
Spanning thirty years, this book has layers of complex characters that work to make it something truly special.
With characters who are fully rounded with humour and charm, the writing connects each of them making their lives cross and grow as the years pass.
All supporting actors in the Counts story have clear lives in their own right and there isn’t a character in the book who doesn’t belong or is added just to fill out the mandatory word count.
As I read the book, the backgrounds to each of the characters was revealed and goes to add to the richness of them all, making me want to go on to know more.
Over the years of his confinement, the Counts character moves from an observer of life within the hotel to a player in the role the hotel plays for its guests and staff.
There are no jumps in his life, just a linear move where I got to watch his personality grow and become who he was meant to be.
With no animosity towards the government who forced his life to change, he shows loyalty and love towards his new family of characters within the hotel.
Not often do I read a book and know for sure each word is there for a reason and even less often am I disappointed that a book ends.
This is a book I would recommend to anyone, and even more important to me, I would delve into it again.
I give it a five gold egg rating
A five gold egg rating for this book.
Chef
Taken from Dish Cult, other things I’ve read and my first write up of Gemma Austin.
Chef Gemma Austin is a chef I’ve known of for many years.
A generous chef and person who without a blink of an eye, said yes when asked to gift Foodie Book Club CIC recipe and to record her making it – (Find it on Foodie Book Club YouTube Here!)
The following is a mash up of the first write up I made when first published on our Lockdown Lunches page during the pandemic lockdown, and what I’ve found out about her since.
Chef Gemm Austin
I first became aware of Emma when she was on Great British Menu the Professionals representing Northern Ireland
Gemma has recently opened a new restaurant Era (Here’s the link to the restaurant) after closing A Peculiar Tea because or spiralling overheads.
Gemma, originally from Carryduf just outside Belfast, didn’t always have the food world in her sights, she was on the way to becoming a nurse until a spine problem put the stops to that.
Changing her training to software programming was a bit of a bend in the road, so going from this to food must have seemed to some people as quite mad, but Gemma was to prove them all wrong.
Gemma took a job in a kitchen and transferred to a Culinary Arts course getting a first-class honour in culinary management.
Her passion was born and she continued to work and study full time, working hard to go from commis chef to senior-sous chef.
Gemma said, “I worked in a 5-star Hotel in Belfast called the Fitzwilliam Hotel. After that I went to a 2-rosette hotel called The Old Inn, Crawfordsburn.
That was before opening and becoming the executive chef of Alexander's & Co and owner of the pop-up, 'A Peculiar Tea.'
It was through her talents as a pastry chef at her pop-up ‘A Peculiar Tea’ that made the producers of the Great British Menu reach out to her for the show to represent Northern Ireland.
In an interview Gemma described what happened:
"The producers of the show got in touch last July. They'd been following the pop-up, which I'd been running for about a year and half, for a while. It had just been operating in different restaurants in Holywood, Belfast, Newtownards, that sort of thing.”
"They got in touch and asked did I want to give it a go.
There was a shortlist initially, then from that we submitted our menu, and each menu preference was picked to go on the show. We were filming for the Great British Menu in November."
Gemma goes on to say: "I'm a pastry chef by trade, I've never been massively into cooking savoury food, so it was a new challenge for myself. There’re also not too many women chefs in the industry, so I thought, no time like the present to put myself out there. Worst thing that could happen is making a fool of myself on national TV!”
She didn’t make a fool of herself, in fact the quite the opposite.
It was obvious when watching Gemma cook on the show that she relished the 2021 theme of Innovators and Inventors.
“I thought the theme was fantastic. It gave us a chance to learn a lot about people from our own regions and what was invented in our town.” Gemma said in one of her interviews.
"So, all our dishes had to be based on an invention or innovation which came from Northern Ireland," she explains.
"That was quite interesting, because we've got so many inventors who have been overlooked. Viagra, for example, that was started here - who knew that?!”
Since the closing of A Peculiar Tea Gemma has opened Era in Lisburn, just a stone’s throw from Belfast.
Showcasing seasonal ingredients and showing off Chef Gemma’s dedication to her craft it experimented with ways to please the customers and stop the chefs from dying of boredom, so settled on a menu showcasing small plates which lets the chefs show more creativity and give customers more variety.
Find the link to the restaurant Era here!
Link to Gemma’s Instagram here!
Link to watch Gemma’s Cook this recipe on Foodie Book Club YouTube channel:
Recipe
Watch Gemma Austin cook her dish on Foodie Book Club YouTube channel here! YouTube channel:
Gemma reminded me to let everyone know a couple of things:
*Fish only takes a couple of minutes to cook once it’s into the hot chowder liquid
*Don’t over season all at once – you can always put more in but can’t take it out.
Fish Chowder
Serves 4
Roasted Fish bones x 1 kg
Bay leaf x 2
Thyme x 2 sprigs
Celery x 1 sticks
Leek x 1
Onion x 1
Carrot x 1
1 litre of water
1 litre of cream
Garlic cloves x 1
Fennel seeds x 1 tsp
Black peppercorns x 1 tsp
Salt and pepper
Cornflour x 4 tbsp
Fish Chowder by Gemma Austin
Method
Dice all vegetables and saute in large pot. Add thyme, bay, garlic, fennel, peppercorn, fish bones and water to the pot. Bring to to boil then Simmer for 40 mins
Pass stock through a fine sieve and put back in the pot and reduce by 3/4
Add double cream and bring to the boil. Dissolve the cornflour in water and whisk it in into the sauce until thickened. Cook out for 5 mins on a low heat.
6. Add the following to the sauce and cook out until fish is cooked.
Cooked Baby boiled potatoes x 8 diced
Garden peas x 50g
Sliced cooked leeks x 50g
Cooked smoked bacon lardons x 100g
Chowder fish mix x 800g
Once cooked, serve hot.
