THE CLASSIC CUISINE OF SOVIET GEORGIA

Margvelashvili—a Canadian married to a Soviet Georgian- -divides her time between Vancouver and Tbilisi, Georgia, and has taken fine advantage of the opportunity to investigate the cooking styles, native spices, and culinary legends of this region rich in colorful and fragrant foods. The result is one of those highly readable cookbooks that convey the cultural context along with the food. As for the food, Georgian cuisine makes heavy use of eggplant, yogurt, wild greens, game, chicken, sour plums, pomegranate syrup, hot paprika, and coriander, both fresh leaves and ground seeds. There's also an ubiquitous paste made of ground coriander, garlic, walnuts, and marigold petals; a leaf called ekala, for which a recommended substitute is sarsaparilla or green brier; and a spice called utseko suneli, for which the closest substitute is powdered fenugreek petals. Since you can't get far without these ingredients (and even the substitutes are a little obscure), we'll be waiting for the list of mail-order sources to come in the finished book.