Anna Karenina and Vodka Equal Great Chemistry

We can thank the Russians for great literature, and of course, for vodka. And this fall we will get both.

Kicking off the winter season is a new movie that creatively re-envisions Leo Tolstoy's great heroine, Anna Karenina.

Directed by Joe Wright and starring the breathtakingly beautiful actress Keira Knightley, it is staged on a stylized inclusive theater set, designed to reflect the closed world of values that sought to control the last days of czarist Russia.

The film’s elegant style is sure to affect culinary trends this fall including vodka cocktails, caviar service and all things grandly Russian. 

Yet few in the culinary world would connect the creation of science’s esteemed Periodic Table of Elements (something every chef interested in molecular experimentation should have) with the creation of Russian vodka.

Yet Dmitri Mendeleev, who labored long and hard to develop the Table, also used his amazing skills to define the precise formula to produce the perfectly balanced vodka – 40% alcohol by volume.

For that we should thank him most hardily. Thank you, thank you!

And yet, there is not a single vodka cocktail that honors him (or Tolstoy) by name.

Perhaps that omission will be correct this winter as the message of the new Anna Karenina movie reminds us all that the vital right to decide our own life’s course is a freedom to be treasured - and protected. 

To that we at Your Culinary World gladly raise our glasses!  We hope you do as well.

Post Note, November 30, 2012: In a creative marketing move that must be a reflection of current trends, the new Anna Karenina movie props are for sale on the Internet, including tables, chairs and mother-of-pearl cutlery. Amazing times these! Beautiful bargains! 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012