Photo: Dining With Dostoevsky

To me, good food is poetry.

Which is why I was thrilled to come across Dining With Dostoevsky, a smart, witty blog from a Californian graduate student named Junsui who dishes up a generous portion of literary allusions along with her recipes.

Junsui is going for the “dreaded ‘d’ word” (her dissertation, in Russian lit)–and in so doing infuses her posts with bits of what she is currently reading. A quotation from the Russian poet Osip Mandelshtam whets the reader’s appetite for “Perfectly Stuffed (Calamari),” the ‘stuff’ of today’s Food Therapy. Here’s the quote, first:

The sea, or Homer – all moves by love’s glow.
Which should I hear? Now Homer is silent,
and the Black Sea thundering its oratory, turbulent,
and, surging, roars against my pillow.

Heeding the call of the sea, Junsui joins forces with “The Greek”—a male character appearing in several of her posts—in making stuffed calamari for dinner. “And not just any old stuffing either,” she proclaims. Theirs was “the perfect combination of feta cheese, green pepper and tomato.”

A Greek friend joins the couple for dinner, as well as a bottle of the Greek aperitif Ouzo. What more could Dining With Dostoevsky wish for? Only “the crashing of the waves and an island breeze.” Whoa.

With such entertaining stories and lip-smacking recipes for any reader–grad student or no–Dining With Dostoevsky will expand your brain as well as your palate.

Here is her recipe for Perfectly Stuffed Calamari.