In his youth, Yevhen Klopotenko left his native Ukraine to live with his grandmother in Great Britain, exposing him to new cuisines and igniting his culinary pursuits. He waited tables across Europe and the United States, created a cooking competition in Kyiv, won “MasterChef Ukraine,” and studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.
Along the way, he asked himself: “Why do I know more about the regional cooking of, say, Italy than I do about the cooking of the place where I grew up?”
Now a Kyiv restaurant owner, online cooking teacher and social activist, Klopotenko answers that question in the introduction to his new book, “The Authentic Ukrainian Kitchen: Recipes From a Native Chef” (Voracious, $40). Eighty years of Soviet rule in the 20th century eradicated much of the region’s culture and identity, he explains, replacing it with what the occupying government deemed “ideologically correct” ways of thinking, dressing and eating. Meanwhile, “the incredibly varied dishes once lovingly prepared by our ancestors went into hiding.”
The recipes within these pages bring those forgotten and underappreciated flavors to light. Borsch (the spelling is intentionally different from the Russian word) is Ukraine’s most iconic dish and appears in several guises, along with numerous other beet-based recipes, from salads to beverages. Klopotenko’s dishes elevate other staples of the Ukrainian larder: rye flour, wheat berries, buckwheat, farmer cheese, sausages, pickled vegetables, dill and parsley.
The salads I tried were as satisfying as they were brazenly simple: one with baby new potatoes, dill and bacon; another with julienned carrots and apples; a third with cucumber, hard-boiled eggs, green onions and radishes.
I’m also tempted by Garlic Pampushky (garlic oil-slathered dinner rolls), Braised Roast Pork with Prunes, Syrnyky (farmer cheese pancakes) and Verhuny (deep-fried pastries dredged in powdered sugar).
With each, Klopotenko invites us to “step into Ukrainians’ shoes — if just for a minute — and understand us as an independent people with a unique culture all our own.”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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