Timing is everything, and few cookbooks come at an apter moment than Mamushka (Mitchell Beazley, £25) by the excellently named Ukrainian-born Olia Hercules. It is too easy to pun on her strengths, but in these flamboyant recipes and stories, Hercules lifts up not just the cooking of her country but that of others in the former Eastern Bloc out of grey culinary oblivion.
‘Mamushka’ is an invented word, used by Hercules to describe the strong women in her life; her mother, aunts and cousins, not all Ukrainian but with roots in Bessarabia, Siberia, Armenia and Uzbekistan. All were great cooks, and Hercules says she includes very few of her own recipes. This food is as special as Hercules promises — and she writes beautifully about it, too.
This cooking fits as snugly into a British kitchen as Mediterranean or the current trend for Nordic (about which more later), if not more so. With rich and meaty soups for winter, cut through with a ping of acidity from gherkin, sorrel or olive, then herby, multi-coloured salads for summer, fun-to-make noodle dishes and a superb chapter on never seen before breads, this is 2015’s most exciting cookbook.
It is a great year for discoveries, however. Andrew Wong cooks Chinese food in the restaurant once run by his parents in Pimlico, for a following that is easily described as cultish. Being one such cultist I can say that his is a mixture of hugely improved interpretations — his baked roasted pork buns is the giveaway secret recipe of the decade — and his own creativity.
Wong was not meant to be a chef. Finishing his immaculate education with a degree from the LSE, he did the opposite of what his parents dreamed. ‘I am supposed to be a doctor, lawyer or banker as these are professions that my parents can openly tell their friends about when the weekly round of “whose-kids-are-the-most-successful” begins at the dinner table,’ he writes.
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