ukraine tales: 7 posts

For the past few days rescue workers in the town of Dnipro have been searching for survivors of a devastating Russian attack. A missile hit an apartment building, destroying it completely. I spent several summers in Dnipro and I have several friends there, and these news have affected us deeply. Almost a year later and I still haven’t learned to cope with the pain of seeing familiar landmarks scarred by war.

After seeing images of gutted apartment buildings and bombed out streets, I needed to remember Dnipro as a vibrant town in the eastern part of Ukraine. Its name comes from its location on the Dnieper River, and its shores offer beautiful views. I went through my archive of photographs that I took during my travels in Ukraine. It was in Dnipro where I discovered the art of Petro Magro (1918–2010). A native of the region, he captured its landscapes in his impressionistic paintings. I hope that you will enjoy his artwork as much as I did–a reminder of beauty and an antidote to darkness and despair.

Do you have a favorite artist whose works uplift you? 

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The neighborhood where I used to live in Kyiv got bombarded several times over the past couple of days. Now every night I dream of walking through it as it once were. I then wake up in the middle of the night and lie conjuring up the familiar images. Ukraine lives in me, even as I am far away from Ukraine.

I recently gave an interview to a Spanish newspaper ABC about my book The Rooster House (Mi Ucrania in Spanish) and said that to understand Ukraine, it’s important to know that its identity made up of beauty and tragedy. And so I will share this painting by Dmytro Perepelytsya (1903–1981), a Ukrainian artist from Poltava, who captured everyday life in moving, poignant images like these. His Still life with watermelon was painted in 1937, the height of Stalinist terror, but it’s a tender depiction of summer bounty in vivid colors.

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You can spell it borscht, borshch, or borsch, but by any name, it’s the dish that embodies the essence of Ukrainian food culture–colorful, rich and vibrant. To call it soup wouldn’t be correct, because Ukrainian borscht is a dish more like minestrone, pot-au-feu or cocido in its heartiness. Every region of Ukraine has different varieties of borscht. There is no one authentic recipe, although there are classical versions. Borscht in Lviv in the west of Ukraine is ruby-red and includes small mushroom-filled dumplings; it’s an essential Christmas Eve dish. In the south of Ukraine, borscht is made with fish. The Central Ukrainian-style borscht–the most popular variation–is famous for its sweet-sour flavors. Borscht can be made with beef, pork, chicken, duck, beans, and even fish. It can be vegetarian. It can be soured with tomatoes, beet kvas, vinegar, sour cherries, rhubarb or red currants. It can be flavored with mushrooms or dried plums. It can include white beets and be pale in color. It can be spicy with paprika or suave with sour cream.

Outside of Eastern Europe, borscht tends to be associated with Russian cooking, since people tend to label everything from the former Soviet Union as Russian. Borscht in different variations is also enjoyed in Poland (barszcz), Lithuania (barščiai) and Romania (borş). Nevertheless, if you think of borscht as soup with beets, cabbage and tinted red with tomatoes, then it’s the Ukrainian version that you have in mind. According to the Russian food historian, Olga Syutkina, that version became popular in Russia at the end of the 18th century, when this dish was introduced on the tsarist army’s menu. Originally, borscht was the food of the peasants, because it was easy to cook in advance and was nutritious enough to be served as a one-dish meal. With the immigration of the Ashkenazi Jewish community to North America, borscht–the English spelling gives away its Yiddish roots–became popular in the New World.

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Poltava, in central Ukraine, is famous for its honey. Every year the city and its environs host fairs celebrating honey in all its forms, and whenever I visit my grandmother, who is a Poltava native, I enjoy this sweet treat in gingerbreads, cakes, drinks and even savory dishes. One of the most beloved local pairings is first-of-the-season honey drizzled over cucumbers.

On a recent visit, I discovered yet another way to eat honey – infused with roses. It was heaven. So, for my recent FT column, The Fragrance of Honey and Roses, I’ve decided to recreate this combination and to find fragrances that are build around the rose-honey accord.

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