Hi! I’m Polina Chesnakova and the author of Hot Cheese, Everyday Cake, and the forthcoming cookbook, Chesnok: Cooking from My Corner of the Diaspora, which explores food of the Soviet diaspora through my family’s immigrant story and recipes. I currently reside in Rhode Island and up until last year, lived in Seattle and worked as the culinary director at Book Larder. My work has been featured in The Washington Post, Saveur, Food 52, The Kitchn, culture magazine, The Seattle Times, among other publications.

What is Chesnok?

I often joke that I am (for better or for worse) a byproduct of the Soviet Union. My mother is Russian and was born in Georgia, my father is Armenian and was born in Azerbaijan. They both were raised in Tbilisi, and I was born in Ukraine - where a large part of my family still lives (or at least did up until the war). We emigrated from Tbilisi to Rhode Island in 1992 and joined a community that comprised of refugees from all over the Soviet Union. Ukrainian varenyky and Uzbek plov were as much a part of our table as were Russian pirozhky and Georgian khachapuri.

Chesnok is the Russian word for “garlic,” and is the root of my last name, Chesnakova. It also happens to be a cornerstone ingredient in Georgian kitchens. I originally started Chesnok as a blog in 2015, as a tribute to my roots in both Eastern Europe and the Caucasus that at the same time tapped into the myriad other cultures that influenced me as a first-generation kid growing up in the Soviet diaspora.

With Russia’s war on Ukraine, I’ve been thinking a lot about my upbringing and how to reconcile this idea of collective identity with ethnic, and even national, identity. In my opinion, how we choose to navigate and grapple with this complex legacy makes all the difference.

Why subscribe?

My aim in turning Chesnok into a newsletter is to shed light on food and culture from this part of the world, while also speaking to the complexity and the nuance of the post-Soviet immigrant experience. How? Through recipes, stories, interviews, and more.

I hope that my words and my food will resonate with the millions that share a similar, messy background, as well as the many who have traveled to or have studied the region. And for those who have only recently tuned into that part of the world due to the war in Ukraine: I hope I can give you deeper insight and appreciation for the cultural hodgepodge and nuance that is the post-Soviet diaspora.

And of course, on a personal level, I’ll also be using this space to keep you up to date on happenings (classes, pop-ups, book-signings, etc!), current musings, personal recs, and the like :)

Thank you to everyone who has found their way here. Welcome!
Polina