COOK LIKE A LOCAL: UKRAINE

Discover sour cheese, pickled watermelons and fried sprats in this ferment-loving corner of Eastern Europe

Discover sour cheese, pickled watermelons and fried sprats

Ukraine is a huge country – the second biggest in Europe – and its produce and dishes are as varied as its climate and landscape. And even though quintessential dishes such as dumplings, borsch and cabbage rolls appear all over Ukraine, even they vary from region to region.

Deeper, earthier flavours are dominant in the Ukrainian highlands in the north-west. Hutsul people (highlanders) eat dishes made with corn – the most famous is banosh, a Ukrainian version of polenta.

Forests are full of mushrooms, bilberries and strawberries; trout is found in mountain rivers; people eat lamb, commonly cook with thyme, marjoram and dill, and make delicious sour cheese called vurda. Curd cheese called syr, as well as thick, homemade soured cream, are ubiquitous across the country, too, and for good reason.

Central Ukraine is famous for its dumplings – filled as varenyky and unfilled as galushki. Whole pears and plums are smoked and dried in the low heat of wood-fired ovens. In the south, tomatoes, aubergines and soft herbs such as coriander and purple basil prevail alongside dill.

And on the Black Sea shores of Odessa, you’ll find whelks, sprats and flat fish, as well as Jewish dishes such as forshmak (chopped herring).

In eastern Ukraine, they make fantastic svekolnik (cold beetroot soup) and okroshka (kefir or kvass-based cold soup with crunchy vegetables and meat stock). Indeed, the whole of Ukraine ferments vegetables expertly but you’ll find the most varied ferments in the Bessarabian south-west. Whole fermented peppers stuffed with kraut, fermented chillies, aubergines, whole pickled watermelons in barrels – all of the summer’s glut gets preserved for winter. »