I’ve been looking forward to Alissa Timoshkina’s Lozhka ever since it was announced some many months ago, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to have this beautiful book in my possession now. Lozhka simply means ‘spoon’ in Ukrainian, and yes, I know that for several years Private Eye ran a column called Me and my Spoon, mocking a certain sort of scraping-the-barrel feature, but Lozhka is miles away from any kind of empty filler: it’s not a huge book, but in terms of its content and meaning, it is substantial. The food it dwells on is what I call, in Simply Nigella and my life generally, Bowlfood, and more specifically, as the subtitle puts it, “Eastern European Soups, Stews & Other Things We Eat with A Spoon”. Such recipes include, for example, Żurek, the Polish soup with wild mushrooms and fermented rye; Creamy Potato and Cod Soup with Caramelised Cabbage; Hungarian Smoky Bean Soup (Jókai Bableves); Czech Goulash Soup; Romanian Green Pea Stew with Chicken Meatballs and Lots of Dill (Mancare de Mazare); Mushroom Mačanka Stew with Potato Pancakes; Volga Tatar Beef and Dill Pickle Stew (Azu); Udmurt Pelmeni Dumplings in Clear Beef Broth; Tatar Manti Dumplings; Christmas Vushka Dumplings in Beetroot Broth; and from the sweets to be eaten with a spoon, Hungarian Cottage-cheese Dumplings (Túrógómbóc); No-Churn Vanilla Ice Cream with a Poppy-Seed Ripple; Hungarian Plum Dumplings (Szilvás Gombóc); Spiced Blackberry Rye Crumble and Caraway Custard; and the utterly compelling Czech Buns in Vanilla Cream (Buchtičky s Krémem). In the fullness of time, I hope to be adding this recipe to nigella.com, but right now I really felt the need to bring you a recipe which for me sums up the comfort to be found in every spoonful that underpins this book. It’s the Garlic Soup, which also may come in particularly handy as the Northern Hemisphere enters the flu and cold season!
Lozhka by Alissa Timoshkina (Quadrille, £28).
Photography by Kim Lightbody.
