Introducing My New Cookbook: Chesnok: Cooking from My Corner of the Diaspora
Recipes from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia
Hello and welcome to Chesnok: Notes from a Post-Soviet Kitchen, a newsletter that explores life and cooking from the Soviet diaspora! If you aren’t subscribed to my newsletter yet, well, here you go:
This past week, I held a fundraiser with Wedge cheese shop in Warren, RI to raise money for the Kyiv-based non-profit Good Bread. Together, we raised over $400 for the organization!! A big thank you to the ladies at Wedge for collaborating and to all those who came through. Good Bread continues to need our support more than ever, so if you have have the resources, please consider donating.
On another note, I will be at Matriarch in Newport, RI for an Everyday Cake book signing on Saturday, May 17. I will be sampling Rhubarb Buttermilk Cake and a Fudgy Devil’s Chocolate Cake, so you know it’s going to be a good time! For more details and to RSVP (it’s free!), click here.
OK, now on to the big news :)
I’m so thrilled to announce that my next cookbook - Chesnok: Cooking from My Corner of the Diaspora: Recipes from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia - will be hitting shelves this September 16!! Published by the fantastic team at Hardie Grant USA.
When I set out to write this cookbook, it was to simply document my family’s immigrant story and recipes as émigrés from Georgia. In the process, the book turned into something much bigger than us—a portrait of the Soviet diaspora as a whole and, of course, a love letter to its food.
In its pages, you’ll find over 100 recipes: the briny ferments, pillowy stuffed buns, and ruffled dumplings of Eastern Europe; herb and garlic-laden braises and walnut-flecked vegetables of the Caucasus; and famous rice pilafs of Central Asia. They are the dishes I grew up eating—passed down to me by mom, aunts, and members of our wider community—that I knew had to be preserved.
Peppered throughout the book are also plenty of personal essays, stories, and photos shot by the brilliant Dane Tashima. There are archival photos, too, plus a collage of pictures from a cookout I got my whole family together for last summer. The end result is a book that is very warm, inviting, and evocative.
In addition to beautifully showcasing the food of the Soviet diaspora, I am proud that Chesnok also speaks to the complexities and contradictions this community continues to face and navigate—in a way that no other cookbook in its genre has before. I was raised in a community of refugees from Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and more. We recognized and celebrated our differences, but we also had larger forces at play connecting us—shared history, trauma, grief, and, yes, language. Everything was very…fluid. It was important for me to write about and share this lived experience with transparency, and I think it will resonate with many in the diaspora, including the tragic and difficult dimension of writing this book amidst the devastation of Russia’s war on Ukraine. I dig deeper into this in my book, of course, but I’ll leave it at that for now :)
Which brings me to: pre-orders! Pre-Orders are immensely important to the success of a book. They signal to bookstores and big online retailers like Amazon that there’s demand and they place orders accordingly. It’s the difference between having a single copy of the book lined up among many on a shelf and a whole stack of them displayed on a front-facing table. More importantly, visibility and exposure for my book uplifts other Soviet diaspora voices. So more attention to those from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia - yes, please! Please consider supporting your local bookstore (this website helps find ones in your area), otherwise you can order Chesnok from all major retailers:
A million thanks to all of you for your continued support and outpour of love and kind words. I hope you’ll love this book as much as I do, and I can’t wait to share more with you in the months to come!
All my best,
Polina
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Hooray! Congrats, Polina. xx
I can't wait to have this book in my hands! The photos are enticing, and the stories of where the food comes from and how the dishes link to lived experiences will be so fun and engaging.