Nordic cuisine has garnered interest recently, but the nearby Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, also deserve attention. They rely on similar ingredients like fish (especially smoked), potatoes, caraway, cabbage, dairy, and foraged and fermented products. This new, beautifully photographed book that explores their cuisines fine-tunes the character of each. Estonia is the most Nordic of them, there are Russian influences in Latvia, and Lithuania, once an empire, is more diverse, with a Jewish component. The book offers dishes like hearty soups, a hotpot of smoked fish with potatoes and cream, stuffed cabbage, yeasted potato bread, a kugel-like shredded potato dish from Lithuania and Latvian butter seasoned with toasted hemp seeds. Come spring I plan to try fresh cucumbers with honey.
“Baltic: New and Old Recipes: Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania” by Simon Bajada (Hardie Grant Books, $35)
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