Lozhka: Alissa Timoshkina on Eastern European Soups & Stews and Spoon Food

In her latest cookbook, Lozhka, award-winning food writer and historian Alissa Timoshkina pens a love letter to Eastern European comfort food.

More than a utensil, the spoon is a conduit for comfort, an extension of the nourishment in our bowl and a small, familiar object with the power to transport us back in time. The seasonal recipes in Lozhka transform humble, everyday ingredients like beans, potatoes and cabbage into deeply flavourful and nourishing meals. Across chapters on soups and broths, stews and grains, dumplings and pasta and sweet dishes, Alissa blends familiar classics with lesser-known regional specialities to celebrate the varied spoonable meals of Eastern Europe. Dishes include Ukrainian Borsch, Bulgarian Tarator and Hungarian Smoky Bean Soup to Armenian Stew with Chickpeas and Lamb, Ashkenazi Fish Dumplings in a Fish Broth, Polish Kopytka dumplings and Ukrainian Rice Pudding with Apples, Cinnamon and Raisins.

Lozhka is both a practical cookbook and a cultural journey through a borderless cuisine shaped by migration, resilience and generosity. Alissa brings together her Eastern European heritage, years of historical research and intimate experience of feeding family and community to create a cookbook about nurture, memory and the foods that take care of us.

Alissa Timoshkina is a London-based food writer, cookbook author and historian specialising in the culinary culture of Eastern Europe. Born in Siberia with Ashkenazi and Eastern Slavic roots, her family history is a defining ingredient in her cooking and writing. Alissa moved to the UK to study, later completing a PhD in Soviet culture and Holocaust history. She is the author Salt & Time and Kapusta, which won the André Simon Special Commendation Award, and writes the Substack newsletter In Her Hands. In response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Alissa co-founded the global fundraising campaign CookForUkraine with her friend, chef and writer, Olia Hercules, raising over £2.5 million for humanitarian relief.

Alissa lives in North London with her partner and their two children.