Ukrainian and international home cooking recipes
This little layered salad with its fairy-tale name runs on the tension between salty and sweet. Boiled potato with chopped pickle sits on the bottom, sweet grated apple on top, and between them a band of raw carrot with garlic that adds bite and fresh crunch. The carrot is deliberately left raw here; uncooked, it […]
If you are looking for a salad that feels both hearty and elegant, the “Alex” salad is about to become one of your favorites. It layers tender poached chicken, marinated button mushrooms, juicy tomatoes, and shredded cheese, all brought together with a touch of garlic and a creamy mayonnaise dressing. It is the kind of […]
“Ayuks” earns its keep in the weeks when the garden buries you in zucchini and cucumbers and the freezer is already full. Nothing gets blanched: you grate, chop, and simmer everything together for a quarter of an hour. The quantities run large, into the kilograms, because this is a bulk-canning recipe from the start. The […]
The tongue-in-cheek name “Bachelor’s Dinner” says it all: this is a self-contained preserve you just open and reheat for a full meal. The vegetable-and-rice mixture of tomatoes, carrot, sweet pepper and garlic is filling enough to serve as both side dish and light lunch. The order of adding things matters. The carrot and onion go […]
The banana does double duty here as a thickener: its starchy flesh makes the shake sweet and thick without any syrup. Blueberries and raspberries add color and a gentle tartness that balances the richness of the ice cream. It belongs to the family of American milkshakes. Helpful Pointers Frozen berries will make the shake colder […]
Start with the potatoes and let them cool completely — that’s the one non-negotiable. Hot potatoes crumble under the knife and turn the salad into mash, while cooled ones hold a neat dice. Boil them in their skins so the flesh stays dense instead of waterlogged. The name points to the borovik, the porcini or […]
Start with a trick that most cooks skip: before the beef goes into the pot, halve an onion and sear it cut-side down in a dry pan until the face is deep brown, then drop it into the boiling water. Those charred sugars tint the broth and give the meat a faint smoky sweetness raw […]
“Cathedral” borscht is a vegetable-heavy version of the Ukrainian classic: eggplant and green beans join the usual beet and cabbage, and instead of the standard fried base, it’s finished with shpik — cured pork fatback, similar to unsmoked salt pork — pounded in a mortar with garlic. That garlicky lard paste, stirred in off the […]
“Champagne Spray” is a cluster of fruit canapes on toothpicks, stuck into a cut pineapple base so the picks fan out like the foamy instant a bottle is uncorked. Fresh squares of pineapple, apple, and pear stay pale and crisp, while the pineapple itself doubles as both a stand and an edible centerpiece. The lemon […]
“Chudesny” (Ukrainian for “wonderful”) is the archetypal pantry salad: four canned things plus crab sticks, tossed together in five minutes. Sweetish corn, tender beans, marinated button mushrooms, and crab sticks play off each other well enough that a big bowl never gets dull. The whole game is draining. Tip the corn, beans, and mushrooms into […]