A Ukranian Cooking Feast

On Sunday, I drove to a stranger's home where I would meet 9 other cooking enthusiasts and partake in a feast of Ukrainian foods. The kitchen was warm and friendly; The smell of buttered puff pastry baking in the oven permeated the air. My host greeted with me with an enthusiastic hello. She was a Ukrainian refugee, whom I would soon find came complete with stories of her years in Gorbachev's Soviet Union and the following years of struggle and success in the food industry in America. Her stories were braided into the dishes, all of which served as a door to a world that I had never been introduced to. The pastries I was smelling were not desserts, but pierogis, very much unlike the Americanized dumpling version. One set of pierogis was cooking, and another set was being prepared. They were filled with a dab of beef and chicken that was first cooked in the borsht and then ground with caramelized onions in a home electric meat grinder--a Ukrainian essential. These caramelized onions had escaped from a long tupper-ware that stored them in a bath of corn oil that had sweetened and browned them earlier in the last week. In between pressing the pastry corners together, the cook held out a scoop of cold ground meat for me to try. I leaned in and accepted the meaty paste. Was there enough salt? She wanted to know. Yes. It was a delicious blend of savory flavors. Once all of the pastries were prepared, a lancome blush brush dusted them with egg yolk and sugar.

Next came the potato pancakes. Red potatoes--boiled, mashed, cooled and mixed with egg. We dusted our fingers with flour and rolled the sticky fragile mass of potato into flat ovals. After one last dab of flour, the potatoes sizzled in a pan of corn oil until they browned. For the meal, these potatoes came topped with a sauce of caramelized sliced mushrooms and onions, salt, pepper and sour cream. It was a divine addition to the simplicity of the soft potatoes. I gave them my full attention but jumped when another guest gasped at the cook's quick juicing of the oranges and lemons with a daringly sharp knife. The juices gushed out, and the thick slices of added "zest" tossed about in their flow. The mixture of wine vinegar, honey, salt, pepper, olive oil and juices created an exotic marinade for what I would have thought to simply be chopped white cabbage. It had a sweet and juicy crunch. These dishes come from Odessa--a region in Ukraine that borders the Black Sea and offers a beautiful Mediterranean climate with a summer that lasts 8 months. My jaw dropped at the prospect of such fantastic weather, until a pan's shrill banging, knocked me back into using my logic, and I realized that I live in San Diego--a city of near-unchanging weather. I turned my head to see vibrant reds and greens heightened by sprinkles of white. This was a dish of pickled bell peppers and fresh sheep's milk feta--which you might know is not something I am drop-to-my-knees fanatic about. The peppers had been roasted whole and then soaked for a good length of time in a brine of oil, white vinegar, water, salt, sugar, garlic, onion and black pepper. The sweetness and ebb and flow of juices that leaked with every cut of the red flesh was a bit overwhelming, but it did create quite a picture! The lady next to me was happy to plant her serving onto my plate, and I was happy that all the insides had leaked out onto hers. Rye bread was passed around at the table; the rule is that you rub a clove of garlic in salt and then on the crust of the soft bread. The bread is then eaten with the borsht--which was the best (and only) beet soup I've every had. It was compiled from a stock of chicken and beef (remember the ground meat for the pierogi?), onion (yes, it is in everything), carrots, tomatoes, beets, cabbage and celery. There was a distinct seasoning of garlic, pancetta, dill and parsley that lifted the flavors of the soup to a state of being satisfyingly savory. The chunks of soft carrot and tomatoes invited new flavors into particular bites if so desired. The extra rye bread was topped with eggplant caviar (no, not fish eggs)--a kind of salsa made of pulp from a baked eggplant, freshly grated tomatoes (just use a home grater and the skin will protect your hands), olive oil, a boat-load of fresh mashed garlic, cilantro, salt and black pepper. In all the dishes, there were more flavors and colors than my eyes could handle, and it was a truly amazing and enlightening day of cooking lessons, stories, good company and food.