Train Food Memories

This past week I did a rare thing for most Americans--took a train ride--and although the scenery was different (traversing along the Pacific Coast from Los Angeles to San Diego) it brought back many memories of so many train trips in Ukraine, so I thought I'd share a bit about Ukrainian train food.

Last summer, Sarah and I embarked on trains that literally took us around Ukraine--from Kyiv to Donetsk to Simferopol to Odessa to L'viv and back to Kyiv.   It was holiday season for many and I was struck by two ways in which local residents living near train stations made additional income by supplying food to those hungry travelers.

At several stops,  people waited for trains to pull in and sold food up into the doors and windows of the train:  smoked fish,  corn on the cob, and more.   Anxious travelers stocked up for the overnight trip. (sorry for the blurriness of some of these photos,  taken on the fly through a train window)

Still other entreprenuers appeared with buckets and baskets of berries, peaches, plums, cherries and more, to be purchased as fresh as can be, gently carried home, back to the city, for canning and preserving.  At one station in the Carpathians, travelers passed through a friendly gauntlet of women with all sorts of fresh (and as we can attest, delicious) things for sale.  It reinforced for me the ongoing importance for Ukrainians of a direct connection between consumers and producers.  You want to be able to look a vender in the eye and talk about the food.

We were no exception. Before we started off on any Pickle Project ride,  we stocked up with food to sustain us along the way:  pickles,  salty string cheese, dried fruit and leposhka, a round bread like naan, baked on an oven.  If it was summer, berries, cherries and plums;  in winter,  dried fruit.

And of course, there's one drink that epitomizes Ukrainian train travel to me.  It's that hot morning tea,  delivered briskly by the train attendant to your compartment in the morning as you approach your destination in its old fashioned yet lovely glass with a metal holder that clinks a bit as the train lumbers and rattles along and you watch the countryside pass by.  If you've been a Ukrainian train traveler, what food memories can you share?

Boy’s Eye View

This post is the second in a series about the distinct Greek communities of Mariupol, a region and oblast in eastern Ukraine, near the Sea of Azoz. Special thanks to Yangnecheer family and Galina and Carrina.

Under bright blue skies, the fruit trees were flourishing with bright red cherries. As we ambled the lanes of the Greek village of Sartana, we admired the tidy, brightly colored houses, fence rows and thriving kitchen gardens we passed. Chatting idly with a friend in English, we heard a friendly little “hello” from behind a cloud of green leaves. Following this welcoming voice, we met the charming 11-year-old Vova. Vova lives in Sartana with his sister, Irina (21), her husband, Alexander (25), and their children, little Tatiana (1) and Varvara (2.5).

The family was hanging laundry in the patio, as we strolled by. Alexander told us that he is from a Greek family and has lived in Sartana his whole life. He said that, during the harvesting months, the family spends much of their summer tending the garden and preserving the food they grow for the winter months.

With a shy smile and generous nature, Vova, gave us a tour of their garden. They raise cucumbers, potatoes, beets, cabbages (two rotations), onions, squashes, eggplants, carrots and an array of herbs, including parsley, chervil (!) and dill.

Walnut and cherry trees line one end of the garden, the other flanked with bushes of raspberries, gooseberries and currents. Grapevines lace the fence between their patio and garden, where jars were set out for ongoing preservation of the summer’s bounty. Just the day before, the family had made raspberry jam and pickles.

As we explored the garden, Vova picked the perfect gooseberries, passing them to me to enjoy and occasionally popping one into his own mouth too. He described the progress of each vegetable in the garden, thoughtfully describing the desired growing conditions of each plant with impressive insight.

He expressed concern about the season’s meager harvest of apricots and apples. “Last year, people kept all the honey for themselves. So, this year, there are not so many bees. There are not enough to pollinate all the fruit trees.” “But” he said smiling, “this year has been pretty good for berries” he explained. “The raspberries are much sweeter than last year.”

Shopper's Delight

In addition to the vendors, growers and cooks we have met across Ukraine, the Pickle Project also engages shoppers to learn more about what they buy, where and why.


We met Vera on a hot and steamy July day at L'viv's bustling Krakivsky Bazaar. Vera has been coming to Krakivsky for 10 or 15 years. She likes this market and knows most of the vendors here. She smiles, exchanging "dobry dehns" as she makes her way down the colorful aisles piled high with produce.



This afternoon, nestled in Vera's red "New York" market bag are carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, sweet peppers and potatoes. She told us she plans to make borscht (the beets are already at home, she said) and a fresh salad for the evening meal.

Market Report: Odessa, July 2011

We're having a hard time keeping up with posts, but last night made a list of more than 50 posts we want to write based on our amazing time here.  We promise we'll get to all of them sooner or later!  But for now, a quick market report from Odessa.  Above, a beautiful bowl of sour cherries.

A shy market vendor shows off his dried apricots.

Pickled apples.  Anyone ever tried them?

Many kinds of sunflower seeds, a popular snack everywhere in Ukraine--fried in a pan and eaten!

Odessa's market vendors were virtually all incredibly friendly--and this one was kind enough to pose for a picture...but then...

This market lady called the two of us over, and whipped out her pocket camera to snap one of the two of us together.

No, not Coke, but hand-squeezed juices including pomegranate and grapefruit.  Recycling at its best.

And a shy young vendor (just finished sleeping, his mom said) amidst beautiful greens.  Next up, market post from L'viv!

Blue, Blue Blueberries!

I spent a little time last week here in the Catskills picking blueberries--and the same thing is happening in Ukraine.  Last week, the small community of Guklyvy in the Transcarpathian Region held a blueberry festival which included the unveiling of a blueberry statue, and of course, blueberries in many forms.   Blueberries are an important food source for people in the Carpathians and also a significant seasonal, supplemental income source. Families pick berries together, eating some fresh and preserving the rest in jams, juices and thick sauces.   Children often sell them in villages or along the side of the road, holding out glass jars full, with their little arms, as you drive the winding mountain roads. Wild blueberries from this region are tiny and rather dark in color. A friend of Sarah's makes something akin to a parfait, layering sugared berries with smetana (sour cream)  creamy white and dark blue, beautiful, delicate and delicious.

In the Carpathians and other regions of Ukraine the blueberries are on wild, low bushes, rather than the high bush variety more commonly seen in the United States. In Polissa, a region of Central Ukraine,  an agro-tourism website extols berry picking both as centuries old tradition and now as fun activity for tourists.  And as anyone who's ever been berry picking can attest, it's immensely satisfying both to eat along the way and to come home with a bucketful.

And what to do with all those blueberries?  At the festival in Guklyvy there was blueberry vodka at right in the above photo and blueberry fillings for varenyky and blini, center.    On the left, some sort of blueberry tart.

Interestingly, a quick google found references to Ukrainians and blueberry picking here in the United States, near Lake Erie and northern New York.   And if you haven't eaten all your fresh berries, hanks to  Foodgeeks.com  here's a recipe for blueberry varenyky, both dough and filling.  Enjoy--and please share your pictures and memories of berry picking in Ukraine.

BLUEBERRY SAUCE
2 cups blueberries (wild blueberries preferred)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp. all purpose flour
2 tbsp. lemon juice
2 tbsp. butter, melted
Sour cream, at room temperature

FILLING
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp. all purpose flour
2 cups blueberries

DOUGH
3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
2 tbsp. butter, melted
Cold water

INSTRUCTIONS

FOR THE SAUCE: In saucepan, stir together blueberries, sugar and flour; add lemon juice and 1/4 cup water. Simmer over low heat until blueberries are soft and sauce is thickened, about 5 minutes. Set aside.

FOR THE DOUGH: In large bowl, whisk together flour and baking powder. In separate bowl, whisk together egg, milk and butter; stir into flour mixture. Add cold water, 1 tbsp. at a time (6 to 7 tbsp. total), until soft dough is formed. Knead until dough is smooth. Cover with plastic and let rest for 10 minutes.

Roll dough to scant 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out 3 inch rounds.

FILLING: Whisk together sugar and flour; set aside. Stretch out cut out dough rounds slightly and fill each round with scant 1 tsp. flour/ sugar mixture and 1 Tbsp. blueberries. Pull dough over filling; pinch edges together to seal.

Continue until dough and filling are used up, letting reworked scraps rest slightly before rolling (keep unrolled dough and filled dumplings covered with a clean tea towel).

In large pot of lightly salted boiled water, boil dumpling, in batches if necessary, until dough is tender at thickest edges, about 10 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon to serving plate; drizzle with butter to prevent sticking. Serve with blueberry sauce and sour cream on the side. Makes 32 to 36 dumplings.

FOOD TIP: any leftover dough can be rolled into noodles, boiled and served with butter or sour cream.

Photos from ForUM and Zacarpatia.net.

post by Linda and Sarah

Market Report: July 2, Opishne, Poltava Region

I was in Opishne for the National Day of Potters, an event created by the National Museum of Ceramics, located there, but after we finished a restaurant lunch, I persuaded my intrepid translator to accompany me across the road to see what a line-up of fruit and vegetable sellers had to offer.   So I saw cherries braided into a strand the way chili peppers are in the Southwest United States;  St.  John's wort and other herbs for tea (and then had some later that day);  cherries,  the tiny strawberries gathered into little bouquets and almost dried, gooseberries, cucumbers and last season's walnuts and dried pears.

But most memorable were the great faces of the men and women who smilingly pressed walnuts into my hand, had me try a dried plum (good for my digestion they said),  and encouraged me to try and purchase all!

Historic Food Images 4: From L'viv

My last trip to L'viv was also my last chance, this visit, to look for historic photos related to food.  The craft market in L'viv, near the opera house, yielded some fascinating images.   Above, some proud (and well-dressed) workers at a flour mill.  Below, a stylish sip of something.

I can't quite tell what's going on in the image below.  A bride?  The slat basket over the one man's shoulder is a really familiar, well-used form even today.  Just last week I saw many people coming in on the trains to Kyiv with this over their shoulder, filled with berries or cherries and covered with a cloth.   Anyone able to tell us what's happening here or where the image might be from?

And just because it's a beautiful image, this color postcard of apples.  Enjoy!

Inspired Infusions

After a recent afternoon of skiing, it hit me: I want vodka. A chilled shot of Ukrainian horilka, to be precise. Ukrainian vodka is called horilka (горілка) and is generally distilled from potatoes or grain, byproducts from some of the country’s biggest agricultural commodities. Good horilka is clear, smooth and quite pleasing to quaff. The practice of flavoring horilka and somohon (самогон), home distilled spirits, is also very common, apparently dating back centuries as a way mollifying less purified, lower quality horilka. Utilizing fruits, berries and herbs collected from forests and home gardens, the alcohol is infused for weeks or months and strained of the fruits before serving. Imbibing the aromatic concoctions is fashionable from village kitchens to hipster night clubs.

Some traditional infusions include kalyna (kалина), the beautiful red berry and Ukrainian cultural symbol; sweet raspberries (малина), blackberries (ожина) and sweet grass (зубрівка), a flavor popularized by the commercial Polish Zubrowka (fantastic with apple juice). Horilka flavored with tiny, wild blueberries (чорниця) is a personal favorite. Medovkha (медовуха), horilka sweetened with honey, is also quite popular. To this libation (or plain horilka), red hot chile peppers are often added, giving it a flaming, yet surprisingly pleasant, zip. Cherry (вишнівка), it should be noted, bears some parallel to cough syrup. That said, horilka preparations with lemon peel and herbs, such as St. John’s wort, are commonly used for medicinal purposes and are espoused by Ukrainian grandmothers far and wide.

Recipes

Drawing on discussions with Ukrainian friends and Helen and George Papashvily’s Russian Cooking (1969), covering the Former Soviet Union including chapters on the cuisines of Ukraine, the Caucasus region and the Baltic region, here are a couple of recipes to try yourself.

To a 750 ml bottle of vodka or horilka, add the following ingredients for infused horilka variations. There is no consensus among my advisors on the duration required for proper infusion with opinions ranging from hours to months, with a middle ground around 10 days or two weeks. Strain, serve and enjoy!

Pepper Horilka

2 Tablespoons of black, white or red peppercorns.

Cherry Horilka

Approximately 40, dark sweet cherries, pitted.

Blueberry Horilka

2 cups of blueberries (I recommend, tiny wild blueberries but I am told that even frozen would do).

Honey Horilka

½ cup honey (or more!). This one needs to be shaken, initially and occasionally, over the steeping time.

A Flying Leap, from Pickles to Doughnuts

Celebrating the practice of food preservation and culture is at the heart of the Pickle Project. And, what better way to celebrate, than with decedent sweets? Although we may not typically associate pickles with doughnuts, preserved fruits and vegetable make their way into every aspect of Ukrainian Foodways.

Pampooshke (пампушка) are the delicious doughnuts of Galicia, a region straddling the Polish Ukrainian border. Traditionally filled with fruit, flower or berry jams, pampooshka are a yeasted, deep fried doughnut. While pampooshke are typically a homemade special occasion food in Ukraine. In Poland, rose-jam filled pącza, as they called in Polish, are an everyday treat, sold in bakeries and from street carts. In eastern and central Ukraine, savory pampooshke, called smazhny or perizhky, are filled with meat, potatoes or cabbage.

Because Galacian pampooshka are one of my favorite treats and are typically filled with homegrown and preserved goods, I asked my friend Halya to teach me how to make them. So, on a snowy Sunday afternoon, I rode the crowded marshrutka from my L’viv apartment to her family’s home in Ivano Frankove (Yanif), a small village north east of the city, for a lesson and lunch with family. Overlooking her small kitchen garden, Halya’s cozy kitchen is easily one of my favorite places in Ukraine.

Lighting the burner on her 1960’s Polish stove with a match, Hayla told me about how she and her mother made doughnuts for the Old New Year, the New Year holiday of the Gregorian calendar. “Every family in Galicia has their own recipe” Halya told me “but it isn’t written down”. Halya’s husband Syrghiv, her son, Sasha, and daughter, Natalia, each pop into the kitchen periodically to check on the progress of the dough. For our pampooshke, we made fillings from homemade apricot jam and cherries preserved in syrup. To each, we mixed in potato flour, which thickens the jam so that it will hold up to the heat of frying. Both the cherries and the apricots are from the garden and are just two of the many fruits and vegetables Halya and her family grow or collect and preserve, sustaining them through the year. Many families in Ukrainian Roztochya still cultivate tea roses in their gardens for making jam (and rose tea) and it remains a popular and special flavor in Galician sweets, especially doughnuts.

Throughout the multi-stage proofing and shaping process, Halya carefully managed the kitchen window, opening or closing it periodically to keep the temperature in the kitchen just right for the dough. Once the doughnuts were golden brown on each side, she carefully removed each one of the browned beauties from oil and placed them on a tin plate lined with paper to drain. When she finally tasted the fruits of her labor, Halya’s brow furrowed.. “Not enough holes” she says “it should be lighter..” I took a bite of cherry pampooshka: it was crispy and crusty on the outside, soft and sweet inside. I smiled at Halya; I could find no fault with such a thing.

After a lunch of steaming solyanka, a spicy Georgian soup of sausage and boiled eggs, flavored with lemon, it is time for dessert. I placed an apricot pampooshka on a small plate for each member of the family; Halya followed me, drizzling a sauce made from melted dark chocolate and heavy cream over each pampooshka. Still warm, the apricot jam was sweet against the bitterness of the chocolate and the softness of the doughnut. A hush, punctuated by delighted sighs, fell over the table as we enjoyed the decadent pastry. I looked over Halya; she couldn’t help but smile.

Recipe

Mix together 50 grams of yeast, ½ liter of warm milk, 2 (table)spoons of sugar, 2 (table)spoons of flour and wait until it gets very big, maybe an hour or two. Halya says that it depends on the temperature in the room.

Then mix together 4 eggs and a glass (about a cup) of sugar. Add 0.1 gram of melted butter, some dried orange peel, vanilla and 2 spoons of horilka (Ukrainian vodka). The horilka prevents the mixture from becoming oily and helps it to become very soft. Wait and allow to rise again. Then, roll out in sheets about ½ inch thick, cutting rounds using the rim of a small glass. Allow to rise once more. Poke a hole in the side of each bun, hollowing the center. Carefully fill with a spoonful of thickened jam, using a pastry bag (plastic bag with a corner cut off at an angle to allow for precise filling) and reseal the sides as fully as possible. Fill a high-rimmed skillet or pot with oil, about an 1 ½ deep; heat over a medium/high flame. When the oil is hot but not smoking, carefully fry each pampooshka, flipping for even browning on each side. Drain on a paper towel-lined plate. Enjoy topped with powdered sugar, a simple white icing (as they do in Poland) or drizzled with chocolate, ala Halya.