Dear readers, we invite you into the magical world of heartwarming and nourishing dishes, personalized by very special people who made them memorable. While these recipes are not traditionally American, they don’t belong to the Ukrainian cuisine either; rather, European with an Eastern-Slavic twist. Bon appétit!
Story #1: cod liver salad
This writer’s courageous savior, now a friend, in Ukraine, where meat and seafood sub-products aspire to true delicacies, employs her favorite recipe to make the most of her super-brief dinnertime in-between her folk-healer sessions with both scheduled and emergency patients. Such a speedily sculpted dish is at once a protein-and-fiber-loaded quick-fix energizer and a luxury dinner for a slim and hardworking woman like herself, who spends countless sleepless nights helping others sleep more peacefully.
Ingredients:
• cod liver — 1 can
• eggs — 2
• peas — 1/2 cans
• pickled cucumbers — 2-3 (small)
• green onion — by taste
• cod liver oil — 1 tbsp.
Directions:
- Hard-boil the eggs, then cool and peel them.
- Remove the cod liver from the can and allow excess oil to drain.
- Wash and dry the onion. Drain the liquid from the peas. Cut cucumbers into cubes.
- Finely, chop onion, liver and eggs. Combine cod liver, eggs, peas, onions, cucumber and cod liver oil.
- Mix the salad well. Such delicious cod liver salad can be served in a salad bowl or can be prepared in portions.
Yield: serves 1. Total time: Prep: 20 min. Cook: 15 min.
Story #2: cottage cheese pancakes
As a choosy child, I used to dislike lumpy semolina milk porridge, fashionable to feed children for chubbiness in the Soviet-era 1970s. I protested until my doting grandmother found her way to plump me out with the same semolina inserted into one of my favorite breakfast dessert dishes — cottage cheese pancakes in the shape of super-soft and airy roses blushing victoriously with the yummiest strawberry jam!
My passion for both cottage cheese and creamy flavor has turned me into a lifelong fan of those love-laden pancakes. Of course, our whole family hastened to partake in that promptly portable pleasure in no time!
Ingredients:
• cottage cheese — 200 g
• vanilla — 1 scoop
• sugar — 3 tbsp.
• sour cream — 5 tbsp.
• 2 eggs
• semolina — 3 tbsp.
• butter — 2 tbsp.
• baking powder — 1 tsp.
Directions:
1. Carefully grind cottage cheese with sugar and vanilla. Add eggs and softened butter.
2. Mix semolina* with sour cream, add baking powder and let stand for 10 to 15 minutes.
3. Mix both masses and arrange in tins. Bake for 30 minutes at the temperature of 356 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. By taste, sprinkle the cottage cheese pancakes with powdered sugar and serve, having poured sour cream or strawberry jam.
*For pancake recipes using semolina, you can substitute it with an equal amount of all-purpose flour or bread flour. Bread flour is a closer substitute due to its higher protein content, which is similar to semolina. All-purpose flour will also work, but the texture may be slightly different.
Yield: serves 5. Total time: Prep: 35 min. Cook: 60 min.
Story # 3: fruitcake from dried fruits & berries
This is precisely a fruitcake from dried fruits and not with dried fruits. It contains plenty of dried fruits and berries and very little dough. This festive, flavorful and colorful fruitcake turns out to be lavishly tasty and healthy since it’s literally packed with vitamins!
Most importantly, it is prepared quickly and easily, unlike most conventional desserts. My longtime friend, a former classmate from the pedagogical university, was growing up in a modest Ukrainian village and was accustomed to helping her parents with planting, harvesting and conserving various gifts of nature including vegetables, fruits and berries of every kind. She would always bring the generous preserves of rare medicinal berries to me, a dainty city girl.
Through many hardships, she was destined toward endurance. She underwent endless relocations with her military test-pilot husband and who ultimately left her for another woman. She struggled as an unemployed single mother, worked with difficult teenagers and finally moved to Moscow to toil as a nanny for wealthy families, only to have her hard-earned apartment in Kharkov bombed at wartime. She had to be evacuated with a few belongings to an inhospitable territory, yet she has remained a perfect cook and hostess. She was devoted to making others happy with her homemade dishes, invariably brimming with nature’s gifts, conserved, preserved and presented in the sweetest package of love, like the fabulous fruitcake miracle she generously shared with me.
Ingredients:
• 10-14 oz of a mixture of nuts and dried fruits (2 types of raisins, prunes, dried cranberries, figs and walnuts)
• 2 eggs
• 6 tbsp. of brown sugar
• 6 tbsp. of flour
• ½ tsp. of baking powder
Directions:
1. Dried apricots and prunes cut into pieces and mix with nuts and other dried fruits.
2. Beat eggs with a whisk and add to the mixture of dried fruits.
3. Add sugar, flour and baking powder; stir.
4. Grease the mold with oil and pour the resulting mass into it, bake in an oven preheated to 356 F for about 45 minutes.
Yield: serves 4. Total time: Prep: 20 min. Cook: 60 min.
Featured image: Photo by Garvit Nama on Unsplash
Edited by Nancy Martin & James Sutton
