Baltic: New & Old Recipes: Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania

Description

Baltic showcases the food culture of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, three countries experiencing new energy and interest in their food scene. This book celebrates traditional dishes from each country and adapts them to create nearly 70 delicious recipes suitable for home kitchens the world over. Baltic cuisine is a mixture of Russian and German culinary influences with spices thrown in such as cardamom and cinnamon because the region is a historic trading point with Byzantium. Rather than strive to be authentic to the core, author Simon Bajada has selected those Baltic recipes most suited to international palates, curating a mix that is a combination of traditional and contemporary Baltic cuisine - tasty, basic, hearty food that makes use of simple techniques. Start your day with Curd pancakes with sour cream & blackberry jam, and learn how to make Black bread and Latvian hemp butter, or try some Summer's milk soup. Baltic is your starting point for experimenting with the flavours of this resurgent cuisine. The atmospheric photography captures the colour and vibrancy of the produce, local culture and landscapes as these countries emerge from 50 years of Soviet rule, reconnect with the past and embrace new promise for the future.

Simon Bajada is an Australian food and travel photographer based in Stockholm with his Swedish wife and two children. He has written two books on Nordic food and has worked in a creative capacity on more than twenty cookbooks, including as photographer for Basque Country by Marti Buckley and Phaidon's Naples and Amalfi Coast. Bajada worked as a chef for nine years, before moving into food styling, recipe development and photography, a space where he is able to apply his many talents, particularly for travel and food photography.

'Simon Bajada's enticing and inspiring cookbook Baltic is an ode to a region that, though influenced by outsiders, remains all its own. Bajada presents the post-Soviet cuisines of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as diverse and responsive. They draw upon tradition, playing with spices from periods of Byzantine trading and tricks learned under Soviet restrictions, but they also shift and change according to the bounty of the farmer's market and the local environment.' - Foreword Reviews