A Taste of Summer in Winter: Plum Pie

In December, I virtually hosted a conversation about holiday foods at America House in Kyiv.  Inna Dudnyk, an aspiring graphic artist who lives to cook,  brought a beautiful plum pie to--and even brought photos to share of the whole process.  We're so pleased that we persuaded her to write this guest post about the whole process. Enjoy her great baking! Do you also have a recipe to share with the Pickle Project?  Be in touch!

In my family I am the one who usually bakes because my mom absolutely hates baking. Even though she has this notebook with bunch of recipes and what’s ironic is that a big section of it is dedicated to all kinds of cakes, pies and even pizza.  This is my aunt’s recipe and it doesn’t actually have directions so I just used simple logic and assumed some of the things. For example, it doesn’t say if the butter is supposed to be soft or melted . It just says: mix all the ingredients for the dough, spread it over the baking dish, fill it with the filling of your choice, cover it and then just bake it. In the original recipe instead of plums she uses sour apples, but you can use any sour fruit. I’m using plums from my mom’s garden. We had a great harvest this year so I’m making everything with plums: pancakes, pies, cakes and sometimes even oatmeal. To be honest, at this point I’m a little sick of the plums.

The ingredients you will need for this pie:

1 egg

1 cup of flour

50 grams of butter

500 grams of plums

150 grams of cottage cheese

½  tea spoon of baking soda

½  tea spoon cinnamon

So, first thing you do is mix half of the cup of sugar and an egg until the sugar mostly dissolves. In the second bowl mix soft butter and cottage cheese. Then mix the contents of both bowls together. But of course you can just gradually add the ingredients to the first bowl. Don’t know why I used two of them in the first place. I probably thought that it would look better in pictures. But afterwards you get to wash more dishes.

After you mixed all of the ingredients together start gradually adding the flour until the dough gets too thick for the mixer and then mix it with a spoon.  Don’t forget to add baking soda to the flour.

Prepare your working surface by dusting some flour over the dry surface, so the dough won't stick when it's time to knead.

Put the dough on a working surface and start to knead. I ended up adding more flour because the dough didn’t have the consistency I wanted. And even after that no matter how much I kneaded it, it just kept sticking to my hands and the table. I know that usually the dough is not supposed to be sticky but with this one who knows.

Cut it into two pieces.

Roll out the first piece of the dough and then spread it evenly over the baking dish.

If you’re using frozen plums, defrost them in a refrigerator overnight. Or if you are an impatient person like me you can leave them on a table for an hour and then run cool water over them for several minutes to speed up the process. Just be sure to drain off the water completely. After that spread the plums over the unbaked pastry shell and then sprinkle them with cinnamon.

Roll out the second piece of the dough and cover the pie. Make multiple punctures with a fork. Pinch the edges together. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes at 180 C until golden brown.

Feeding EuroMaidan

When we began the Pickle Project, we began with an idea that the ways in which Ukrainians approach food and sustainability were something to be proud of, something Americans could learn from.  But our 2011 conversations in Kyiv, Donetsk, Odessa and L'viv helped us understand more:  that talking about food, eating together and sharing a meal were fundamentally democratic activities, making us all equal and providing a safe place to share ideas, even with strangers. 

Like many of you who care about Ukraine, I've spent the last two weeks checking out my Facebook feed (for English speakers, check out Euro-Maidan in English on Facebook) reading the Kyiv Post's continous online coverage, and hearing from friends and colleagues in Ukraine about the protests in Kyiv and throughout the country.  And, if you looked closely, even from thousands of miles away,  you could see our beliefs about food made real. 

This post is just to share a few images from the protests in the center of Kyiv, just blocks from where I lived for a few months.  Dozens, if not hundreds, of people (including Miss Ukraine 2013) have stepped up to make sure everyone, even policemen, are fed warm soup or served a cup of tea.  I've read that citizens from Poltava and other locations have sent food, local restaurants have gone into the streets to serve free food, and in the video at the end of the post, Adli from Crimea makes plov.  With all these images, photographers, I've tried to credit you as I can--if I missed you, please let me know.  If you've got more photos to share, please do.

What have I seen?  As you can see here, cold sandwiches of meat and cheese, homemade varenky in a pot carefully wrapped in newspaper to stay warm,  kasha, plov, those boxes of cookies seen in every subway underpass; cups of tea and coffee, and giant cauldrons of borscht, borscht, borscht.  But more importantly, what I've seen is volunteer action, of a kind that is rarely seen in Ukraine.  Incredible to watch.  On this cold night, our hearts are with you.

Images, top to bottom:  Several of these photos are by Vassil Garnisov,  others from Euro-Maidan on Facebook or the Kyiv Post. The image of tea being served to policemen is by Vitalli Sediuk on Twitter.  Video by Babylon13,  who are creating great short video documentaries about EuroMaidan.  You can find others on YouTube.

New and Old in Kyiv

I just spent a few days in Kyiv on this trip to Ukraine, as the May holidays approached. Kyiv is increasingly an international city and although I didn't get to any markets, a couple quick snapshots convey the changing nature of Ukrainian food in this capital city.  

Somehow over the last year and a half, many the food carts in the city all adopted a sort of Ukrainian village style--so now you see these (above) faux houses on faux wooden wheels all over the center.   In the year or so before that,  tiny expresso coffee trucks popped up--they're now a really common sight.  But because it's spring, I saw these coffee trucks doing double duty--they were also selling kvas from blue and yellow barrels.  So the coffee trucks have replaced the once familiar big kvas tanks that were a harbinger of spring.

Perhaps most surprising was my encounter with a raw food restaurant, just off Maidan.   I pondered villagers eating their dandelion greens and foraged berries while I ate my green soup and fresh pressed juice.  Ever-changing Kyiv-- a reminder that our food cultures are always combinations of old and new.

Kitchen Talk

Sofia's Kitchen, Verkhovyna, Carpathian Mountains

I have heard native-born Ukrainians refer to the language spoken by members of the Ukrainian diaspora, living in the US and Canada as “kitchen Ukrainian,” a not-quite contemporary Ukrainian, often with English or other influences. It is also meant to reflect the fact that many first and second generation Ukrainian Americans and Canadians learned Ukrainian from their mother or grandmothers, usually while they helped with cooking. Indeed, several friends with Ukrainian roots that grew up in the US and Canada have shared these kinds of insights. 

The Beekeeper's kitchen, Donbass Oblast

Social scientists actually use the term “diaspora language” to describe the dialects or variations of languages spoken in places of migration. These languages evolve, as all languages do, absorbing new influences and changes to their community. In the context of rapid change in Ukraine, as well as long absences from the country, language and food practices seem to be the most tangible connection to this culture for people with Ukrainian roots living in other parts of the world.

Svitlana, in her Kyiv kitchen

Through the Pickle Project, we too have learned a kind of kitchen language, Ukrainian, Russian and Crimean Tatar, spending time, mostly with women, talking about food. Standing over stoves, hunched over plants in the garden: Як ви сказали? How do you say it? 

Lenura's kitchen in Ak-Meshet, Crimea

Maybe it is because that is where Mama is, or, where the food is, or, where the work is.. Everyone is always hanging out in the kitchen. Included here are photos of some kitchens that we have been lucky enough to spend time in.

The 1970's kitchen, Pyrohiv National Museum of Folk Architecture

Of course, nothing foments fervent debate or connections to identity and culture quite like language in Ukraine. So, please consider this an open invitation to share your own thoughts, stories and experiences about the intersection of food practice, cultural preservation and food. 

Historic Photo, Ukrainian Market

Because Why Shouldn’t Uncooked, Lightly Cured Bacon Be Considered Delicious?

Another guest post by Caleb Zigas.

As far as museum experiences go, the Bulgakov Museum on a torn-up street in Kyiv surpasses nearly every expectation for a memorial to an author, even in a country with an impressively high literacy rate. The Museum is as much memory as emotion, and it was here that we had our first conversation.

At that point, my culinary experience of the entirety of Ukraine, let alone Kyiv, consisted of the following; Crimean Tatar food in a basement restaurant, that delicious funnel-cake-wrapped hot dog on the street, multiple markets with their varieties of pickles, a new-wave Ukrainian restaurant with hemp beer and incredible furnishings, several coffee shops, an organic demo marketplace with roasted pig, amazing soup and horseradish vodka in a tent under the rain with new friends and Puzata Hata, a Ukranian cafeteria-style chain with an open kitchen and servers in national garb. On the table at the Bulgakov we began with salo and vodka.

One of the reasons that not only have I always loved food but also working in food lies in the stock I put in hard work and in craftsmanship—in pride. I believe that this happens at tables, benches and backyards across the world, even when there is scarcity. But Ukraine was home not only to significant amounts of death in the  20^th Century but also home to one of the worst famines of the same period. And so scarcity perhaps takes on a different meaning.

Our conversation began here, with scarcity, although somewhat unintentionally. I began these conversations in Kyiv with an interest in understanding who made what, why they made it and whether or not there was a market for it. My assumption about the changes that urbanization would bring revolved around the mass industrialization of foods and, therefore, not necessarily the disappearance of those foods but rather their replacement with more commercial versions of the same. In my own life, especially in America, my antidote to industrial-scale food production lies in taste. In deliciousness. Admittedly, it is thin ice to stand on, or, rather, a fairly subjective stance from which to stand, but something about me believes it, and so I stand.

And so it was fascinating to hear from Roman, a Ukrainian organic dairy farmer, that the National table relies on volume, or, in his words, calories. In his telling, at a crucial point in our conversation, the very value of the meal one offers not only resides in tastiness but also mostly in the quantity of food offered to guests. Now, I believe as much as anyone in never running out of food, but given the history of place and the sincerity of statement there is weight to thinking about this.

Could it be that Americans, or, for that matter, cultures unaware of the pangs of recent hunger, prioritized taste in an appropriate way? I thought about meals I’d eaten in El Alto, Bolivia, an incredibly poor place with a similar subsistence economy, and the pride a family would take in the taste of its offerings and found such a simple volume equation to be unsatisfactory. But the rest of the Ukrainians at the table agreed; taste, they said, was overrated.

But then why go to Puzata Hata? Because it felt like home? Because it was cheap? Why go anywhere for that matter? Why differentiate? The issue of taste runs central to food. Yes, we all eat to live, and the majority of us (despite ridiculousness like Man Against Food on the Food Network) do not live to eat. We live because we eat—in so many ways. And so I am given to wondering about the perception of taste. Not the way one piroshky feels compared to another but, rather, what the word itself means and what it gains and loses in translation. And so at the first of these conversations I find myself questioning if I even know how to explain my very fundamental relationship with eating in a way that is true to translation. In a way that will convey my appreciation for taste. For all kinds of taste.

And to do that while eating salo gives one quite a contemplative moment.

Images, from top:  
Salo, at the Pickle Project Conversation at the Bulgakov Museum
Bulgakov Museum interior, courtesy of the Bulgakov Museum
Puzata Hata food line, photo by Caleb Zigas
Kyiv Pickle Project participants
Caleb talks taste
Organic milk and honey, homemade pickles, brought to share at the conversation in Kyiv.

Chatting and Chewing in Kyiv

As Caleb mentioned in the previous post, the first in this autumn’s series of Pickle Project Community Conversations took place at the Bulgakov Museum. The museum is perched on the renowned Andriyivsky Uzviv, a steep, curvy little street that winds down a Kyivan hill. The museum observes the life and works of the beloved Ukrainian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, most famous for his novel The Master and Margarita, the subversive commentary on the oppression of the Soviet Regime.

The building itself was Bulgakov’s home for a time and the Museum uses the house’s rooms to imaginatively braid together the themes from Bulgakov’s own life with that of the Turbin family, featured in his novel The White Guard, set against the chaos of the Russian Civil War. The Bulgakov Museum is known for inventive programming that often includes food traditions, drawing on Bulgakov’s life and works. For me, the Bulgakov Museum has a warm, familiar and almost magical quality. Thus, it made a wonderful and fitting setting for the event.

The evening began with cheerful mingling and refreshments. Between refreshing sips of icy vodka, a personal favorite, and nibbles of black bread and salo, participants chatted and jotted down responses to questions posted on the walls with thick markers. These included “What is your favorite meal? and “What makes food natural?” The crowd was a lively mix that included diplomats and dairy farmers, rural development specialists, municipal managers, grandmas, college students and teenagers.

A sequence of deeper discussions ensued, sparked by mini-presentations around the food-centric themes of personal memory, entrepreneurship, science and sustainability. We told stories about our grandparents and grandchildren. We laughed about why we hate some foods and love others. We talked about what it means to make food for your children and if a person can actually “taste the love.” We explored the element of trust in our food system and what our national dishes really are. There was technical tête-à-tête, about calves’ intestines and compliance requirements among the dairy professionals in the room, and the salt-to-water ratio for good pickles between experimental American picklers (ahem..) and seasoned Ukrainian ones.

To accompany these exchanges, there were second and third courses to our feast. We enjoyed kasha with sautéed onions, golden cabbage and squashes with caramelized pork. There were home-made pickles and marinated mushrooms! Oh my! Then, we had coffee, tea and sweets.

The evening concluded with the exchanging of home canned goods, raw dairy products, hugs and kisses. Set in the Bulgakov Museum’s comfortable space, the event and dialogue offered many levels of engagement and was enriched by the openness and energy of the participants. And, we headed out into the dark Kyivan night, a bit brighter by the connections we'd made.

The Bulgakov Museum maintains an interesting blog and Linda has written more about the Bulgakov Museum at the Uncataloged Museum.

A Round of Thanks!

During our recent trip to Ukraine, we found a vast, beautiful, changing country of great diversity, both in communities and landscape. We saw dramatic coastlines, vast fertile fields of wheat, high mountain meadows, large cities and tiny villages, all with a wide array of foods and traditions.

However, more important are the many people we met along the way and those that continue to support the Pickle Project, without whom our work would not be possible.  Our partners are a cornerstone of the Pickle Project. Their enthusiastic on-the-ground assistance during this trip and ongoing collaborations make a great difference in our work. Specific thanks to:

· Ihor and Tania Poshyvailo from the Ivan Honchar Museum, Kyiv (with translation assistance from Valentina Bochkovska)

· Valentyna Sakhenko from Eko-Art, Donetsk

· Hannah Shelest from Promotion of Intercultural Cooperation, Odessa

· Ihor Savchuk, Sofiya Kosarchyn, Bozhena Zakaliuzhna and Olha Kotska from the Centre for Cultural Management, L’viv

Our thanks also go to a very long list (we hope we haven’t missed anyone) of wonderful people who provided translation, food and cultural research suggestions and ideas, transportation support and coordination, a place to rest our weary heads, a lovely meal with family, and so much more. In no particular order, we raise an appreciative glass to:

• The entire Leonenko family, Donetsk (and Irina, there in spirit!)
• Svitlana and Vladimir Salamatov, their family and neighbors,  Kyiv
• Neshet, Lenura, Serdar and Safie Seytaptiev, Ak-Meshet, Crimea
• Katia Burkush, Kyiv
• Barb Weiser, Peace Corps Volunteer, Simferopol/Ak-Meshet, Crimea
• Cheryl Pratt, Peace Corps Volunteer, Sovetskiy, Crimea
• Lidia Lykhach, Kyiv/US
• Galina Chumak, Donetsk Art Museum, Donetsk
• Staff at the village museum in Prelestno, Donetsk’a Oblast
• Staff at the Greek museum in Sartana, Donetsk’a Oblast
• Workers at the restaurant in Sartana,  Donetsk’a Oblast
• Lyubov, Ethnographer from the Museum of Local History, Donetsk
• Alie Yuldasheva, Simferopol
• Arzy Emirova, Crimea
• Christi-Anne Hofland, L’viv
• Eugene Chervony (L’viv) and family, L’vivska Oblast
• Ania Ivanchenko, Donetsk
• Alexandra Kirichenko, Donetsk
• Carina, Donetsk
• Natalia Bogachova, Odessa
• Olya Kik, Oksana Terteka and Halja Pavlyshyn, L’viv
• Nataliya Stryamets and the entire Stryamets family, L’viska Oblast
• Olya and Mykola in Akreshori, Ivano-Frankivs'ka oblast
• Cheesemakers Vasyl, Mykolya, Mykolya and others
• All the market vendors everywhere!

Of course, last but certainly not least, we also extend our warmest gratitude to our Kickstarter backers, as well as key supporting partners Shelburne Farms and the Trust for Mutual Understanding, that enable us to conduct this vital fieldwork, continue to expand our network and further build the Pickle Project!