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.

Baba Valya's Green Borsch

 Returned Peace Corps volunteer Kim McCray shares another food memory--about one of my favorite dishes in Ukraine as well.  It's a perfect dish to celebrate the approach of a green spring.  If you try Kim's recipe,  send us a picture! 

Everyone knows about borsch.  In fact, I would place a pretty high wager on the fact that if the average American was asked to give a examples of Ukrainian/Russian cuisine, almost all would say borsch and vodka.  However, while the red beet borsch that most Americans know so well is the only borsch variety to have made the jump across the pond to find popularity in the U.S., it is not the only type of borsch that Ukrainians enjoy. Now, I love red borsch just as much as the next gal, but if given a choice between red borsch and it’s green counterpart, I will choose the latter almost every time - partly because I prefer the taste, but partly because it is green borsch that reminds me of Valya. 

Valya was my next-door neighbor in my village of Priyutivka, and in our small apartment building of eight flats, she was the person I came to know best. To a certain extent our living arrangements made such a relationship almost unavoidable, at least that is how it seemed at first, as I became aware that my every move was being watched by my neighbors, with Valya, who I eventually came to refer to as my “Ukrainian grandmother”, taking the lead in this hobby of “American-watching”. At first it made me uncomfortable.  But as time progressed I came to value their watchful eyes, as I knew very well that anytime someone rang my doorbell, Valya was peeping out the eye-hole from her caddy-corner apartment to make sure that everything was all right.  If it was a friend or coworker or someone else I obviously knew, I never heard a peep from her. But the few times when I opened my door to a stranger (usually someone from the utility company or someone lost and knocking on the wrong door), Valya was there in a jiffy, coming to my aid and translating when necessary.  I came to count on her as my own home security system.

Besides keeping an eye on who came to my door, Valya also fed me. Often. The feeding didn’t begin right away, but developed as a result of Valya’s sizing me up and finding me in some suspicious characteristics. First of all, I was an American girl, an old maid at 23 with no prospects, living all alone in the middle of nowhere.  Strike one, two, and three.  On top of that, I could not pass a bag inspection for the life of me.   

Bag inspections, as I have since dubbed them, were fairly commonplace throughout my Peace Corps service, but especially at the beginning.  Several times in my first month in the apartment, Valya would intercept me on my way home from the village shop.  She would then open my bag and paw around, announcing to the other babusyas on the bench the sorry evidence of my helplessness that she saw inside. “Oh no, don’t buy the canned mackerel in that oil, you must buy it in water…” or “Kimusia, why are you paying such prices for carrots? Go into the city where they’re cheaper”, or worst of all, “Slava Bogu (My God), this pelmeny is storebought trash!” 

After failing several of such bag inspections, it became apparent to Valya that I did not know how to shop OR cook, and so she took me under her wing.  For the next year and a half, at least once or twice a week my doorbell would ring and I would open it to find Valya standing there in her slippers holding out a mason jar full of cherry compote or an old tea towel wrapped around a half loaf of bread. But of all the food that Valya gave me, it was green borsch that became the emblem of our relationship.  I still remember the first time I tasted it.  My doorbell rang and Valya handed me a bowl of a green broth soup with half of a hard-boiled egg floating in the center.  I asked what it was.  “Zelyony Borsh” she replied.  Well, green borsch I had never seen, so I tried it on the spot and couldn’t believe how savory yet refreshing it was. I praised her and asked for the recipe and hurried inside to finish the bowl.  A couple of minutes later the doorbell rang again, and instead of coming back with the recipe, Valya had returned to my door to give me the rest of the pot of soup! 

As the summer waned and sorrel, a key ingredient vanished, Valya stopped making me “summer borsch” for a time, but the next spring it was back in her repertoire.  I think I can safely say that Valya brought me green borsch at least 15 or 20 times, and each time it hit the spot.  Sometimes I’d eat it hot, sometimes cold, but always with a dollop of sour cream and a slice of black bread.

Before I left Ukraine I did manage to get Valya’s recipe, and have included it below. In the typical fashion of any cook who has made a dish countless times, Valya did not write down any ingredient amounts, but I have added the amounts that I have used when making this dish. 

Valya’s Green Borsch

Ingredients:

100 grams of pork
3-4 big potatoes
2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
sorrel (2 cups fresh)
salt
sour cream
dill (optional)

Preparation:

Fill a pot with water and put it on the fire to boil. Cut the meat into medium pieces. Put the meat into boiling water. Take off the skin of potatoes. Chop the potatoes in medium pieces. Let the meat cook for about 4 or 5 minutes and then add the potatoes and sorrel and the egg slices. Boil everything 10-15 minutes more. Add salt to taste and add sour cream on top.

Images:  Top:  green borscht, via Kansas City with the Russian Accent ,  Center:  Kim with Valya and Ivan.

Ukrainian Cuisine: The Cookbook

In our conversations in Ukraine, we've discovered that most Ukrainian cooks don't use recipes when cooking traditional Ukrainian dishes.  Some now go to the Internet to try new things--Chinese or Italian, for instance, but most home cooks learned at the kitchen table with their mother or grandmother.

So imagine my surprise when my friend Gwen Spicer gave me a Ukrainian cookbook, called, simply, Ukrainian Cuisine, published in 1975 in English, in the Soviet Union (in Kyiv) that features all sorts of recipes and as well, provides a picture of a particular time and place, as presented in a form that perhaps doesn't always represent reality (just think about how few of our American meals actually resemble those in cookbooks or magazines).

In the introduction, the authors (H.I. Georgievsky, M.E. Melman, E.A. Shadura, and A. S. Shemjakinsky) write,

The consumer can now buy a wider variety of nutritious foodstuffs.  Farming and the food industry supplies the market with greater quantities of better and more wholesome food than ever before.  Canned products and processed foods help the housewife reduce the time needed to cook tasty family meals.

The cookbook,  like all instruction books, is prescriptive.  "To cook tasty meals you must follow the recipe and keep to the cooking time indicated."  And referencing Pavlov,  they advise that "to arouse the appetite and ensure that meals are thoroughly enjoyed, the important thing is eating at regular hours,"  to establish a proper reflex and healthy appetite.   They recommend simple foods, without frills, quoting the Ukrainian folk proverb, "Eat simply and you'll live to a hundred."

But what are the recipes?  Borscht gets its own chapter, with 24 different variations.   I'm particularly intrigued by the regional variations.  There is are recipes for borscht from Poltava, from Kiev, from Volyn, from Chernihiv, Galicia, Lvov, and Crimea as well as Krivy Rog cold borscht.  There are recipes for varenyky with liver and salt pork;  heart and lungs; cottage cheese; potato, potato and mushrooms; beans and mushrooms; and of course sweet varenyky with cherries, plums, or poppy seeds.

The home canning chapter is extensive.  Detailed recipes provide information on pickling cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet peppers, eggplants, spiced greens watermelons, beets, cabbage and more.  You can learn how to marinate mushrooms, "Place the mushrooms in rows caps down or pierce with wooden matches which are then inserted into a special staff.  Another way to dry mushrooms is to string them up on thread or thin cord and hang them up to dry."

There's lots of cooking hints including:

• Cook pearl-barley before adding it to the soups if you want to avoid that blueish tinge.
• It is easier to clean slipper fish if you coat your fingers with salt.
• Corn on the cob should be boiled without removing the husk and silk.  Salt just before it is done.
• To stop milk from brimming over, rub the edge of the saucepan with butter

And some tips for setting and serving Continental style.

• Bread, cut neatly in accurate slices weighing 50-100 grams is placed on the table, on a plate or special bread basket.
• Soft caviar is served in caviar bowls wtih ice in the metal bottom.
• Soft boiled eggs are served in special egg cups.
• A special knife is used for Dutch cheese.
• Main course dishes are set on the table in oval or round bowls.

The book is a fascinating combination of familiar and unfamiliar recipes with these sort of aspirational instructions.  I look forward to trying the recipes and to learning more about what role these type of books might have had for post-World War II cooks in Ukraine.

Note:  The lovely illustrations are by O.I. Miklovda and the book was published by Technika Publishers, vul. Pushkina 28, Kyiv.

Borscht by Heart, Aleksander Hemon's New Yorker Article

This week’s New Yorker (November 22, 2010) is the food issue and, among other wonderful food essays, contains an affecting article by Bosnian-American writer Aleksander Hemon, author of the acclaimed novels “the Lazarus Project” and “Nowhere Man.” Hemon tells the story of borscht in his family, carried from Galicia (now, in Western Ukraine), to Bosnia, the recipe an unwritten poem, repeated by heart in diverse but perfected recitation. Drawing on the bounty and miscellany of the kitchen garden, the soup is simple sustenance, spooned into mismatched bowls, in accordance with classic Ukrainian convention, one chuck of meat each. Hemon’s borscht is a meal of family and survival. For me too, even in modern, changing Ukraine, I have come to understand that straightforward, claret soup as both a solace and artifact of Ukrainian endurance.

What does borscht mean for you? As always, we would love to hear from you!

Other Pickle Project-relevant compositions in the Food Issue, including an amusing essay outlining the steps to sauerkraut by David Bezmozgis (Pickling Cabbage) and a profile of fermentation prophet Sandor Katz, author of the cult classic “Wild Fermentation,” (Nature’s Spoils), along with other articles of lesser Pickle pertinence, including a treatise on root vegetables and an essay by Laura Shapiro on Eleanor Roosevelt's Thanksgiving frugality.

For an abstract of Hemon’s New Yorker article, visit http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/22/101122fa_fact_hemon and notice that full access is granted with a trial of the digital subscription. New Yorker cover image by Wayne Thiebaud.

White Borscht?

Ukrainians love soup--and hardly a day goes by that they don't eat some.  And it's not Campbells, out of the can, but homemade.   Most familiar is a red borscht, but when I visited Anya's family's dacha, her mother Luda made a delicious soup, okroshka, also called white borscht.   It was served cool (by being kept in the root cellar) and the ingredients included buttermilk, cucumbers, potatoes, hard-boiled egg and spring onions.  Perfectly light and refreshing on a hot day. 

Interestingly, Anya tells me that in Russia, there is also a soup called okroshka,  but it is very different--made with kvas (a fermented beverage made from dark bread) and dried fish.  I'm sure it's tasty,  but Luda's homemade Ukrainian version was great.  Although now they eat it at the start of summer because cucumbers are always available in markets, Anya remembers when it was almost a celebration--the dish made when the first cucumbers arrived in the garden.