The Belarusian Cookbook / Aliaksandr Biely

Description

The Belarusian Cookbook by Aliaksandr Biely is a culinary story told in over 200 recipes and 50 photographs. This volume is a cultural and historical journey through the kitchens of Belarus, a land shaped by shifting borders, layered identities, and centuries of exchange.

Here you’ll find simple dishes of peasants and the refined dishes of the gentry. Recipes preserved in oral tradition sit beside those drawn from rare cookbooks, including the remarkable 19th-century Kicharka Litewska. Jewish, Tatar, Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian influences run through the pages woven into a cuisine that is local, resilient, and quietly inventive.

Many of these dishes appear in English for the first time. All have been carefully adapted for the modern kitchen, with attention to context, clarity, and accessibility. This book offers a way to explore Belarus through its food – one recipe, one story, one meal at a time.

Grunwald, 2025. 405 pp., hardback.