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.”

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.

Tea on a Summer Afternoon

We recently had the good fortune of spending the afternoon with my friend Nataliya’s family in Yanif. Located northwest of L’viv, Yanif (also called Ivano Frankove) sits at the edge of the Roztochya Forest Preserve and on the shores of a sizable lake historically known for the salty, smoked fish produced there.

From the marshrutka stop, we made our way through the village, along the dusty roads and winding alleys, past raggedy dogs and fenced yards filled with chicken coops, roses and potatoes to Nataliya’s grandparents house. Cheerful and generous, Pavlina and Volodymyr Litynski are are in their 70s and maintain an energetic and lively household.

They live in a simple house with a small but bountiful kitchen garden, a little greenhouse made of windows for growing tomatoes and a few fruit trees. It is there that I have learned much about Ukrainian food traditions. In addition to being industrious vegetable gardeners and orchard keepers, three generations of this family, including my friend Nataliya, her mother, Halya, and her grandfather, Volodymyr, are all foresters and are knowledgeable experts on native Ukrainian berries, mushrooms and wild herbs.

It was one of those clear, blue summer afternoons and we found Volodymyr sitting in the grass, sorting just-picked red currants. After surveying the various stages of vegetables and fruits in the garden, as we always do when I visit, Volodymyr carried the kitchen table out into the dappled shade of the yard, much the way my own grandparents would on a summer day.

Under the trees, we nibbled seernik, a light Ukrainian cheesecake, with fresh raspberries and sipped a refreshing herbal tea that Pavlina made. The tea was a local mélange of wild raspberry leaves, wild strawberry leaves, nettles, mint and the delicate fruits of basswood. (For the forestry geeks out there, they are technically nutlets with a thin leafy bract. We often see these marketed for tea in big Ukrainian city markets as well.) All of these were collected around Pavlina and Volodymyr’s garden and, then, hung and dried in the "shadow" of the trees. They store this mixture in a canister in their cool, dry pantry.

Despite the heat, we drank our tea hot and it provided that strange, cooling effect that warm and spicy foods produce. (Actually, I have always wondered about the physiological effects that spicy and hot foods precipitate. According to this 1999 Scientific American article, it has to do with the skin’s pain receptors, which can be stimulated by actual heat or by chemicals such as capsaicin, that simulate heat, to trigger a response from the nervous system.)

As we chatted and sipped, various neighbors passed through the yard, calling out greetings as they strolled by. Some carried borrowed garden tools, others bags of food or children. A few friends and cousins stopped to join us for a cup of tea, conversation and an idle moment during a busy season.

Special thanks to Pavlina and Volodymyr Litynski and Halya, Serhy and Nataliya Stryamets, as always, for their warm hospitality.

Berries, Berries, Berries and Cherries

This week appears to be the height of berry and cherry season.   At the market today there were sweet and sour cherries, strawberries, wild strawberries, blackberries and blueberries, all in great abundance.  Many of them were displayed in handmade splint or willow baskets.  Ukrainians enjoy the berries fresh but also turn them into preserves--a compote, or even into cherry. blueberry or strawberry varenyky.  The Gourmanderie blogger tried making blueberry ones--you can find their recipe and photos of the result. here.

Enjoy the look of summer while I enjoy the taste of sun-warmed berries.

 

Above, my wild strawberries gently wrapped for me to carry home.

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.