Read Celebrating the Ukrainian Way: The 12 Dishes of Christmas at the Kyiv Independent

didukh

The dried wheat bouquet called didukh is part of Christmas decorating in Ukraine. Aren’t these lovely?

deruny

You’ve probably know these as latkes. Potato pancakes, often with onion and garlic, served with sour cream. They are a part of the Ukrainian table year round.

kartoplianyky

Do you love mashed potatoes? Rhetorical question. Everyone loves mashed potatoes! Have you ever had the ingenious idea of STUFFING mashed potatoes with other things you love like meats, mushrooms or vegetables? Well get with the program. Meet kartoplianyky.

piroshky

Buns. Hand pies. Call them what you will, but both baked and fried piroshky are the walking foods you need more of in 2024. These are filled with rice, herbs and hard-boiled eggs, one of my favorite combinations. If you’re in Seattle, there’s a famous, in the kind of circles where people use famous to describe regional snack shops, snack shop called Piroshky, Piroshky. If you’re not in Seattle, I bet your local Eastern European grocer is also making them.

uzvar

Essentially smoky apple cider. So good with bourbon. Made from dried fruits including smoked prunes and apricots. Drink it warm or cold, it’s rich and layered.

Want to try some? Get some unsweetened dried apples and apricots. Find the moistest prunes you can, massage in some Wright’s liquid smoke and let it sit sealed overnight. Then boil all the fruit in water for about 30 minutes, strain and let come to drinking temperature.

kolach

In the same ballpark as challah bread, this slightly sweetened yeast bread is crucial to the table. It’s not always in this bread pyramid, but this is a traditional way to serve it around the holidays. I wonder if the butter candle trend will show up in any kolaches around the world this year.

Read Celebrating the Ukrainian Way: The 12 Dishes of Christmas at the Kyiv Independent

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• Reading - more gift guides than I’m buying gifts.

• Listening - to Mele Kalikimaka (Christmas in Hawaii) by KT Tunstall because I would expect nothing less from my local college radio station.

• Snacking - on persian sour plum and cornelian cherry juice from Azerbaijan which I recently discovered at my local pan-slavic grocer. A Christmas miracle!

• Watching - Dumb Money (2023) who could not have cast a better Ken Griffin.

• Smelling - Highland Lilac (1890) because what is Christmas shopping if you’re not also buying for yourself.

1. What foods are traditional at your family table?

2. The best kitchen related gift you’ve given or received is ___________.

3. What’s your holiday drink?

4. The best way to eat mashed potatoes is _______________________.

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P.S. I’m taking January off. If you miss me, snoop around the archives while I’m resting!

I was a Roald Dahl obsessed child. I spent 5 years during college working in a chocolate shop. America’s Manic Pixie Dream Boy is playing the latest version of Wonka this Christmas, sure to be a disappointment I will watch nonetheless.

All to say it makes perfect sense that my second article with the Kyiv Independent is about Ukraine’s most storied candy factory and the cake that made it famous.

Read Kyiv Cake: The legendary sweet of Ukraine’s capital at the Kyiv Independent

I had forgotten how good Kyiv Cake was until I wrote this story. Essentially a giant meringue sandwich, it’s the perfect balance for anyone looking for a vehicle to suck down rich buttercream without abandon. Something you can find at most Eastern European grocery stores in the states.

The history of the factory is a lot more complicated.

What started as Valentin Efimov’s “steam factory for the production of chocolates and candies” in the 19th century would go on to make confections so popular that they outlasted three forms of government — the Russian Empire, Ukrainian People’s Republic, and finally, the Soviet Union.

During its 137 years in operation, the factory has found its way into many key moments of Kyiv’s history — from its workers resisting Hitler to becoming entangled in a trade alliance that led to the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2013.

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Here are some additional videos and visuals that support the story.

Some vintage factory footage from 1986 & 1973 that shows factory workers making the cake and people saying how they’ve traveled just to get a fresh cake.

A 30-minute art house documentary from 2009 called Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory which explores found footage from the factory and posits owner and former Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, is an oligarch orchestrating a secret sale to AVK, the company’s main competitor.

An image of factory workers decorating the cake with it’s newly standardized images in 1965 which are strikingly similar to what you’ll find in store today.

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• Reading - The Creative Pragmatist Book by Amy Smilovic (2023) otherwise known as Mom Tries to Get Her Groove Back.

• Listening - to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra freshly score Jim Carrey’s 2000 movie, The Grinch.

• Snacking - dark chocolate covered pretzels from local chocolatier Wockenfuss.

• Watching - an adorable mustelid mock his mother’s capitalist tendencies in Jim Henson’s 1977 take on gift of the magi, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.

• Smelling - Thierry Mugler’s 2021 Alien Goddess which smells like a Bath & Body Works vanilla wrapped in a TOTEME scarf jacket.

1. What type of cake do you use to mark important celebrations?

2. Nuts in desserts are ____________________.

3. Have I eaten a chestnut? Have you eaten a chestnut? How do we eat chestnuts?

4. A Ukrainian dish or brand I’d like to know more about is ________________.

5. Cashews vs Hazelnuts: Go!

Strolling next to the onion-domed St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church during the 46th annual Baltimore Ukrainian Festival in September, it felt impossible to forget that only 50 days had passed since Russia sent cruise missiles directly into the Transfiguration Cathedral, the primary Orthodox church in Odesa.

Towards the back of the Baltimore church, a small booth displayed several blue and yellow products including a heart shaped magnet, the top half covered in blue black-eyed susans, the Maryland state flower, and the bottom half in yellow sunflowers, Ukraine’s national symbol of resistance. The merchandise was a reminder that Baltimore and Odesa have been Sister Cities since 1975, first drawn together by the industrial importance of their ports. 

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What is a Sister City?

The Sister City program was launched by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, which envisioned a network that would be a champion for peace and prosperity during the Cold War. The goal was to foster bonds between people from different communities around the world. 

In September 1975, dignitaries from Odesa visited Baltimore’s port facilities and attended an Orioles baseball game before the two cities signed an agreement to share cultural and educational resources and embark on people-to-people exchange programs. A partnership that was reinvigorated by a cultural exchange trip to Odesa in August 2021.

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Baltimore-Odesa Sister City Committee (BOSCC) has organized several efforts to support Ukraine. The Committee was influential in the Maryland Governor's office providing $5 million in aid in 2022 and helped make connections that launched the ongoing World Central Kitchen campaign. 

On the ground in Odesa BOSCC has also supported smaller, people-to-people projects as well. In one example from 2022, The Committee funded a seamstress in Odesa who retrofit her wedding gown shop so that she could alter volunteer battalions pilots’ uniforms to include flame retardant materials. This year, the $3,000 raised from the Ukrainian American Festival will be used to help replace a fire truck that was destroyed during a rescue mission this summer.

How Did These Cities Come Together?

Odesa has historically focused their Sister City partnerships on port cities. So Baltimore, which has had an active port since it began exporting tobacco and sugar in 1706, was a perfect match.

Later that century in 1794, the Russian Imperial Army commandeered the existing Turkish port of Khadzhibei on the Black Sea. When Empress Catherine took power, she named the city Odesa after the Greek god of wisdom and put a Spanish naval commander from Naples, José de Ribas, in charge of the city’s development into a commercial and shipping hub. 

By 1815 the port of Odesa was already handling more than half of all the freight passing through the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. It quickly became a key exporter of grain for much of the world. 

Today, both cities have a traffic capacity of around 40 million tons of international cargo annually. Almost 33 tons of grain were exported from Ukraine during the 12 month deal brokered with Russia in July 2022. Since Russia pulled out of the deal in July 2023, its attacks on Ukraine have damaged or partially destroyed 105 port infrastructure facilities.

How Did Italian Architectural Design Influence These Cities?

In the three years that Neapolitan José de Ribas served Odesa, he designed much of the Italianate city center and brought numerous other Italians to this rapidly developing port city.

In 1808 another Neapolitan, Francesco Frapolli, designed the Transfiguration Cathedral and in 1809 the Odesa Opera and Ballet Theater. However, much of the city’s neoclassical architecture is owed to a second Francesco, Francesco Boffo, who served as chief architect of the municipality of Odesa from 1822 to 1844.

During Boffo’s last years in Odesa, the first Italians were arriving in Baltimore. Almost immediately after Italian immigrants arrived, the 3-story, cornice capped Italianate row home started appearing in Baltimore. The style dominated residential development from 1850 to 1890 making it the most common style of row house in Baltimore to this day.

Since the ongoing targeted airstrikes began in Odesa this summer Italy has vowed to bring its experience and resources to help with restoration efforts. At least 25 historical buildings including 9 in the UNESCO protection zone have been damaged. 

The destruction includes the Vorontsov Palace designed by Francesco Boffo and the Transfiguration Cathedral designed by Francesco Frapolli. The Cathedral was destroyed once before by the Soviet regime and replaced with a Stalin monument in 1936. It was restored in 2010 before being bombed by Russia on July 23, 2023.

How Has Jewish Food Influenced These Cities’ Local Cuisines?

Jewish immigrants started arriving in large numbers to Baltimore at the beginning of the 19th century, around the time Odesa was building itself into a critical international port. By the start of the 20th century, 30% of Odessans and just under 10% of Baltimoreans were Jewish. 

Regardless of religious affiliation today, you will find Jewish food everywhere in Odesa. The unofficial dish of the city is forshmak, a herring and apple pâté served with black bread. In My Odesa Cuisine restauranter Savva Libkin notes that forshmak is “this undoubtedly Jewish snack that has long gone beyond the borders of Jewish cuisine.” Olena Bohdonava’s Ukrainian Cuisine: Our Dishes with Soul includes a deconstructed forshmak chopped salad, speaking to the dish’s popularity.

Gefilte fish, a cold ground fish appetizer, and tzimmes, a side dish made with sweet root vegetables, are other Jewish dishes common at the Odessan table.

Baltimoreans have their own ground fish snack called coddies, a deep-fried patty filled with ground cod and potatoes. Although the origins of the dish are disputed, they were popularized when Jewish merchant Louis Cohen started selling the savory snack at his ice cream stand in 1910. 

Corned Beef Row, a string of delis in a historically Jewish part of downtown Baltimore, was started by two Ukrainian immigrants newly in love. At just 20 years old, Harry Attman arrived from Kusmien, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, in 1910 and opened a shop selling produce and corned beef sandwiches in 1915, the same year his future wife Ida came from Pidvolochysk, Ternopilska Oblast. Today Attman’s is the oldest continuously family-owned deli in the United States.

All across Ukraine the danger and destruction of war are leaving families with no access to food, especially in rural areas. In 2022, BOSCC raised funds at the ‘Bmore Ukraine’ Festival which enabled them to provide a vehicle for an Odessan food pantry to make delivery to rural areas of the oblast cut off from other aid efforts.

During a time when continued financial support from allied governments for Ukraine is in question, the types of exchanges and support fostered by smaller organizations like the Baltimore-Odessa Sister City Committee become increasingly important. The Committee accepts direct donations, the full amount of which will be used for humanitarian aid to citizens of Odesa, Ukraine, and for displaced Ukrainians in Baltimore.

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forshmak salad

This is a deconstructed salad version of forshmak adapted from Olena Bohdonava’s Ukrainian Cuisine: Our Dishes with Soul. Traditionally, you would pulse these ingredients in a blender or food processor until they form a rough pâté and create a balanced blend of tart apples and strong herring. The key to this salad is dicing everything similar size so you can get all the flavors in one bite.

what you need

2 hard boiled eggs, diced◾2 cups smoked herring in oil, diced ◾1 granny smith apple, diced ◾ 1/4 red onion, diced ◾ 1 bunch green onions, roughly 1 cup chopped and loosely packed ◾ 2 tablespoons unrefined sunflower oil◾1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar◾1/2 teaspoon honey

what to do

In a small saucepan, cover eggs with an inch of water and bring to a boil. Continue at a low boil for 6-8 minutes. Drain immediately and submerge eggs in a large bowl of ice water to cool.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl whisk together sunflower oil, vinegar and honey to make dressing. Set aside.

Dice herring and apple into 1/2-inch pieces and place in a large bowl. Dice red onion into 1/4-inch pieces and chop green onions, adding to bowl when complete.

Peel eggs and dice into 1/2-inch pieces. Add eggs and dressing to the bowl, gently folding ingredients together until combined.

(If making pâté instead of salad: add all ingredients to a food processor or blender and pulse until combined into a smooth paste.)

Serve with dark rye toast.

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• Reading - We Are Never Meeting In Real Life: Essays by Samantha Irby (2017) which is giving me equal parts Chicago giggles and homesickness.

• Listening - Birth of a Ghost by Omar Rodríguez-López (2017) which is a prog rock classical fever dream recorded in a Baltimore church accompanied by With Lions.

• Snacking - on candied strawberries from the divine Dipasquale’s Italian Market in Baltimore.

• Watching - Theater Camp by Molly Gordon & Nick Lieberman (2023) which confirms that the female cast of The Bear have been watching a lot of Christopher Guest films.

• Smelling - a strange blend of LUSH bath bombs and vape pens trapped in a subway tunnel entitled, the scent of a commuter’s life.

1. What is your favorite seafood snack?

2. Where’s the place you’ve never lived, but feels like home?

3. [whatever you wanna tell me!]

4. Does your town have a sister city? Should we go there?

5. How are your sisters doing?

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Twenty years into the attention economy, it might seem a foolish attempt to keep up with even the smallest slice of pop culture. Not surprisingly, many of us stop finding new music after the age of 33.

Back in July of 2017, my music algorithm was busy feeding me results for Ukrainian indie-folk crossover bands: 5 Vymir, Panivalkova, the Dakh Daughters and the others built off recommendations from bigger acts like Okean Elzy and Onuka. This left me completely unaware that stateside Michelle Zauner was building steam with her critically acclaimed sophomore album, Soft Sounds from Another Planet, which she performed under the name Japanese Breakfast.

This second album solidified her self-proclaimed brand of “dreamy, shoe-gaze inspired indie pop.” As early as track 2, ‘Road Head,’ we’re hearing a soup that tastes a lot like Karen O and Real Estate. From there ‘Machinist’ and ‘12 Steps’ inject dance worthy beats you might find on a playlist next to M83 into an album otherwise living up to its shoe-gaze aspirations.

The back half of the album is anchored by a three-part distortion-heavy contemplation on love in the face of death starting with ‘The Body is a Blade,’ a return to the more direct references to her mother’s death seen on her 2016 debut Psychopomp. This is followed by an introspective love song to her husband and bandmate that indulges itself by ending with the single word line “thanatophobia” (the fear of dying). I think you get the picture.

Three weeks after the Soft Sounds release, I found out my mom had pancreatic cancer.

It’d take another three years and a pandemic road trip for me to find Zauner’s music and a fourth to discover what we had in common. A breakfast of self-indulgent grief.

In June 2021 Zauner released her memoir, Crying in H Mart (rumored to become a feature film), which chronicles her relationship with her mother as she loses her struggle with cancer. The secrets that connected them and how the foods they shared helped solidify a new identity after her mother’s passing.

Maangchi's letter

All about Korean home cooking, yours and mine.

During her mother’s illness, Zauner tries desperately to learn Korean dishes from extended family members and caretakers. Most try to help, but have been cooking from feel too long to consider documentation useful. In the meantime, many of the family favorites have become indigestible during chemotherapy.

The first welcomed dish is jatjuk, a pureed rice and pine nut porridge, which according to many of the book’s characters is served in Korean homes when loved ones are sick.

When the funeral passes and the search for comfort begins, Zauner becomes immersed in Korean cooking and relies on YouTube chef, Maangchi, for many of her recipes. Nothing satiates Zauner until she finds her way back to a recipe for jatjuk. A mild, private healing that can be folded softly into the day.

In the desperate few months between diagnosis and death, there weren’t many signature Theresa dishes to document. I had long ago mastered my mom’s no bake oatmeal cookie recipe. And although Appalachia has experienced something of a food revival, my mother would have wanted no part in it. So initially I found myself replicating her diet as I remembered it from my childhood, largely filled with chocolate.

At the same time, I found myself newly fixated on Ukrainian cuisine. Language lessons, conversations at work, reading and collecting cookbooks all revolved around tasting and documenting recipes and ingredients from around the country. Like Zauner, I was sorting through a new phase in my identity, one dish at a time.

I started making kimchi once a month, my new therapy. I reserved an older batch for cooking stews, pancakes, and fried rice, and newer batches for side dishes. When I had more than enough to eat, I started pawning it off on friends.

When I did cook, I found myself wanting something private. Leftovers, like me, that would be left alone. In our house, that was a weekly batch of kasha.

Kasha, or roasted buckwheat, is a grain staple in Ukraine. Earthy and aromatic in a way that’s unexpected by what looks like a plain side dish. After noticing it served for breakfast with milk in my school and reading about eating tomatoes on cereal, this combination seemed like it could work to balance the grain’s flavor. In late summer, these were probably also the only ingredients in my fridge. I ate it without pause until the last tomato disappeared from the market. Two months later, my mom disappeared too.

roasted buckwheat with tomatoes & sour cream

Roasted buckwheat comes on strong with a fetid, woodsy taste liable to overpower meeker meats and vegetables. It pairs well with savory egg and vegetable dishes and is frequently served in Ukraine either alone or with a mushroom-onion gravy.

Make sure you have the roasted variety usually found in the kosher, Polish or Russian food section of your supermarket. In the alt-grains section you might find Bob’s Red Mill unroasted buckwheat groats, but those are a bland, mushy second in comparison.

what you need

1 1/2 cups water ◾ 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt ◾ 1 tablespoon unsalted butter ◾ 1 cup roasted buckwheat/kasha ◾ 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved ◾ 1/4 cup sour cream or plain Greek yogurt

what to do

Bring water, salt and butter to a boil in a medium saucepan with a lid. Add buckwheat, reduce to a simmer, and cover. Simmer for 13-15 minutes. Similar to rice, the hissing will quiet when the grains are done. Remove from heat, letting stand covered for 5 minutes.

Serve with cherry tomatoes and a dollop of sour cream or plain Greek yogurt.

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• Reading - the interesting recipe backstories in Festive Maryland Recipes by AKA Kara Mae Harris (2023).

• Listening - to the Baltimore National Heritage Area A City of Immigrants podcast (2018).

• Snacking - on the Original Sacher Torte which my neighbor ordered online and then didn’t like because the amount of oil it takes to stabilize the shipping process makes it very unlikeable.

• Watching - The Saint of Second Chances (2023) which makes me very excited for an Orioles post-season.

• Smelling - St. Barts by Tommy Bahama (2007) which could not smell more like its birth year.

1. What is your most comforting breakfast?

2. The best snack at H-Mart is _________________________.

4. What’s a food memory you associate with your mother?

5. Breakfast should be ____________________.

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The last time I wrote about borscht was January 18th, 2022, combined with a profile of Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan. Since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 he has led various fundraising efforts for occupied regions of eastern Ukraine.

DONATE: to Zhadan’s Charitable Foundation which supports “a variety of educational, cultural and healthcare initiatives in the Ukrainian East, to help the communities ravaged by war feel [like] an essential part of Ukrainian society.”

Discourse about Ukraine has changed a lot since that newsletter was published, but its national dish has been roughly the same for five centuries. The cost to make it in a wartime economy, not so much. The Borscht Index, similar to The Economist’s long running Big Mac Index, shows how food costs are rapidly rising for Ukrainians.

To learn more about the history of borscht, what makes it quintessentially Ukrainian and how some of those ingredients made it into the index, check out my very first byline in the Explaining Ukraine section of The Kyiv Independent.

borscht article at The Kyiv Independent

• Reading - That 1980s Bowling Alley Smell by Jason Diamond (2023)

• Listening - My Soft Machine (2023) by Arlo Parks who I’ve been hooked on since 2021’s Hurt which she ingeniously calls back to in the lyrics to Puppy on the new album.

• Snacking - on UTZ Carolina Style Barbeque chips. Barbeque meets salt & vinegar. How did it take this long?

• Watching - UNTOLD: Swamp Kings (2023) because what is sports fandom without championship nostalgia and an abusive work environment?

• Smelling - MÛRE SAUVAGE by DANS un JARDIN, a Quebec made eau de toilette which combines wild blackberries and musk in a way that really has me rethinking fruit notes in perfume.

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1. What is your fall food personality? Are you a gameday grubber? A pumpkin spice head? A soup season fanatic?

2. <insert whatever in the world you want to talk about here>

3. Are beets (a) the best of the fall produce, (b) not worth the effort, but maybe at a restaurant, (c) a bloody mess that taste like they slept underground before dinner?

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Consider the crab stick. The chicken nugget of the sea. Made most commonly from Pollock, an abundant fleshy white fish, through a Japanese centuries-old preservation process called surimi. It is notably sweeter, denser and cheaper than its natural counterpart, making the distinction between real and fake crab hard to miss.

So if the host of my quarantine sushi making class was correct that it “crab sticks were invented for American sushi in the 1970s” (he was not), then why did I eat so many great crab stick based dishes in Ukraine?

To answer that we need to go back to Stalin’s desire win Soviet hearts through their stomachs. During the 1930s, while he was systematically starving millions of rural Ukrainians through a grain collectivization program, he sent the People’s Commissar of Food and Trade, Anastas Mikoyan, on a tour of US industrialized food production.

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Mikoyan returned with a plethora of ideas on how to revolutionize both the Soviet food system and the domestic kitchen. One result of this trip was the USSR’s publication of The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food in 1939. Part cookbook, part patriotic guidebook, it blended a picture of food abundance with a smattering of replicable national dishes from around the Soviet republics. To that, it added refashioned American foods as well as newly created Soviet dishes based on what could most easily be mass produced. After the second printing in the mid-1950s, it had sold 2.5 million copies, putting it in roughly 5% of Soviet households.

The book includes a few recipes for dishes like crab in white wine and butter sauce. It highlights crab fishing and canning in the Kamchatka peninsula, due west of southern Alaska, noting world famous crabs weighting upwards of 4 - 7 pounds with leg spans reaching up to a yard long. Much like Soviet champagne and chocolates, crab becomes another way to prove that the capitalist West did not have a monopoly on luxury.

A decade after the book’s second printing, a Japanese scientist discovers a way to lengthen the shelf life of surimi by preserving it with sugar, making it possible to export. then in 1966, the USSR and Japan sign a trade agreement including food products.

Within a few years fishers of the eastern Soviet Union rise to the growing demand for Pollock in Japan and learn to make their own surimi on the boat to maximize freshness and fetch a higher purchase price. But it will take another decade before imitation crab rides on the wave of glasnost into the Soviet home kitchen.

When it does arrive in the mid-1980s, home cooks make brilliant use of what’s available. In my favorite case, letting vibrant home-grown tomatoes elevate processed foods like imitation crab sticks, processed cheese and canned corn.

While that list of ingredients might sound dated in an era of wild caught fish, artisanal cheese and farmer’s market corn right out of the recreated field of dreams (what are they gonna get if they auction that corn as an NFT?!), the rest of us are happily relying on innovative techniques like flash freezing to get sweet corn easy enough to thaw and throw into a pre-cooked Pollock salad parading around as a shellfish delicacy.

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Нижніст - crab & corn salad

In Ukrainian, this dish is called Nizhnist or “Tenderness” salad. This doesn’t translate well, but it means something like comfort food salad and can also be made with chicken. Many of the Ukrainian language recipes I found online include hard boiled eggs, green onions and either fresh cucumbers or pickles, making the dish decidedly more savory. Here the focus is on the sweetness of corn and cherry tomatoes which highlights the sweetness of imitation crab. To keep things balanced, make sure to add plenty of salt.

what you need

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved ◾ 8 ounces of imitation crab sticks, chopped ◾ 4 ounces hard, mild cheese cubed (try edam, unsmoked gouda or gruyère) ◾ 8 ounces corn, fresh or frozen and thawed ◾ 1 lemon ◾ 1 handful of chopped parsley ◾ 1/4 cup unsweetened mayonnaise like Duke’s ◾ 2-3 teaspoons of kosher salt

what to do

Prepare ingredients, chopping to make everything relatively equitable in size. Then, in a medium bowl combine tomatoes, crab sticks, cheese, and corn. Sprinkle the lemon juice, parsley, and salt over the ingredients. Fold in mayonnaise until the salad is well coated. The dressing should be very thin like a vinaigrette, not thick like an egg salad. Serve cold.

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• Reading - Old volumes of Our Life (наше життя) magazine (1944 - 2023).

• Listening - to Emotional Contracts by Deer Tick (2023) which sounds like they listened to a boatload of Tom Petty during the pandemic.

• Snacking - on The Charmery’s red bean and strawberry ice cream which is peak pink treats of 2023 for me.

• Watching - Oppenheimer (2023) or a long parade of nervous scientists in suits obscured by a non-linear time line.

• Smelling - Orphéon by Diptyque (2021) which has that heavy dirty floral scent I love for slugging it through summer in the city.

In January’s letter 26 I covered Ukrainian poet and activist Serhiy Zhadan and the work he’s been doing since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. Over the last month he’s been using his Facebook page to cover the situation in Kharkiv and to support the role of volunteer militias.

Last Friday he called for donations to support purchases related to his organizing efforts. Funds are used for everything from vehicles, helmets and bullet proof vests to food and first aid support. These aren’t the type of direct donations you might be accustomed to, but it is the kind of grassroots organizing that is desperately needed.

DONATE HERE:

Serhiy Zhadan’s Patreon: www.patreon.com/serhiyzhadan

PayPal transfers from outside Ukraine: Serhiy Zhadan - sirozhazhadan@gmail.com

Learn more about the development of volunteer militias since the Revolution of Dignity by streaming the film Myth which follows Ukrainian opera singer, Vasyl Slipak, who left Paris to join the ranks.

nalysnyky (налисники) - Ukrainian-style filled crepes

A food fit for any part of the day, nalysnyky travel well if you pack them snugly or wrap in wax paper. This recipe yields 6 filled crepes, but they are filling so that may be all you need. NOTE: Kefir is the rising agent, so don’t skip it.

what you need

filling: 1-14oz package of farmer's cheese ◾ 1-2 handfuls shredded carrots ◾ 2 cloves garlic, minced ◾ kosher salt to taste

pancakes: 2 eggs ◾ 1 tablespoon sugar ◾ 2/3 cup all-purpose flour ◾ pinch of salt ◾ 3/4 cup milk ◾ 1 1/2 tablespoons kefir ◾ 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

what to do

Mix together filling ingredients and set aside.

Warm a 7-8" non-stick frying pan over medium heat.

In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs with the sugar, then incorporate the salt and flour. Slowly add milk while continuing to whisk. Then pour in kefir and oil and mix until all the lumps are gone.

Pour 1/4 cup of the batter into the frying pan, using the back of the measuring cup to quickly spread the batter across the bottom of the pan. It should be very thin, almost see through. Cook for 1-3 minutes, until light/golden brown. Flip with a large spatula and continue cooking for another 1-2 minutes. Repeat with the remaining batter.

Spread 1-2 heaping tablespoons of the filling into the center of the pancake and roll up like a burrito.

My recipe request cupboard is bare. Help refill my coffers by sending in 5 recipes you’ve enjoyed, your name and current hometown.

Want a recommendation? Click here!

• Reading 

  You don’t get by on being original. You don’t get by on being bright. You don’t get by on being strong. You get by on being a subtle crook.

  • Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009) for my annual two-person book club.

• Listening - a lot more train conductor announcements than I’ve heard in the last two years.

• Watching - House of Gucci by Ridley Scott (2021) which probably got harsher reviews than it deserved for being such a straightforward biopic.

• Smelling - Bloom by Gucci (2017) because I’m just a hamster in the marketing wheel.

Happy first anniversary to this newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here, you’re reading and you may even be cooking along.

So far, it turns out this newsletter has been largely about salads and sweets.

Salads: crab & corn salad - East Village spinach salad - shrimp, grapefruit & olive salad - potato chip potato salad - green bean & walnut salad - two ways with pasta salad

Sweets: caramel oatmeal bars - blueberry cardamom jell-o - orange clove icebox cake - egg yolk chocolate chip cookies - zero-proof old fashioned snickerdoodles - Russian spice cookies - Robert Redford cookies

If you’re interested in supporting another year of research, cookbooks, photography, salads or sweets financially, now you can buy me a slice of pizza.

Buy me a slice of pizza!

It should also be acknowledged that the newsletter is sometimes about Ukraine and post-Soviet foodways. So I’d like to take a moment to say that Ukraine is a democracy deserving of self-determination and sovereignty. That a shared past or shared language should not be conflated with the right to invade or create economic instability to serve geopolitical interests. That English media reporting surprising calm in Ukraine should not be interpreted as apathy.

In short, I stand with Ukraine. In honor of that, I’m using this anniversary to share the story I wrote in 2018 that became the inspiration for this newsletter.

As I pull up to the pastry display counter at the most western leaning outpost in my rural Ukrainian community, I begin scanning the case for what I’ll pair with my standard tea order, 1001 Nights - a green, black and fruit tea blend. Nestled between the standard offerings of Napoleon cake and cherry poppy seed grated pie I notice something new. A short stack of thick buttery pie crust, dulce de leche and chocolate ganache topped with a smattering of peanuts, an unusual combination for Ukrainian desserts. I begin my usual struggle to read the hand written Ukrainian cursive. It says “Snickers Pie”?

I cave to my incessant craving of cherry and poppy seeds, but when my friend Julia joins me a few minutes later I notice she’s brought this riff off Snickers to the table. “Is Snickers pie new?” I ask. “Well, I’ve only seen it here once before, but I had it last time I was in Kyiv visiting a friend. I saw it everywhere there. It’s so tasty” Julia glowed between bites. Julia, an historian born in 1990, a daughter of what Ukrainians call the “born free” generation, and I cherish the time we meet to discuss the past, present and future influences of Ukrainian culture.

After we parted ways, I couldn’t stop thinking about Snickers pie. To me, it felt disconnected from other Ukrainian desserts often rooted in cream, honey and fruits. Heavy on walnuts and hazelnuts, usually light on chocolate. But when I started digging through Instagram profiles of the trendiest cafes in Kyiv, Julia was right, it was indeed everywhere.

The earliest post of Snickers pie I found came from Milk Bar. Their tag line, “Cakes, Shakes & More” reflects one of the best-executed American-themed restaurants in Kyiv (as of 2018). Avocado toast, table side Chemex coffee service and pumpkin pie are just the highlight reel on a long list of insta-friendly offerings.

When I slid into their DMs to find out about Snickers Pie they responded as though it barely needed explaining. “We offer a rotating menu of American inspired desserts including apple pie, brownies and red velvet cake. Snickers pie is a perfect match. Everyone knows and loves Snickers. We knew it’d be a hit.”

Snickers, coincidentally, arrived in Ukraine not long after Julia. Mars Inc. started flooding the former Soviet republics in 1992 and became one of the heaviest foreign investors in the market long before even other giants like Coca-Cola and McDonalds had made significant inroads. At the time, the emergence of the “healthy” energy bars in the West was taking a toll on a 16-year American marketing campaign, “packed with peanuts, Snickers satisfies.” But, in cultures rebounding from a history of food scarcity and seeking the wealth of the West, a similar campaign which roughly translates to “fat, a fat layer of chocolate” struck gold. By 1994, the LA Times noted that Russian reporters were calling it “a symbol of our new times.”

Even today, sweet and “healthy” energy bars have not made meaningful inroads in Ukraine. So when I started to think about where and when I noticed consumption, it was often busy women with an eye on western culture. They frequently refer to them as convenient energy boosters. “When I’m studying for exams, I just get the 3 bar pack. It’s enough energy for the whole day!” bounds Julia, the studying historian. One of my teaching partner’s Yana had a similar view, “if I don’t have time to finish a full meal, Snickers and coffee will get me through the day.”

Consistently priced as luxury within reach, Snickers was one of the first ways children of the born free generation could taste the West. It became a popular children’s birthday gift and a joke among parents wary of the influx of western advertising. Long before being interested in Marlboros and after realizing they couldn’t afford Levi’s, Snickers had solidified its place in the evolving tastes of a new generation.

Snickers seems to understand its place as stable brand in changing times. In a 2012 commercial, a young boy describes his comically outdated adult aspirations in 1991 before flashing to him as an adult in a modern cityscape.

Snickers pie then, serves as an obvious comfort food in the age of Instagram. A food comforting the born free generation of Ukraine that affordable luxuries are still within reach, that once western goods can now be claimed for their own interpretation and that they are just a bite away from plugging into the West.

Hi again from The Dinner Conjurer, the part of the programming where you send in 5 recipes you’ve enjoyed, your name and current hometown. Then I work some haphazard magic to help lure new recipes into your dinner routine.

Madison in Washington D.C. from our pasta salad sandwich newsletter last summer is making:

1. The Division Bell cocktail

2. This Antipasto Salad Dressing in a salad with plenty of pickled pepperoncini peppers

3. Garden Herb Shrimp Scampi

4. Chutney Morcheh Sorkh from Parwana on literally anything

5. Stir Fry with whatever veggies she has cooked in Zhong Sauce

Since you’re skipping between savory, spicy and smoky, let’s see if I can hit Mexico, Italy and South Asia in one fail swoop. Start by using up your remaining mezcal for snake eyes or a mezcal sun-risa.

Then excuse this poor copy editing and grab your improvisational spoon for this deceivingly easy chili crisp butternut squash spaghetti.

To simplify: Get the noodles, squash and shallots and garlic going at the same time. They’ll all finish in about 20 minutes including prep, reserve liquids from both. Then puree the squash with 1/4 cup pickle juice, 1/4 cup nutritional yeast or parmesan, 1 tablespoon of cumin, 1 tablespoon of fresh ginger and as much broth and/or pasta water as you need to reach saucy. Toss with noodles and top with chili crisp and scallions.

Want a recommendation? Click here!

• Reading - A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelly (1962)

• Listening - Collected Reworks (2020) by Foals which I thought was a greatest hits album before embarking on 4-hour dance pop-fueled banana bread making session.

• Watching - The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) by Joel Cohen where I spent the entire film waiting for that big “to be, or not to be” climax…oops!

• Smelling - James by rosie jane (2015) because I’m like a moth to the amber light.

In 2020, many of us allowed ourselves the pleasure of toiling through a new hobby or project where we had little previous experience. For a brief moment we applauded the idea in others.

Yet historically, we’ve allowed a very narrow path for our literary writers and visual artists in this country. You may be a professor as well. That is all. On occasion, singers and actors may briefly cross over before we require them to choose a lane.

Which artists working in English are respected equally for their work across several media?

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In part this is likely a value judgement on acceptable forms of profit, but may also be consequence of so many artists working in English. Among less spoken languages the culture can’t always afford forced specialization. Enter the prolific Ukrainian multi-disciplinary artist, Serhiy Zhadan.

Since 2001 Zhadan has been translating poetry into Ukrainian while producing his own work. By 2004 he has written seven poetry collections, a compilation of short stories and his first novel, has started collaborating with La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York and is leading an activist camp in Kharkiv through Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.

Read: How Ukraine’s Orange Revolution Shaped 21st-century Geopolitics

Then in 2008, after two more novels, he becomes the singer-songwriter for a Ukrainian punk-ska band called Dogs in the Cosmos. In total over the last 20 years, Zhadan has led activists during two political revolutions, written four studio albums, orchestrated five performance art projects and authored seven novels as well as 14 poetry collections. Many to critical acclaim.

Read several of Zhadan’s poems including “…Remember How Winter Began in Your Town”, Alcohol and Music for the Fat which have been conveniently collected and linked on a single page by Yara Arts Group.

It makes for a portrait of a life built around words with great latitude in how they are executed. The kind of structured freedom that is a lot like borscht.

Borscht starts with sour, then expands as you see fit. The result can be red, white or green. It may have meat or mushrooms, fruit or not. It can be packed full of vegetables or a nearly bare broth. Hot or cold, served at any hour. A multi-disciplinary soup in the spirit of Duchamp’s readymades where self proclamation is as important as the composition.

борщ - Ukrainian-Style Borscht

Borscht is the Yiddish transliteration most commonly used in North America linked to the Proto-Slavic word for hogweed, once fermented to form the centerpiece of the soup. Today, many cooks rely on acid from lemon, tomatoes, vinegar, pickled vegetable juice tart apples or apricots to impart the signature sour taste.

The other key ingredient is zazharka (зажарка) - braised carrots, onion and cabbage which work in the tradition of mirepoix, sofrito or the Louisiana holy trinity as the flavor base of the soup.

Cooking Notes: From scratch this takes an active 2+ hours, so don’t be a hero. Using pre-made stock, pre-shredded carrots and cabbage can save you maybe 30 minutes if you’re well organized. To go vegan, use 2 pounds of mushrooms in place of chicken for the stock.

what you need

stock: 4 bone-in chicken thighs, 1 pound ◾ 4 bay leaves ◾ 6 quarts water ◾ 2 tablespoons kosher salt or bullion cubes

zazharka (braised flavor base): 3-5 tablespoons canola or grapeseed oil ◾ 1 large yellow onion, diced ◾ 1 cup shredded carrots ◾ 5 cups shredded cabbage, about 1/4 head ◾ 1 red bell pepper, diced ◾ 4 prunes, chopped ◾ 1 tablespoon tomato paste ◾ 2 tablespoons garlic, minced

soup: 1 large or 2-3 small beets, boiled and shredded ◾ 1 tablespoon white vinegar ◾ 1 pound waxy new potatoes, cut to 1 inch cubes ◾ 1-28 ounce can diced tomatoes, drained

what to do

Add stock ingredients to a large stock pot and bring to a boil. Simmer uncovered for 1 hour while you prepare the beets and other vegetables.

In a medium pot, bring beets and white vinegar to a boil. Boil for 25-40 minutes depending on the size.

While the beets are boiling, do your dicing and shredding of the remaining vegetables. Beets are ready when a fork easily pierces through. When ready remove beets from heat, drain and rinse several times in ice water to stop the cooking. Set in the freezer to cool.

To make the zazharka, heat the largest frying pan you’ve got (12”+) or another large pot to medium-low with the oil. Add onions and sauté for 5-7 minutes until translucent. Add the carrots and cabbage, salt generously and cook another 10 minutes until the vegetables start breaking down. Add bell pepper, prunes, tomato paste and garlic and mix thoroughly, cooking another 10 minutes to sweat peppers and plump prunes. Remove from heat.

While the vegetables are braising, peel and shred your beets. Then remove chicken and bay leaves from stock, shred meat from bones with two forks and return it to the pot along with your cubed potatoes. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Add beets and tomatoes, then simmer another 5 minutes.

Finally, add remaining vegetables and salt to taste. Bring back to a simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally to combine ingredients well.

Serve with sour cream, dill and garlic butter dinner rolls.

Welcome back to The Dinner Conjurer, where you send in the name or a short description of 5 recipes you’ve enjoyed, your name and current hometown. Then I work some hopeful haphazard magic to help lure new recipes into your dinner routine.

Elissa S. of MOVIEPUDDING has been single handedly creating a rappini shortage in New York City with:

1. Rappini (aka broccoli rabe) sautéed in garlic and showered in homemade, extra spicy chili oil

2. Chard, kale and rappini with white beans in parmesan broth, from Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons

3. Traditional lasagna Bolognese (no ricotta or mozz!!), an all day affair

4. A quick chicken pho, from Anita Lo's Solo

5. An even faster fridge-dive miso soup with salmon

Since you’re already investing the time in homemade chili oil, try using it for this linguini with walnuts, orange and chili from Food & Wine. My favorite upgrades are adding sautéed greens and using walnut oil in place of olive for a big flavor payoff.

Alternatively, if you’re willing to travel south with your beans and greens, Southern Living has a hearty white bean and collard soup perfect for winter. I make it with Carolina-style mustard barbeque sauce to cut the fat and sweetness of the original recipe.

Want a recommendation? Click here!

This section was inspired by The Biblioracle Recommends newsletter where you can get the same scene, but for books.

• Reading - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (2020) which I’m hoping turns out as good as Knives Out.

• Listening - Voodoo by D’Angelo (2000) because who isn’t looking for a Greatdayandamornin’?

• Watching - The Sopranos by David Chase (1999 - 2007) and wondering, is this it? Maybe I’ll just skip straight to the cookbook.

• Smelling - Tease Crème Cloud by Victoria’s Secret (2021) for anyone looking to smell like musky vanilla and sheer sandalwood for 47 seconds.

It started with the beatniks and jazz musicians in the 1960s. Punk, No Wave Cinema and graffiti ruled the 1970s. This paved the way for artists like Blondie, Talking Heads, Jenny Holzer and Jean-Michel Basquiat to make connections between the established art world and downtown in the 1980s.

During the nineties, the city’s music scene went dormant as we all sent our collective grunge gaze towards Seattle. Then as quickly as the millennium turned DFA was born, Is This It came out and the nascent internet brought the music world back to the East Village.

The remaining village of Ukrainians were ready to feed the return of rock and roll. Both the Odessa Restaurant, opened in 1965 as a bar, and Veselka, opened in 1954 as a candy shop, had expanded and converted to 24-hour diners in the mid-nineties. So when I read Lizzy Goodman’s oral history, Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City from 2001-2011, I was ready to hear about late nights that ended as mornings in Ukrainian diners.

However, somewhat predictably, consumption stories from the bands largely revolved around powder and pills. Not a lot of Eastern European comfort food stories amid the competition between The Strokes and Kings of Leon for who can have the skinniest jeans.

JAMES MURPHY: Sometime during this time, we celebrated my thirtieth birthday. For a cake Tim bought me Roxy Music’s Stranded LP with thirty lines of cocaine on it. This is the cocaine era of New York.

I was feeling the urge to write my own drunken perogi missed connection. But I searched on.

In Meet Me in the Bathroom we find out that Karen O’s first apartment was above Odessa Restaurant. Our first clue. Goodman’s chapter “New York, New York” from the Chan Marshall biography, Cat Power: A Good Woman, also references a “pre-internet world where entire relationships were built” on chance meetings at these two diners. But leave it to an original tastemaker of the NYC rock revival to not let me down.

Before millennial women turned mom blogging into a multi-trillion dollar business, Laura Young of The Modern Age and Sarah Lewitinn of Ultragrrrl were documenting the rise of early aughts indie bands online. Both contributed to Goodman’s oral history, but it was the resounding voice of other journalists and musicians that describe their crucial part in the success of many bands from the era.

Ultragrrrl was last hosted on blogspot in a quasi-searchable index world. My commitment to manually searching her whopping 1,037 posts between 2003 - 2005 was limited. In the end I didn’t need to because The Modern Age’s recounting of “The Greatest Week in NYC” from 2011, had just the confirmation I was looking for:

But this week was a total return to 2001-2003, down to going to dancing the night away at parties and then heading to Veselka at 4am to eat pierogies. (You OGs know what I’m talking about.)

Veselka was a place so ingrained in the moment, it became part of an insider’s reference.

East Village spinach salad with creamy dill dressing

Adapted from The Veselka Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Landmark Restaurant in New York's East Village because dry mushrooms are a scourge on salad.

what you need

1/4 cup plain yogurt ◾ 1/4 cup sour cream ◾ 1/2 lemon, juiced ◾ 1/2 teaspoon salt ◾ 1/2 teaspoon black pepper ◾ 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

4 strips of bacon, cooked ◾ 2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced ◾ 1 pound baby spinach ◾ 1 cup shredded carrots ◾ 1/2 cup fresh green beans, trimmed and halved

what to do

To make the dressing, whisk together all the ingredients in a small bowl. The dressing can be made in advance and even benefits from a day in the refrigerator.

Cook the bacon over medium heat in a cast-iron pan until very crispy, about 10-15 minutes. Set aside on paper towels to blot and cool.

While the bacon is cooking, bring eggs to a boil in a small saucepan and continue at a low boil for 7-8 minutes. Drain and dunk in ice water to stop the cooking and to facilitate the peeling process.

Assemble the salad and either top with dressing or top to combine.

What is the worst topping on a salad?

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• Reading - Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001–2011 by Lizzy Goodman (2017)

• Watching - Mare of Easttown by Craig Zobel (2021) because even when I leave Baltimore that Mid-Atlantic accent seems to follow me

• Smelling - Elizabeth Street Cologne by New York Shaving Company (2008) for anyone who wants to strong arm their partner into wearing cologne, but also sneak spritzes for themselves all winter

• Listening - to a playlist inspired by Monday nights of the early aughts in Gainesville, FL at the University Club

Back in July of 2017, my music algorithm was busy feeding me results for Ukrainian indie-folk crossover bands: 5 Vymir, Panivalkova, the Dakh Daughters and the others built off recommendations from bigger acts like Okean Elzy and Onuka. This left me completely unaware that stateside Michelle Zauner was building steam with her critically acclaimed sophomore album, Soft Sounds from Another Planet, which she performed under the name Japanese Breakfast.

This second album solidified her self-proclaimed brand of “dreamy, shoe-gaze inspired indie pop.” As early as track 2, ‘Road Head,’ we’re hearing a soup that tastes a lot like Karen O and Real Estate. From there ‘Machinist’ and ‘12 Steps’ inject dance worthy beats you might find on a playlist next to M83 into an album otherwise living up to its shoe-gaze aspirations.

The back half of the album is anchored by a three-part distortion-heavy contemplation on love in the face of death starting with ‘The Body is a Blade,’ a return to the more direct references to her mother’s death seen on her 2016 debut Psychopomp. This is followed by an introspective love song to her husband and bandmate that indulges itself by ending with the single word line “thanatophobia” (the fear of dying). I think you get the picture.

Three weeks after the Soft Sounds release, I found out my mom had pancreatic cancer.

It’d take another three years and a pandemic road trip for me to find Zauner’s music and a fourth to discover what we had in common. A breakfast of self-indulgent grief.

If you’re still holding on to summer applications for iced-tea, try Nichelle’s Earl Gray and Limoncello ditty. It’s the athleisure of drinks, sort of fancy but still sweatpants. Or help Tammie decide: is cold brew even good?

In June 2021 the memoir Crying in H Mart chronicles Zauner’s relationship with her mother as she loses her struggle with cancer. The secrets that connected them and how the foods they shared helped solidify a new identity after her mother’s passing.

During her mother’s illness, Zauner tries desperately to learn Korean dishes from extended family members and caretakers. Most try to help, but have been cooking from feel too long to consider documentation useful. In the meantime, many of the family favorites have become indigestible during chemotherapy.

The first welcomed dish is jatjuk, a pureed rice and pine nut porridge, which according to many of the book’s characters is served in Korean homes when loved ones are sick.

When the funeral passes and the search for comfort begins, Zauner becomes immersed in Korean cooking and relies on YouTube chef, Maangchi, for many of her recipes. Nothing satiates Zauner until she finds her way back to a recipe for jatjuk. A mild, private healing that can be folded softly into the day.

In the desperate few months between diagnosis and death, there weren’t many signature Theresa dishes to document. I had long ago mastered my mom’s no bake oatmeal cookie recipe. And although Appalachia has experienced something of a food revival, my mother would have wanted no part in it. So initially I found myself replicating her diet as I remembered it from my childhood, largely filled with chocolate.

At the same time, I found myself newly fixated on Ukrainian cuisine. Language lessons, conversations at work, reading and collecting cookbooks all revolved around tasting and documenting recipes and ingredients from around the country. Like Zauner, I was sorting through a new phase in my identity, one dish at a time.

I started making kimchi once a month, my new therapy. I reserved an older batch for cooking stews, pancakes, and fried rice, and newer batches for side dishes. When I had more than enough to eat, I started pawning it off on friends.

When I did cook, I found myself wanting something private. Leftovers, like me, that would be left alone. In our house, that was a weekly batch of kasha.

Kasha, or roasted buckwheat, is a grain staple in Ukraine. Earthy and aromatic in a way that’s unexpected by what looks like a plain side dish. After noticing it served for breakfast with milk in my school and reading about eating tomatoes on cereal, this combination seemed like it could work to balance the grain’s flavor. In late summer, these were probably also the only ingredients in my fridge. I ate it without pause until the last tomato disappeared from the market. Two months later, my mom disappeared too.

roasted buckwheat with tomatoes & sour cream

Roasted buckwheat comes on strong with a fetid, woodsy taste liable to overpower meeker meats and vegetables. It pairs well with savory egg and vegetable dishes and is frequently served in Ukraine either alone or with a mushroom-onion gravy.

Make sure you have the roasted variety usually found in the kosher, Polish or Russian food section of your supermarket. In the alt-grains section you might find Bob’s Red Mill unroasted buckwheat groats, but those are a bland, mushy second in comparison.

what you need

1 1/2 cups water ◾ 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt ◾ 1 tablespoon unsalted butter ◾ 1 cup roasted buckwheat/kasha ◾ 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved ◾ 1/4 cup sour cream or plain Greek yogurt

what to do

Bring water, salt and butter to a boil in a medium saucepan with a lid. Add buckwheat, reduce to a simmer, and cover. Simmer for 13-15 minutes. Similar to rice, the hissing will quiet when the grains are done. Remove from heat, letting stand covered for 5 minutes.

Serve with cherry tomatoes and a dollop of sour cream or plain Greek yogurt.

What is your most comforting breakfast?

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• Reading - Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (2021)

• Listening - The Woman that Loves You on Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast (2016)

  Don't you think?
  You should try to do as little harm as you can
  To the woman that loves you

• Watching - Pecker by John Waters (1998)

• Smelling - My friend’s Nuxe Dry oil Huile Prodigieuse which I stealth sniffed in their bathroom like a total creep. It’s subtle and glorious.