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Tuesday, March 29, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Food from the heart:
Flavors of Ukraine
By DANIEL NEMAN
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
M
y grandfather came
from the city of
Boryspil, in Ukraine.
One-quarter of the blood in my veins
is Ukrainian.
In Ukraine, you cannot separate the people from
the land, and you cannot separate the land from the
food that is grown on it.
The soil of Ukraine is unsurpassed in its fertility.
So much wheat is grown there that it is often called
the bread basket of Europe.
“You just need to drop a seed, and it will grow
there,” said Tetiana Mouzi.
Mouzi is a senior research chemist at Pfizer; she
moved from the western part of Ukraine, in the Lviv
region, to St. Louis in 1994. She thought she might
stay here for just a few years.
“It’s a great city. We just fell in love, and we’re
still here,” she said.
Though her family loves a wide variety of ethnic
cuisines, Ukrainian food to her is comfort food. It’s
what she turns to when she is feeling nostalgic; it is
what she turns to when times are bad.
“Whatever you ate when you were a child, it’s
always got that home-sweet-home feeling. The
feeling of that warmth and smell and taste that your
mom made, and your grandma. It always stays with
you,” she said.
Never has that been more true than now.
“With the stress we are under, I have been
making Ukrainian food,” she said. “Yesterday I
made perogies, and today I might make borsch.”
Borsch — the T at the end is the Yiddish spelling
— is the unofficial national dish of Ukraine. The
hearty beet soup was invented there, Mouzi said,
despite some other Slavic nations’ efforts to claim it
as their own. Some historians suggest people have
been eating it since the 1300s.
For a dish that has been around so long, it has
almost infinite variations.
Beets are a necessity in borsch, of course, but
everything else is a matter of taste. It can be vege-
tarian, or it can have meat — beef, pork, chicken or
even duck. It can be made with beans or without,
Colter Peterson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch-TNS
Chicken kiev with a side of boiled potatoes and glazed carrots.
with cabbage or without.
It does have to be served with bread, preferably
rye bread, on the side. Always. That is a must.
I followed a recipe by a Ukrainian immigrant
food blogger and used beets, beef stock, beef, pota-
toes, onions and carrots. Root vegetables are very
important in Ukrainian cuisine, and this recipe
caught my eye because it was loaded with them.
And like everyone else who cooks it, I added my
own touch to the dish. I made a double-rich stock
by simmering bones and beef in store-bought beef
stock, along with a bay leaf, an onion, a couple of
carrots and a couple of ribs of celery.
The borsch was beety and meaty and robustly fla-
vored, worthy beyond doubt of being any country’s
national dish.
Up next, naturally, were cabbage rolls, another
meal common throughout the Slavic lands. Called
golubtsi, this version had a distinctly Ukrainian
twist — carrots.
Shredded carrots are mixed into the tomato
sauce that goes both on top of the cabbage rolls
and inside them, where it is mixed together with
rice and ground meat. I used a mixture of beef and
turkey, but you could also use pork or — why not?
— chicken.
The carrots add a natural earthy sweetness to the
dish that perks up the mild-flavored cabbage. Some
other cuisines add raisins or currants to sweeten the
dish, but shredded carrots feel more organic to the
overall flavor.
I next made one of the best known Ukrainian
dishes, which is even named for the nation’s capital.
Chicken Kiev is the famous dish of chicken breast
stuffed with herbed butter, and fried. There is even a
small sculpture of it on the streets of Kyiv.
Chicken Kiev was ubiquitous in the 1970s, on the
menu of any American restaurant with aspirations of
at least moderately fine dining. Then, as with many
things that briefly become too popular, it began to
fade away.
But when prepared properly, it is still an excep-
tional dish. And it is simple in concept. At the very
center is butter mixed with herbs (I used tarragon,
but you could also use chives, parsley, chervil,
thyme or rosemary). Wrapped around that is a
chicken breast that has been pounded thin.
This package of chicken and herbed butter is
dipped first in flour, then egg and finally bread-
crumbs before being deep fried to a golden brown.
When you cut into one, the crust is crispy, the
chicken is moist and melted butter flows out of the
middle.
There are some caveats, though, in making it.
Chicken breasts are much larger now than they were
when the dish was at the height of its popularity.
Even if you pound one as thin as you can and wrap it
around the butter, you still are likely to overcook the
outside in the oil before the inside is cooked through.
I sliced mine in half horizontally, which yielded
the proper size. Some stores carry smaller breasts;
the Just Bare brand of chickens are smaller and are
available at several local supermarkets, but the store
I went to was out of them when I got there.
Most recipes suggest frying the chicken briefly
before then cooking it in the oven as a way to ensure
it is cooked all the way through. But that’s cheating
and is not in the spirit of the dish. I fried mine at the
relatively low temperature of 350 degrees for the rel-
atively long time of 15 minutes and ended up with
chicken that was perfectly crispy on the outside and
thoroughly cooked.
Colter Peterson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch-TNS
See, Ukraine/Page B3
Borsch topped with a dollop of sour cream and dill.
Getting ready for gardening
WENDY
SCHMIDT
BETWEEN THE ROWS
Barbara Eckstein/Contributed Photo
Forsythia is one of the first shrubs to bloom in the spring.
While we wait for the weather
to turn more temperate, many
things can be done to occupy the
day. Make sure garden tools are
cleaned and sharpened. You can
also give plants a head start by
starting garden seeds indoors.
It is a great plan to take notes
about when the seeds are planted,
what variety you chose to plant,
when they germinate, are trans-
planted, and when you plant them
outdoors. This will help you plan
your schedule for future springs.
Crocus and snowdrops are
blooming and forsythia is gearing
up to turn the world yellow. It is
recommended that any winter
mulch be left in place until the
forsythia blooms.
Garden Update for March
• Pussywillows begin
blooming
• Bats begin leaving hiberna-
tion caves
• Make sure birdhouses are
clean and ready for nesting
• Add fresh chicken manure to
peonies.
• Sprinkle a good all-pur-
pose fertilizer around where you
planted bulbs
• Sow seeds of larkspur, sweet
peas and snapdragon where they
are to grow outdoors
• If you had ornamentals with
aphid or scale problems last year,
apply dormant oil spray on a mild
day while temperatures are above
freezing.
• Begin pruning fruit trees this
month; prune apple and pear trees
first.
This is a busy time of year in
the outdoor and indoor garden
in preparation for the growing
season. Happy gardening and
thanks for reading!