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.

Just Pickled to Be Here

On our recent conversations trip in Ukraine, we were joined by Caleb Zigas and Rueben Nilsson.  Both have been good enough to share their reflections on that trip, those conversations, and that food.  Here, Caleb shares his thoughts on those first days in Kyiv.

I know, probably like most Americans, very little about Ukraine outside of Gogol Bordello (a great live show), Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated (with a Gogol Bordello connection no less) and, of course, the most cursory of details about Chernobyl, famine, Stalin, World War II, oligarchs, Shaktar Donetsk’s UEFA Cups Championship and that the lead on the Google search of the country is marriage opportunities for Westerners. This is to say, in what is probably a longer way than necessary, that when I was asked to join the Pickle Project I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Linda and Sarah found me to be a part of this project through a Ukrainian immigrant who had heard about the work that we do at La Cocina. I believe in La Cocina because I believe that everyone deserves an opportunity to make a living doing something that they love to do. Furthermore, and I can never quite articulate this well enough so you’re either going to have to simply try to believe me or join me for dinner some time, I believe that food, more than anything else, can be a tool with which to be the same as anyone in the world. That to sit down to a meal and to open yourself to that which someone else offers is a rare moment of pure and total equality. So the idea behind the Pickle Project, conversations about culture and food, immediately appealed to me. As did, if I’m to be totally honest, the ability to go some place new, and to learn.

Conversation, in a controlled situation, is something of a funny thing. One (and by one I mean not simply the universal but also the personal) feels compelled to say perhaps grander things than one otherwise would and, in that grandiosity, as a result perhaps obscures the grander truths. And so the intentional conversations of the Pickle Project do not stand alone as experience but are rather coupled with the people, the train rides and the meals that were shared to give the picture that I now hold. As myopic, myriad and incorrect as that may be.

I boarded a plane from Paris to Kiev directly behind two women with Celine bags, significant amounts of jewelry and really lovely blond hair. I got off the plane in Kyiv and realized, immediately, that a) Cyrillic is nothing like English and b) that I should probably have learned more about Ukraine (don’t say the Ukraine, I was told, so I know that at least) before I arrived. Like how to say please and thank you.

Kyiv conformed almost too neatly to my vision of post-Soviet Europe with wide avenues, block-style apartments with unimpressive facades, large statues in picturesque squares and the contradiction of old women selling small collections of varied sundry items on sidewalks with the Jaguars, Bentleys and designer clothes of the cosmopolitan set.  So, I think it made sense that my first culinary experience be a hot dog wrapped, essentially, in funnel cake and served with no toppings in a plastic on street corner. Because this, at least, I did not understand, though it does provide further proof of Bourdain’s theory of encased-meat universality. And it was delicious.

Immediately, and despite our world’s best efforts at standardized globalization, one begins to know that one has arrived in a different place. Without spending too much time defining the notion of difference let us simply acknowledge the political (post-Soviet state, Orange Revolution, Tymoschenko recently jailed), physical (aforementioned apartments, average heel height of 4 inches) and cultural (language, Bulgakov, soccer) discrepancies, and accept those as fact if not generalization. And go from there.

 My Kyiv, and in fact my Ukraine, begins with those apartments, opens into a cosmopolitan downtown, curves to the open-air and established markets (more soon on this!), dips into modern art galleries that feel a little unexpected and neatly lives in places like the Bulgakov Museum, where we had our first conversation. I hope to get to the conversations soon, but wanted to begin with, well, the beginning, because every writer knows the middles is the hardest and as I write this from a plane I already know the end.

The first market I visited in Kyiv looked, well, just like I expected a market to look like. Tiled blocks from which older women cut pieces of unrefrigerated primal cuts into domestic cuts, rows of vegetables all of which looked great and the majority of which could certainly not have grown in a Ukraine as cold as the one I was experiencing, counters full of pickles where sampling was not only allowed but also encouraged and a back corner full of dried fruits and nuts from all over. Our second market, much the same, opened onto a larger marketplace for clothes and assorted household items as well as hot and prepared foods like the tandoori-style lavosh breads and grilled meats. But the real marketplace, the one that captures the imagination, happens informally in the streets where an older generation hawks dried mushrooms, random herbs and berries, 3—5 vegetables and even live crawfish all of dubious origin but with the romanticism of the country come to the city. Not being able to have the conversations, and unable to test the statements even if I could, I will take the romantic long-view and believe in provenance.

But meanwhile, a city is growing. In a place that is home to over 3 million people and a prominent (if very small) very upper class, demand appears to be shifting,  if ever so slightly. There are fast casual concepts everywhere, an organic marketplace one weekend, restaurants and an abundance, truly, of sushi. Again, provenance is perhaps questionable and, again, I did no investigation and prefer to believe in the best intentions of humanity despite strong evidence otherwise in most cases.

All of this, I think, to say that arriving in Ukraine means both the new and the old, the known and the unknown, the market and the supermarket, the home and the restaurant and all of those other things that make our current global moment so, well, global. But what about that food?

Welcome to Potluck!

On a dark stormy night in Donetsk,  Caleb, Daria (the local organizer) and I hurried down a gusty street, clutching our umbrellas and leaping over ankle-deep streams at intersections, to arrive at our second Pickle Project conversation.   We entered the school where the conversation was to be and were instantly swept up into the kind of buzz that only excited high school students make. 

"Welcome to Potluck" said the chalkboard and we were thrilled to see that students had all brought food from home to share with us.  EkoArt, our partner in Donetsk, works with young people, so they decided to have the conversation at a lyceum with high school and college students.   We met in the French language classroom, where their enthusiastic teacher, Nikolai Routchka, had read our blog, had it projected on the board, and had even brought us a jar of preserved sea buckthorn after seeing my request for information and identification after spotting the berries in a market.

We began the evening with girls in traditional costume bearing the traditional Ukrainian welcome of bread and salt;  a lovely reminder of an ancient, still important tradition.  We asked students to share the details of each dish they had made--and impressively,  each one did it in English, most with an accompanying PowerPoint presentation.  Here's just a bit of what we ate (and thanks to Valya Sakhnenko and others for the descriptions!)

The salad is called "herring under fur coat" or short "fur coat" ("shuba" in Russian). It includes herring, pickled onions, potatoes, carrots, beets. Clean and cut the herring into small pieces. After that put chopped fresh or pickled onion. Vegetables cooked, rubbed on a grater and put by layers. You can add the grated apples and eggs. All layers except herring, covered with mayonnaise.

Daria's pickles, "This is my pepper in tomato sauce, which was pickled by my mother. In Ukraine we call this dish "lecho"."

Verguny--a fried dough.  

 Mlyntsi, (depending on where you're from, blini or crepes) filled with homemade cherry jam. 

 Homemade compote, above, and below, holubtsi, stuffed cabbage rolls.

Below, still warm plov, brought in right as we started by a student's father.  Plov is traditionally made by men, and she had made it with her dad, who was Kazakh, and had, as I recall, learned to make it from Uzbek friends while living in Moscow.   Ukraine is a diverse place, with many different cultures, and of course, it can be seen in the food.

And what would a potluck be without a great looking dessert.  One student had some pretty amazing cake baking and decorating skills!

The food was great, but it's the conversations that I'll remember.  Donetsk is off-the-beaten-path for most Americans, so we had lots of questions.  What is "typical" American food?  (which consistently, was one of the hardest questions to answer throughout the trip).  Are Americans really overweight?  Do we all eat fast food all the time?  What kind of food does my family eat?  Does my daughter know how to cook?  Do I preserve fruits and vegetables?  Is food in the US safe?  Do we trust the government to regulate it?  What makes food healthy?  (in part, this conversation was generated by the university nutrition students who attended bringing healthier versions of some typical Ukrainian foods).

So much of what Ukrainians think of Americans comes from television and movies--particularly for young people.  Caleb and I are from different generations, different regions, and different family backgrounds--but what we both shared with these enthusiastic young students were stories that are different from what movies and TV shows convey--that there's not one American food, nor one American story.  And what did we learn?  We learned about food, but even more about a curious, enthusiastic group of Ukraine's young people who care passionately about their country and the world.

We ended the evening with group photos and headed out, with bags full of sea buckthorn, cake, grapes from the teacher's arbor, bread, and more, to sustain us on our next train trip.   The rain continued, but the warmth of the evening carried us home.

Market Report, Odessa, October 2011

It's been an incredible time in Ukraine for the four of us Pickle Project conversers.  We'll have more thoughts to come about our experiences, but for now, as I get ready to leave for home tomorrow, one last market report, from last week in sunny Odessa.  Enjoy!

Above, quail eggs.  Below,  walnuts, apples, quince and milk, followed by a spirited negotiation.  And then cheese, squash, pomegranate juice vendor, and tiny fish (sardines?)

Market Report, Organic Edition, October 15

On a cold rainy Saturday, Caleb Zigas and I headed out for the Organic Market in Podil.  A one day event, we were curious to check out what was on offer, and to learn a bit more about organic growing and eating in Ukraine.  Much more to come, we hope, about organic growing in general here, as it's fascinating, but here's a bit of what we saw.

A pig roast, which was excellent--you can see Caleb, left, and our new acquaintance, Vladimir, enjoying it.

A display of flowers and peppers, melons and squash labeled organic, fair trade coffee.

 A terrific soup, with the smoked pork, beans, potatoes, and tiny dumplings, cooked over an over fire.

And finally, behind the scenes at one of the tents, a generous feast of homemade horseradish vodka along with salo, dark bread, homemade butter and tvarog.  Delicious!

Market Report October 14, 2011, Kyiv

Back in Kyiv and time for another market report.  It was a chilly, windy, sometimes rainy day,  but friendly market vendors made for a great visit.  Here's a bit of what Caleb Zigas and I saw today.

 Outside, a small selection from a single village garden.  Squash, dill, horseradish, and yellow berries whose name I haven't figured out yet.  Readers, your guesses?

 Caleb getting his first taste of Ukrainian pickled things, including pickled dates (smoky, sort of, but surprisingly good).

Nuts, with accompanying squirrel.

 What I think of as winter market staples here:  beets, potatoes, onions, carrots.

Melons,  both a canteloupe sort of one, but elongated, and watermelons, the ones found outside on street corners in metal cages in the summer.

 Two great looking market ladies, working outside.

 

And seafood--above, from one of the street side vendors,  crayfish,  live in a crate, and below, fish in their baby bathtubs.  More market reports to come over the next two weeks.

Flights, Friends and Feasts

While conducting some Pickle Project interviews in Odessa, over the summer, we have the good fortune of encountering a friendly family from Siberia. We met Mykoli, Margarita and their three children blithely sun bathing on blankets, sipping cold beer and nibbling on dried fishes. "It is the perfect snack combination for a hot day" they told us. In addition to Odessa’s easygoing vibe, Mykoli and Margarita also love the various fish and sandy seaside the city provides. We chatted with the family for a while, about train travel, snacks and sunshine.


This charming family had traveled for nearly two days to soak up the Black Sea sun and waves along Odessa’s city beaches. They began with a flight to Moscow and, then, made the 25-hour train ride to Odessa. Not only did we meet them on the beach but, later, saw them around Odessa in the coming days. We would excitedly wave each time we spotted each other on cobblestone streets or under an umbrella, dining al fresco.

I thought of them, again, in anticipation of our own travel to Ukraine, reunions with old friends and the interesting series of Community Conversations that the Pickle Project is co-convening over the next couple of weeks. The series will kick off on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 6-8pm (18:00-20:00) at the Bulgakov Museum, located at Andriyivsky uzviz 13 in Kyiv. Stop by for local snacks and an evening of sparkling dialogue about food, culture and sustainability in Ukraine's dynamic capital city. Stay tuned for location information for the Community Conversation events in Donetsk (18 October), Odessa (21 October) and L’viv (23 October).