HEARTY RUSSIAN FAYRE

Dumplings...my sweet little luscious Russian dumplings...better than sex, we wolfed down a number of servings on the Eastern front - delicious little parcels of hearty meat, delicately hand-made then boiled and drowned in melted butter, vinegar and sour cream. Divine. Blini with caviar, tangy, satisfying fruit pastries drenched in rich cream (below), one could truly indulge every gluttonous whim in Moscow and Petersburg and my travelling compadre and I eagerly obliged. Then theres the handsome samovar (below), the traditional tea making urn common to many a Russian household (including Tolstoy's Moscow crib) decorated with shushki, the small, mildy sweet bread rings often accompanying tea.

In Moscow we loved this restaurant below (memory and Inspector Google both failing me on the name), evoking the atmosphere of an old Soviet apartment. Admittedly a cosily decorated bourgeois number, rather than a depressing communal 1930s one inhabited by drunken poets and elderly peasant headscarf-rocking babushkas. Complete with singing canary, waitresses in cute uniforms and an inquisitive house cat stalking the diners, the ambience was charming and the authentic Ruski nosh utterly delicious. Just the ticket to load up on before sweating out the toxins at the Sanduny banya, the historic Russian baths frequented by the likes of Clinton (Bill and George)...not that I in anyway advocate doing this with a skinful of top-grade voddie coursing through the veins.

Russian food supplies in London are available at the fabulous Kalinka store on Queensway. Primrose Hill's Trojka is a favourite restaurant of mine, for its authentic, cheap traditional food, wide range of heart-stopping vodkas, vibrant crimson interiors and traditional music.