Dig deep into Ukraine’s culinary culture
Fermenting, pickling and preserving vast quantities of produce in the sweltering heat takes dedication and fortitude.
In Ukraine, summer kitchens — standalone buildings where the doors and windows could be flung open, and bottles and jars filled without navigating the everyday activity of a family dwelling — made it all possible.
Growing up in southern Ukraine, cookbook author Olia Hercules’s summer kitchen was made of brick. Mirroring the composition of her family’s main house, the single-room structure had a similar roof, “and a little porch and everything.” Everyone she knew who lived somewhat rurally had one. It was where people did all their summer cooking and eating, and sometimes where they prepared feasts during winter as well. Perfectly commonplace, it wasn’t until she moved to London, England that she began to realize how special they were.
“They are magical, amazing places but they’re still regular to a Ukrainian person,” says Hercules. “With the Ukrainian part of my identity, I was completely feeling they were quite unremarkable. And then when somebody said, ‘Oh my God. That sounds amazing,’ I thought, OK. I need to start researching it.”
Far from simply spaces where seasonal cooking happens, as Hercules illustrates in her third cookbook, Summer Kitchens (Weldon Owen, 2020), these structures are woven into the fabric of Ukraine’s culinary culture. Using them as a framework, she shares essays, first-person accounts and recipes spanning all seasons.
Hercules “dug deep into people’s memories” for inspiration, travelling more than 10,000 kilometres, conducting interviews and visiting summer kitchens across the country.
The book’s 100 recipes tap into the past and reflect present sensibilities in fascinating ways. Summer kitchens became a tool, Hercules says, to analyze and research the very nature of her native cuisine. Highly regional — whether influenced by Nordic, Turkic or Hungarian methods — even common dishes such as holubtsi (cabbage rolls), borscht and varenyky dumplings take on local colour.
“I didn’t know how special some of the dishes we made in the south of Ukraine were. Because when I go up north or to the west and I mention some of the stuff that we make, they widen their eyes and they’re like, ‘Oh wow! Really? What’s lyok? What is this herb paste?’” says Hercules. “It’s so regional that even people from the same part of Ukraine haven’t heard of it.”
Despite these differences, Hercules sees the significance of summer kitchens and the food made within them as a unifier. The ingredients may change — dried smoked pears in the region of Poltava, fermented whole watermelons in the south, and pickled mushrooms in the north — but the techniques and traditions remain the same.
Essentially a miniature version of the main house, Hercules explains, summer kitchens go by different names depending on where you are in the country. In the north, shopa (barn), in the southwest budka (cabin) and in the south, in Hercules’s hometown of Kakhovka, litnya kuhnia (summer kitchen). As the names vary, so do the materials: the characteristic wooden constructions in the north morph into structures made of clay mixed with shells in the south and southeast.
Highly individual and sometimes eccentric, Hercules says, they’re an expression of both locality and personality.
“Whatever makes sense locally, that’s how they would be built. And some of them had real quirks. Mostly they are one-room structures, but sometimes people would really go crazy,” she adds, laughing.
With the proliferation of air conditioning, the practicality of summer kitchens is no longer the draw it once was. As a result, Hercules says, many people now use them for storage, have converted them into in-law suites or have torn them down entirely. She hopes, in this sense, Summer Kitchens will not only serve as documentation of a fascinating culinary practice, but as encouragement for Ukrainians.
“I’m hoping to maybe inspire people that still have one around to look at it through slightly different eyes,” she says. “Ukrainian but also not so Ukrainian. So you get a different view of them in a way, a different appreciation of them.”
During her research into their history, Hercules reached out to her followers on social media asking if anyone had memories of summer kitchens. She received more than 60 responses, many of them from Ukraine, but also from Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Russia saying they had similar structures. Thirdand fourth-generation Ukrainian
Canadians also got in touch with their recollections, which helped her fill in some of the historical blanks.
“I thought maybe summer kitchens did exist in one form or another before the 1950s, but I wasn’t sure because there’s no literature on that. And whoever I interviewed, they didn’t necessarily know or maybe their grandparents were already dead,” says Hercules. “But loads of Canadian people told me that they knew exactly. Their parents would have left in the early 20th century but they knew what a summer kitchen was. And in fact they say that in some communities in Canada they do still have them. Imagine this thing being brought over so many years ago and it’s still talked about. It also signified how important they were, and how central and important cooking was.”
SAUERKRAUT WITH WHOLE CABBAGE LEAVES
Ingredients:
• 2.2 kg (4 3 / 4 lb) sweetheart or young green cabbages
• 400 g (14 oz) carrots
• About 25 g (about 1 1 /2 tbsp) sea salt
Directions:
Step 1
Carefully take off the outer leaves of the cabbages and set them aside for later — you should have about 500 g (1 lb) of whole leaves.
Step 2
Cut the cabbages in half, cut out the cores and then cut them into thin matchsticks. (In Ukraine, the core, or heart, of the cabbage is never wasted — it is a prized, sweet morsel and is given to children to be eaten raw. I give it to my son.)
Step 3
Slice the rest of the cabbage, but not too thinly. You should have about 1.3 kg (2 3 /4 lb) of shredded cabbage, making 25 g (1 1 /2 tablespoons) of salt pretty much perfect. If you have less shredded cabbage than this, reduce the salt accordingly; if more, increase it slightly.
Step 4
Scrub or peel your carrots (if they are clean, I rarely peel them), then cut a little lengthwise slice off each carrot to make it steady on your chopping board. Cut the carrots lengthwise into thin slices and then into thin matchsticks — or you could just grate them on the coarse side of a box grater.
Step 5
Mix half the shredded cabbage and half the carrots in a large bowl and add half the salt. My mother just massages it all with her hands (she is fitter than me, despite being 62!), but after massaging it for a bit, I usually reach for my granite pestle and pummel the cabbage until it is defeated, soft and succulent. Then repeat the operation with the rest of the cabbage, carrots and salt.
Step 6
Put a little bit of the shredded cabbage in the base of a sterilized 1.5-litre (six-cup) container with a lid, then lay in your whole cabbage leaves — if they are too awkward and concave, just slice them in half. Pile in the rest of the cabbage.
Step 7
Now you need to weigh down the kraut so it releases enough liquid to cover everything — I usually put a sturdy small plate on top of the cabbage and sit my heavy granite pestle on top of that, then wait until a layer of brine forms on the surface. At this point, cover the container with its sterilized lid and leave at room temperature for a couple of days, lifting the lid from time to time to release the fermentation gases.
Step 8
When the kraut tastes sour, transfer it to a colder place, where it should keep well for about three months — a cellar is perfect, but a fridge, or in winter in cold climates, a garden shed or outside on your balcony would be fine too.
Makes: enough to fill a 1.5-L (six-cup) container
LAZY DUMPLINGS WITH GREEN BEANS, POPPY SEEDS AND CRISPY SHALLOTS
Ingredients:
For the dumplings:
• 100 g (4 oz) syr curd cheese or well-drained ricotta
• 75 g (2 /3 cup) all-purpose flour
• 1 egg
• Large handful of finely chopped dill
• 200 g (8 oz) green beans, tops trimmed
• 70 ml (1 /3 cup) sunflower or vegetable oil
• 2 shallots, thinly sliced
• 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 2 tbsp clarified butter (or butter with a splash of oil)
• Pinch of poppy seeds
• Sea salt and black pepper Directions:
Step 1
For the dumplings, gently mix together the curd cheese or ricotta, flour, egg and dill, then season with salt and pepper — it will be quite a wet dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and carefully knead until it is no longer sticky, then cover with a clean kitchen towel and leave to rest while you get on with the beans and onions. Step 2
Cook the green beans to your liking: for crisp-tender, drop into boiling water and cook for two minutes; I prefer my beans softer, so I boil them for at least four minutes. Drain and set aside.
Step 3
To make the crispy shallots, pour the oil into a frying pan over low heat. Just before you are ready to fry, toss the shallots in flour seasoned with salt, then shake off any excess and drop them into the hot oil. Cook until they are golden brown, but be careful not to take them too far, or they will taste acrid. Drain on paper towels.
Step 4
Now, on a lightly floured surface, gently shape the dumpling dough into a 25-cm (10-inch) sausage and cut it into 12 pieces. With floured hands, lightly coax each piece into a dumpling about 6 x 2 cm (2 1/2 x 3/4 inch). Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil, then slip in the dumplings, in batches, and cook for two to three minutes — they will float to the surface when they’re done. Drain well in a colander.
Step 5
Melt the clarified butter (or butter and oil) in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the dumplings and gently toss for a few minutes, until they are a light golden colour, then add the green beans to the pan and stir to warm through.
Step 6
Serve the dumplings and green beans with the crispy shallots, poppy seeds and some black pepper.
Serves: Two (makes 12 dumplings)