Festive Ukrainian Cooking

www.ebook3000.com Festive Ukrainian Cooking ---~--- www.ebook3000.com Festive ~ /«ainian Cooking Marta Pisetsl<a Farley ---University of Pittsburgh Press:--- Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15261 Copyright © 1990, Marta Pisetska Farley All rights reserved Eurospan, London Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Farley, Marta Pisetska. Festive Ukrainian cooking/Marta Pisetska Farley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8229-3646-1 1. Cookery, Ukrainian. 2. Ukraine-Social life and customs. I. Title. TX723.3.F371990 90-30614 641.5947'71-dc20 CIP www.ebook3000.com In memory of my father Danylo Pisetsky who taught me to love and respect my heritage www.ebook3000.com -----------------,Contents----------------- Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi Note on Sources xix I Traditional Feasts 1 Christmas Eve (Sviata Vechera) 3 2 Christmas (Rizdvo Khrystove) 27 3 Easter (Velykden') 37 4 First Sunday After Easter (Provody) 60 5 Feast of Saint George (Sviato Iuriia) 72 6 Pentecost (Zeleni Sviata) 78 7 Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (Petra) 85 8 Feast of the Transfiguration (Spasa) 93 9 Feast of Saint Demetrios (Dmytra) 103 10 Feasts of Saint Catherine and Saint Andrew (Kateryny i Andriia) 114 II Family Celebrations 11 Weddings (Vesillia) 125 12 Name Days (lmenyny) 142 13 Gathering Wild Mushrooms (Hryby) 177 Appendixes 191 Notes 195 Glossary 201 Bibliography 207 Index to Recipes 211 www.ebook3000.com -------Acknowledgments------- During the eight years spent researching and writing this book, I have received help from many people. Librarians and clerks have assisted in finding and retrieving materials that seemed inaccessible. Top priority goes to the New York Public Library's Slavonic Division and the Widener Library at Harvard University. I thank the headquarters staff of the Ukrainian National Women's League of Amer ica, New York City, for giving me access to their collection of Ukrainian cookbooks. I acknowledge this organization's continuing interest in materials on Ukrainian tradi tional cooking. It is largely due to their efforts that Natalia Chaplenko's Ukrainian Culinary Glossary became available. Her work, in turn, made mine easier. I thank Frederick A. Hetzel, Director of the University of Pittsburgh Press, for his willingness to guide me through the process of publication. Jane Flanders, Editor at the Press, made the transformation of the manuscript into a book appealing and seemingly effortless. I thank her. Professor Emeritus Wasyl Jaszczun of the University of Pittsburgh helped me to interpret archaic Ukrainian texts and historical terminology, and with translations. Without his help, my task would have been more difficult. I thank him. Lubow Abramiuk-Wolynets of the Ukrainian Museum, New York City, receives my gratitude not only for her monograph on traditional Ukrainian breads but also for her willingness to read the first draft of the manuscript. I thank Dr. Orysia Karapinka of the University of Pittsburgh for her patient reading of the second draft and for offering thorough and constructive criticism. Because of her efforts, the material took a firmer shape. Thanks to Bohdan Swyszcz of Pittsburgh for translation and retrieval of a "lost" cookbook. George Fedynsky of Detroit offered me a wonderful turn-of-the-century cookbook that proved the elegance of Ukrainian culinary art. I received help regarding korovai from Anna Poliszczuk of Baltimore and Kateryna Dowbenko of Pittsburgh. I thank them both. Artistic credit belongs to Yvonne Kozlina ix x Acknowledgments------------------------- of Pittsburgh. She was patient, attentive, and creative in transforming photographs by Gregory Ihor T urczyn of Pittsburgh into drawings. In the conceptual phase of the book, Ol'ha Kuzmovych of New York offered enthusi, asm and support for its format and completion. I am grateful for her faith in this project. In order to complete this mountain of work, I received much encouragement from Dr. Michael Kotyk of Pittsburgh. I thank him for his staunch support. My family's help was constant. My sons, Andrew and Mark, are a "product" of my cooking. Both willingly and at times enthusiastically ate their way through various versions of most recipes. They offered wry and not so wry encouragement throughout. Special gratitude and appreciation is due my husband, Andrew Newell Farley, who generously underwrote the research and writing of this book. All the help notwithstanding, the responsibility for the book is mine. I am sure there will be readers who will differ with the opinions and interpretations of the material presented here. However, I hope that all will be enriched and entertained by discover, ing the rich culinary and spiritual traditions of the Ukrainian people. www.ebook3000.com --------Introduction-------- The intention of this book is to acquaint the reader with Ukrainian cuisine as it existed in the preindustrial era, and with modern variations on that cuisine. Ukrainian cooking embodies national and ethnic tastes and reflects the spiritual and social awareness of Ukrainians. This cookbook records these traditions and adapts the old recipes to mod, ern use. I began with questions. Why do Ukrainians eat what they eat when they eat it? Why do Ukrainians like tart and textured dishes? Attempting to answer these questions led to an examination of Ukrainian traditional, religious, and familial feasts. Preindustrial folk celebrations focused on the table. Food, its abundance and availability, marked the level of importance of an event, because scarcity was a frequent condition of life. Ukrainian traditional cuisine was basically old home cooking. It evolved. It was tried and tested over centuries, and the patiently gathered knowledge it incorporated was passed on orally. Like all orally transmitted traditions, it was only as strong as the last link in the chain. Not until the nineteenth century were attempts made to document what and when Ukrainians ate and drank. This book is one of the links in that chain. I hope it will not be the last. The Christian religious calendar superimposed on the folk calendar assured the re, demption of the soul and offered to explain the mysteries of the world. Although the Christian church sharply opposed some of the old Ukrainian folk rites and customs as pagan and idolatrous, it softened this opposition by coopting customs, songs, and ritual dishes into Christian celebrations. Christmas thus replaced celebration of the winter solstice, Easter the rites of spring. However, Ukrainians continued to celebrate Christ, mas with kutia (a pudding made from whole wheat kernels, poppy seeds, and honey) that dated to very ancient times, 1 and Easter with pysanky (intricately decorated eggs) and krashanky (dyed cooked eggs) that also predated Christianity by centuries. Family feasts marked birth, christening, betrothal, marriage, and burial. These in, ducted the individual into the family, clan, and nation. Religious rituals tied one to the succession of generations, past and present. Commemoration of the dead, deeply rooted xi xii Introductionl----------------------------- in antiquity, persists to this day. Twice a year, special graveside services were held that included the traditional sharing of food and pysanky with the dead. The individual anniversary of a family member's death was also commemorated. A banquet was what distinguished a festive occasion, a religious holiday (praznyk) or a wedding, from the daily routine. Generous offering of food was a sign of hospitality as well as a token of respect. The degree of hospitality, the importance of a feast, respect toward a superior, or obligation to one's ancestors were all measured by the abundance of fare. 2 Rituals devised for tilling, planting, and harvesting crops were used to placate if not harness the evil, chancy, threatening elements of nature and to secure abundance. Thus these elements woven together, as in the traditional braided kalach (ceremonial bread), form the basis of this book. How prevalent are these practices today? Most of these traditions were common throughout the entire Ukraine, with regional variations, until the Second World War. Folk customs persisted in villages and small towns more than in large urban areas. The traditional sequence of holidays was still observed, and family events celebrated in accordance with the old customs, even among Ukrainians who had left their home land. 3 Of course, many agrarian practices, no longer relevant to city life, faded away. In Soviet Ukraine, traditional religious feasts were officially ignored and their cele bration forbidden because they conflicted with the official policy of atheism. New rites invented by Communist party officials reflected the party's history. The First of May and the October Revolution were celebrated instead of church festivals. 4 Similarly, folk rites were suppressed because they encouraged "nationalistic separatism." That meant that any ties to a Ukrainian past ran counter to the policy of Russification of all Soviet peoples. But these festivals and folk traditions live on in Ukrainian expatriate commu nities and in their cuisine. * * * Bringing these recipes to the modern reader entailed a challenging exercise in eth nological research. In the old Ukraine, there were lists of dishes preserved in folk traditions, song, and stories, but there were no lists of ingredients or descriptions of methods of preparation. Certain dishes appeared with greater frequency

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