Cabbage isn't the only vegetable in Eastern European kitchens

Alissa Timoshkina says that when she was younger, people would tell her, "Oh, all you eat over there is cabbage," referring to any Eastern European country behind the Iron Curtain. Yes, it's a stereotype, she explains, but it's one that was rooted in the dreadful reality of life under the Soviet dictatorship. So what did Alyssa do? She grew up and wrote a cookbook, Kapusta: Vegetable Forward Recipes from Eastern Europe. 

Evan Kleiman: Tell me about you a little bit in your background. Where did you grow up?

Alissa Timoshkina: I grew up in Siberia, in quite a big industrial city called Omsk. For people, to locate it on the map, it's closer to the border with Kazakhstan. So it's a center of Russia towards the Asian side.

How did you get into food and writing about it? Did you grow up in a very food-centered household, living in the Soviet era?

I was born in the '80s, and I caught the last 10 years of the Soviet regime. Obviously, it was quite hard to be a foodie in the way we are foodies now but I was very fortunate that I was brought up by three generations of women in my family. I was raised by my great-grandmother, and I had three wonderful cooks cooking for me when I was a child. So I do have lots of really warm, comforting memories that are set in the kitchen and always set around meals. And I think it's part of the broad Eastern European culinary culture or customs when you don't have much luxury in food but you retain that sense of awe and festivity around eating. So whenever there would be an occasion, people love gathering around the table and putting everything on the table. It's very humble but a very joyful way to do the best with what you have.

It's extraordinary to be raised by a great-grandmother. If there was one food, one dish that you immediately associate with her, what is it?

It would definitely be a poppyseed roll. This is something that's not actually in the book, but she was a Jew from Ukraine, and it's a really iconic Ashkenazi and Eastern European dessert. Very simple, yeasted sweet bread that's rolled with poppyseed paste.

Alissa Timoshkina responds to the constant refrain of "All you eat is cabbage over there" with her cookbook "Kapusta: Vegetable-Forward Recipes from Eastern Europe." Photo courtesy of Quadrille.

I love that stuff. So given all the stereotypes about cabbage, why did you lean into that name for the book, Kapusta, which means cabbage in several Eastern European and Slavic languages. 

Well to me, kapusta was the symbol of Eastern European cuisine. When I was thinking about the book, I wanted to have this almost playful approach. The thing that most people probably would associate kapusta with is either something that's really bland and boring or it's an embodiment of the socialist and the Soviet regime. But I wanted to turn that cliche on its head and actually be truthful about how amazing kapusta is and how resourceful people were to invent so many wonderful dishes with cabbage. 

Let's start with a cabbage recipe. I was intrigued by the cabbage strudel. It can be such a watery vegetable when you cook it, how do you keep your cabbage strudel from getting too damp?

Well, that's the thing about cabbage. I think it's how you cook it. I think people often overcook it, and hence that negative stereotype. But the key with cabbage is to braise it and use lots of salt and lots of butter. You create this really beautiful glaze, almost. Naturally, it is not soggy at all when you season it properly and you use fresh cabbages, as fresh as you can get. It's a really lovely vegetable that's accessible throughout the seasons and at different points in the year. There are different cabbages that are best to use, so if you stay seasonal, if you season well, that's the key to a successful cabbage recipe.

You've divided the book into seven chapters. There's cabbage, beetroot, potato dumplings, carrots, mushrooms, and pickles and ferments, which just feels so East European to me. What countries or regions does the book cover, and how much do their cuisines overlap?

I've decided for the book to look at the "official" definition of Eastern Europe as currently stated by the United Nations, which includes Czechia and Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, and Hungary, and also a small part of Russia, which is technically western Russia, but it's the eastern part of Eastern Europe. So when I delved into the research for the book, I was really blown away by this beautiful dialog that exists between different countries within the region.

As we know, the history of Eastern Europe is a very complicated one. It was a stage for so many world wars and other major conflicts. There were different empires that came and went, and of course, all of that can be told through the language of food, and they're really fascinating. I kind of almost see them as rather than dishes, but see them as culinary genres. So there's almost a genre of cabbage rolls, which is a dish that pretty much every region, every part of Eastern Europe, has and loves, but the way that dish is cooked is a little bit different.

"It's part of the broad Eastern European culinary culture or customs when you don't have much luxury in food but you retain that sense of awe and festivity around eating," says Alissa Timoshkina. Photo by Laura Edwards.

How about a carrot recipe? Maybe the Carrot Tapenade or the Carrot, Honey and Twarog Fritters?

Yeah, the fritters are a really delicious kind of breakfast tea/dessert recipe. It's inspired by a dish called syrniki, which is a Eastern European cottage cheese fritter. Very popular in Poland and in Ukraine and Belarus. I felt it'd be quite nice to add a buttery, jammy carrot that's stewed with honey. It was a bit of an improvisation but obviously sticking to the authentic tradition of cooking fritters with cottage cheese. And it was really fun. 

When I was researching different cottage cheese recipes, I also came across a story, or a historical background that actually, the tradition of making cottage cheese fritters goes back to the Ashkenazi community, who brought it with them when they were moving away from Italy and Spain. Initially, cooking with ricotta cheese was the tradition. And when they came to Eastern Europe, obviously there was no ricotta and there was twarog. That's how this very popular dish came about. I was really mind blown to realize that because whenever I make syrniki in the UK, I often use ricotta cheese, thinking that I'm substituting something and making it less authentic. Actually, it turns out, if you go back far enough in the history of the dish, ricotta is the original cheese that has been used in the fritters.

Potato knishes don't require yeast, which makes them easy to prepare. Photo by Laura Edwards.

I love that story. Potatoes are another staple of Eastern European cuisines, and I happen to really love making knishes. I don't do it often but when I do it, it's just so much fun. You have this great quote where you write, "I'm afraid I have to say that Slavic piroshki  stand no chance against their Ashkenazi siblings – knishes." Why is that? And what makes this particular recipe so special?

Well, it's obviously a very subjective opinion. I just love the pastry. For one, it's a lot easier to make because it doesn't require yeast and it doesn't require as much time, so there is no proving process. Also, the taste and the texture, they have this really lovely flakiness and butteriness to it, which you don't really get with piroshki buns. And it was really amazing with something that I didn't have the time to add to the book. 

When I was shooting the book, my mom was there to help me with my baby, and I was telling her about knish, because to me, it was this new big, big thing that I was obsessed with. So she didn't know the name knish but when I gave her to try one, she immediately said, "Oh, this is exactly what my granny used to cook for me when she was young." For some reason, that recipe got, I don't know, sidetracked, and never made it into our daily repertoire but it was really heartwarming to discover that knish was there in my family, just somehow they were lost. I almost intuitively felt so drawn to them and got completely obsessed.

I love that. Very lovely. And of course, we can't have this conversation without talking about pickled and fermented foods. Pick one of your ferments to talk about. Do you want to talk about the classic sauerkraut and the master method? 

Yeah, I think it's great to start with the basics. There's a real magic in fermenting, where all you need is salt and a lovely kapusta head, and that's it. So many people have done quite a lot of fermentation classes, and so many people still can't get their head around that you don't need to add anything else, that the liquid comes out of the cabbage. You don't make a brine. There's no vinegar to create that tang and sharpness. It's literally kapusta and salt, and you can add some other things to flavor it.

In my recipe, I also add a bit of carrots for sweetness, and the sugar in the carrot enhances the fermentation process, so it speeds up the fermentation process. I add a bit of caraway seeds and a bay leaf so it gives it a bit of nuttiness from the caraway seeds. But you don't really have to do that either. It's just amazing how multi-layered and how complex that flavor is. And that's, again, the beautiful kapusta.