These Medovi Pryanyky–honey spice cookies — have been an integral part of Ukrainian holiday traditions for centuries. Also called medianyky, medivnychky and medovyky, these names stem from the Ukrainian word for honey, med, meaning “made from honey” and announce that the dough contains honey, which makes sweet, long-lasting, easy-to-shape cookies. The word pryanyky (plural, pryanyk …
It’s soup time! The autumnal equinox just passed, and days are getting shorter and cooler; the rainy season started. Slowly I am replacing the cooling meals of a record-breaking hot summer with warming dishes. Fall rain triggered reminiscences of my first mushroom-picking venture and this Romanian Mushroom Soup. One rainy fall day when I was …
This post presents a delectable apple and bread dessert known by various names. I call it Apple Babka, but similar recipes also are called Apple Zapikanka (pudding) or Apple Sharlotka (charlotte). The names often are confused because the recipes include similar ingredients: apples, bread or flour, butter, sugar and some also add eggs and/or milk. …
Apple Babka or Zapikanka or Sharlotka? – Ukrainian Apple Cake Read More »
Crimean Tatars, descendants of Mongol-Tatar nomadic tribes, left a legacy of chebureki (plural; singular; cheburek), their special savory meat-filled hand pies wherever they lived in Central Asia, including Ukraine. Chebureki resemble other hand pies eaten worldwide such as British Cornish pasty, Latin American empanada, Middle Eastern börek, Indian samosa, Italian calzone and Ukrainian pyrizhki. While there appears to …
This Chilled Crayfish Soup (холодник з раками – cold soup with crayfish) is one of many cold soups enjoyed by Ukrainians and their Eastern European neighbors. On a hot summer day, Ukrainians substitute a hot meal with a cold soup – kholodnik (холодник from the root word холод, meaning cold in Ukrainian) to refresh and …
In my childhood home, a bowl of Green Borshch and a piece of Egg, Scallion and Dill Tart were the harbingers of spring – a sign that the meat and potato dishes of winter months were put aside for lighter meals. Green Borshch or sorrel soup (Ukrainian: зелений борщ or щавелевий суп) is a variation …
Plachinda (плачинда in Ukrainian; plăcintă in Romanian) is a ubiquitous pastry with sweet or savory fillings, prepared in countries along the western coast of the Black Sea. Before current country borders were established after World War II, Bessarabia (Romanian: Basarabia; Ukrainian: Бессарабія; romanized: Bessarabia), as this region was known, served as a trade route between …
Crimean Tartar Lagman (also called laghman, lağmen, lağmon, lengmen means stretched dough) is a favorite Tartar dish. It is a nourishing, brothy main course full of vegetables, flavored with spices and herbs with or without meat, served on a bed of long pulled noodles. As Tartars resettled to the Ukrainian mainland after Russia’s 2014 forced …
This Braised Beef with Prunes and Winter Vegetables comes from Odesa, Ukraine’s most cosmopolitan city (or Odessa, the Russian transliteration). The dish originated in Odesa’s Jewish community many centuries ago and became part of the city’s multiethnic culinary tradition. For millennia, Ukraine, a country geographically located on the crossroads between Europe and Asia along the …
I would not have enjoyed this Khmer Rice and Pork Soup (transliterated as borbor, bo bor or babor), and other Khmer dishes but for a lenient Cambodian border control agent. On one of our trips to Thailand, an unscheduled opportunity cropped up that was too tempting to pass up. A local TV ad touted Bangkok …