My Food Odyssey - Lithuanian Cooking: Nine of My Favourite Traditional Lithuanian Dishes

Book excerpt: This book is, essentially, a love story. The story of an Irish girl who fell in love with a Lithuanian man, then fell in love with his country and its food. The book contains nine of my favourite traditional Lithuanian dishes, including kugelis (potato pudding), cepelinai (potato dumplings), koldunai (pasta dumplings) and saltibarsciai (cold beet soup). The recipes are explained in detail with step-by-step instructions and illustrations where required, making this book ideally suited to anyone attempting these dishes for the first time. Substitute ingredients are suggested where certain ingredients might be hard to find outside of Lithuania. Each recipe is accompanied by a short preamble about my life in Lithuania and how the recipe was developed. The book also contains a number of stunning photographs of the Lithuanian landscape and wildlife.