Galina’s Favorite Meal

Often, discussion of food and culture is focused on those big celebratory meals, at holidays and seasonal festival times. On our recent research trip, we specifically explored the foods of daily life in Ukraine. Drawing on this work, the Pickle Project is launching the "Favorite Meal" segment, to share stories about people and their favorite foods and memorable meals.

Galina is an enthusiastic friend of the Pickle Project that lives in Donetsk. She told us that, while she does love to cook and spends much time tending her garden outside the city in the summer months, because of her busy schedule, she prefers simple, healthy, quick meals.

Galina’s favorite meal is a broth made with mutton and accompanied by black bread toasts. She makes the toasts by rubbing slices of heavy black bread with minced garlic. She then cuts the bread slices into small pieces and dries them out over several hours. The result is a crunchy, garlicy crouton that she can float in the flavorful broth. Galina also likes to add fresh dill to her soup and toasts. “Oh!” she gasped and put her hands on her cheeks, in mock ecstasy “it is delicious.” When she has time, she adds, she may also put together a quick cabbage salad. Her typical salad combines shredded green cabbage with sliced fresh cucumbers and smetana (a cultured milk product, like sour cream), with salt and pepper.

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.