Sunbathing in Siberia: A Marriage of East and West in Post-Soviet Russia

Начало книги

Jaffa Cake: A round soft sponge type thing topped with orange coloured jelly and covered in a thin layer of chocolate. How was anyone supposed to know a Jaffa is an orange when it doesn’t say so on the box? It said ‘Jaffa Cakes’, meaning that Jaffa was either the name of the company or it was an actual fruit in its own right, like a kiwi or a banana. Or it could have even been a totally made-up name like rock cakes, which to my knowledge contain no rocks at all. How was I supposed to know that Jaffa wasn’t a country, or a person? Where I grew up there was a local man called Jaffa; and although I suspected it wasn’t his real name it was the only name anyone knew him by; and besides, people had all sorts of weird names, especially in the food world, like Captain Birdseye and Mr Kipling. It was a basic logical deduction that led me to believe that, much in the same way Mr Kipling had invented a type of cake, Jaffa Cakes were invented by someone named Jaffa.

Читать дальше →