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.

Our Debut Video! What Food Reminds You of Home?

Last summer, on a visit to Simferopol, Alie Yuldasheva was generous enough to sit down with us in a Crimean Tatar restaurant and talk about her own family traditions.  We're far from video experts,  but this was the start of some short video podcasts that we'll be sharing with you.   The Crimea provided us with so many memorable experiences and we were privileged to learn more about the diverse cultures there.  Alie's favorite food is a great metaphor for our Pickle Project work.  Plov, she says, "represents [the[ sharing idea."  

What Food Reminds You of Home? Alie Yuldasheva from The Pickle Project on Vimeo.

Thanks to Alie for making that sharing idea a reality,  Anna Harty for editing, and Barb Weiser for hosting us on the Simferopol leg of our trip last summer.  And a special note to Peace Corps volunteers:  we met, as you'll hear, Alie through Peace Corps volunteers--so other volunteers,  please join in.  We'd love to see other favorite food videos--a great student project for English teachers!

From Georgia, or ?

The wisdom of crowds helped us learn a bit more about one snack we saw in a number of different markets (although I don't remember seeing them in Kyiv or L'viv).  They were long, skinny brightly colored treats (above) that were hung up in markets, at vendors of dried fruit and nuts.   One night we ordered a sampling of sweets in a Georgian restaurant in Donetsk and realized one of the treats on the plate was a cut-up version of what we'd seen.  It had a nut inside a sort of hard jelly.  The texture was sort of like fruit leather, but sweet and crunchy at the same time--maybe a little grapy? Hmmm?  What was it?

So we put a picture up in one of our market reports and had a number of responses, all of which testify to the cross-pollination of food in Ukraine (and to the power of crowdsourcing!)  That's not surprising given the country's important place on both sea and overland trade routes.   Food traditions in Ukraine have come from what the land itself can produce, but also from traders coming across the Black Sea;  settlers coming down from Russia, Turkey,  and the Caucauses--and now, of course, from around the world.

This treat is called churchkhela in Georgia,  rojik in Armenia, or  Üzüm pekmezi (grape molasses) in Turkey.  It's nuts strung out along a string and then dipped repeatedly in grape juice mixed with flour and sugar. A Google image search shows me mostly natural colors,  but these brightly colored ones (probably food coloring) appear to be a newish innovation.  Thanks to Florian Pinel, who blogs at  Food Perestroika:  Adventures in Eastern Bloc Cuisine,  here's a recipe:

Churchkhela
10 qt grape juice [white or purple depending on your color preference]
1 lb sugar
2 1/4 lb flour
2 lb walnuts halves (or almonds, dried fruits…)

• In a pot, reduce the grape juice over low heat for about 3 hours, progressively stirring in the sugar.
• Whisk in the flour [to avoid lumps, I would place the flour in a large bowl and progressively pour in the liquid while mixing] and return to a boil. The resulting mixture is called tartara.
• Thread the walnuts onto 1 ft-long pieces of string. Dip the strings into the hot tartara several times to obtain the desired thickness. Hang to dry for approximately 2 weeks, until the churchkhelas are still soft, but not sticky.
• Wrap in towels and allow to mature for 2 to 3 months. The churchkhelas will develop a thin layer of powdery sugar.

Florian's site is a great look at both Eastern European restaurants in New York City and his travels throughout Eastern Europe.  Check it out!

Inside detail photo from SF Weekly

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.

Halvah! Hmm?

Last spring, an issue of the American food magazine Saveur featured a short article on the New York City based Joyva candy company, the largest commercial producer of halvah, that delicious, nutty paste confection, in the United States. While, I had seen packaged halvah in America, I never tried it until I lived in Ukraine, where it is cut from giant blocks in producti and bazaars. As I learned from Chris McConnell’s Savuer article, the Joyva Company was, in fact, founded by Nathan Radutzky, a Ukrainian immigrant, in 1908.

According to Joyva’s website, halvah is an ancient treat whose name means “sweet meat” in Turkish. And, that is about right.. Sticky, crumbly and little spongy in texture (as unlikely a combination as that seems), it has the consistency of fudge. The confection is generally made of ground seeds, usually sesame, or various flours. A little googling and cookbook research suggest that it is also commonly made of sunflower seeds in Eastern Europe and some of the former Soviet states, which makes sense given the abundance of sunflowers in Ukraine. This also explains some of the variation in taste I have experienced around Ukraine, where regional versions of dishes reflect the specific cultural influences in that area. Halva is wonderfully sweet and nutty, often studded with pistachios (which I LOVE and someone told is in a Balkan style), other nuts or dried fruits. It is also sometimes covered with chocolate. My favorite havlah is procured from an Azerbaijani family that sells dried fruits at a little bazaar in L’viv.

My search for a tested and endorsed sunflower halvah recipe came up short. So, if Pickle Project readers have one to share, we are all ears!

Photo provided by Grace Eickmeyer, US Peace Corps Volunteer, Crimea. Thanks, Grace!

Some Thoughts on the Practice of Chocolate Giving

Although Valentine’s Day is not widely celebrated in Ukraine, all of the chocolates being exchanged remind me of the Ukrainian penchant for giving chocolates. I learned about the practice of chocolate giving at the end of my first trip to Ukraine. As a colleague arrived to drive us to the airport, he presented me with an enormous box of chocolates. (It really was a huge box of chocolates! Perhaps, 18 inches long and 12 inches wide (40cm X 30cm). I had to hand-carry it because it would not fit in my suitcase..)

Now, after living in Ukraine, I have come to understand chocolate giving as a common ritual, sometimes charged with meaning and sometimes without expectation whatsoever. My friend, Katarynka, once told me that Ukrainians love chocolates but that they really love chocolates in boxes. This, she said, is because, during the Soviet era, boxes were fancifully decorated and typically came from abroad, which was considered more extravagant. Giving of any gifts, she explained, was and, arguably, still is a strategy for securing personal economic and political livelihood. Conversely, another friend, Natalia, who is a bit younger and grew up in a post-Socialist Ukraine, told me that she thinks it is “social” to bring good chocolates to friends or colleagues to enjoy with coffee. And, she added, they are tasty.

In her article on the culture of gift giving in contemporary St. Petersburg (And, by the way, the Pickle Project endeavors to fill the void of Ukrainian-specific food studies!) Jennifer Patico (2002) explores how the giving of small gifts, and chocolates, in particular, inform post-Socialist identities. She also further examines how these customs reflect and overlap with the social and transactional networking that was central to Soviet era life. Whereas, during the Soviet period, people drew on their connections to meet their material needs for goods and commodities, today, with a range of consumer goods available, urban Russians rely on money to achieve those ends. Now, Patico’s research suggests, gifts are used not as direct payments or bribes, but as “signs of attention” or spontaneous expressions of gratitude. They symbolize recognition that relationships are appreciated and in good standing, while reinforcing a kind of social commonality. Reflecting the variation in my friends’ responses to the chocolate question, Patico writes that gifts can be variously interpreted and that their meaning is often expressed by the choice of item selected. Boxes of chocolate (for women) and bottles of cognac (for men) are both neutral and traditional, reflecting the tastes of neither the giver nor the receiver. Nonetheless, chocolates in a decorative box are a good gift, she found, because a person would never buy a box of chocolates for themselves. Furthermore, they are frivolous, fleeting and delicious.

Regardless of the reason for the gift, Ukrainian chocolates come in a dizzying array of shapes, flavors and fillings. There are ones with poppy. And, coffee crème, almonds and crispy rice and marshmallow (delightfully called “hummingbird’s milk”) and cognac-soaked cherries and raspberry jelly. There are wafers, layered with hazelnut ganache. There are cones filled with champagne-flavored crème. My personal favorites involve the mingling of honey and almonds..

Chocolate confectionary is rather old industry in Ukraine, apparently dating back to the 18^th century. According to Ukraine.com, as L’viv emerged as an important hub of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it also became a center for confectionery. In combined celebration of this history and International Women's Day, the 3^rd Annual Chocolate Festival will take place in L’viv March 6-8, 2010.

For thoughtful academic discussion of gift-giving in Russia, see Jennifer Patico’s 2002 article “Chocolate and Cognac: Gifts and the Recognition of Social Worlds in Post-Soviet

Russia” in Ethnos 67 (3), 345-368.

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.