Lozhka: Eastern European Soups, Stews & Other Things We Eat with a Spoon
Shipping calculated at checkout
Lozhka is the Russian word for spoon, an everyday utensil that provides Alissa Timoshkina with a way of exploring the varied cuisines of Eastern Europe. In this collection of 80 recipes, the food writer and co-founder of #CookforUkraine looks beyond national boundaries to the shared traditions of soups, stews, porridges, dumplings, and other dishes eaten with a spoon. Drawing on Ukrainian, Jewish, Tatar, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak, and Roma cooking, she considers how migration, geography, and generations of home cooks have shaped the region’s food.
Among the recipes is krupnik, a thick stew of pearl barley, wild mushrooms, root vegetables, and chicken broth, familiar in Poland, Belarus, and western Ukraine. Lamb dumplings called manti are served with red pepper sauce and garlicky yogurt, and other dishes reflect the region’s fondness for fresh herbs, fermented flavors, grains, and slowly simmered broths. Timoshkina pays particular attention to the resourcefulness of traditional cooking, in which modest ingredients are transformed through patient preparation and careful seasoning. Her interpretations often favor vegetables and a lighter touch without abandoning the flavors and techniques of earlier generations.
Recipes are accompanied by stories that place these dishes within their historical and cultural settings, revealing connections among communities whose culinary traditions have long overlapped. Rather than presenting Eastern European cooking as a fixed collection of national specialties, Lozhka explores the ways food travels, changes, and persists, often in the familiar form of something served in a bowl.
Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.
Published on October 15, 2026
