Eastern Ukraine - Ukraine - page 473

» Bread Dark and white varieties of khlib are available every day, including the white
pampushky (soft rolls rubbed with garlic and oil and then fried) occasionally served with
borshch . Bread is often used in religious ceremonies and on special occasions. Visitors
are traditionally greeted with bread and salt.
» Cabbage Rolls Holubtsy are cabbage rolls stuffed with seasoned rice and meat and
stewed in a tomato and sour cream sauce.
» Kasha Pretty much any grain is called kasha in Ukrainian, and while the word might be
used to describe what Westerners would call porridge, more commonly it turns out to be
buckwheat. The latter appears as a side dish, as stuffing or as an unusual but filling
breakfast gruel.
» Pancakes Three types of pancake might land on your plate. Deruny are potato pan-
cakes, and are served with sour cream and vegetables or meat. Nalysnyky are thin
crepes; mlyntsy are thicker and smaller, like Russian blyny .
» Varenyky Similar to Polish pierogi, varenyky are to Ukraine what dim sum is to China
and filled pasta to Italy. These small half-moon-shaped dumplings have more than 50 dif-
ferent traditional vegetarian and meat fillings. They're usually served with sour cream.
According to some enthusiasts, borshch is imbued with all kinds of magical powers, in-
cluding the ability to melt the hardest heart.
Drinks
On street corners in summer, you might see small drink tankers selling kvas , a gingery,
beer-like soft drink, which is made from sugar and old black bread and is mildly alcohol-
ic. Kvas is proffered in plastic beakers, the communal mug on a chain having mostly dis-
appeared. In winter you can buy kvas in plastic bottles at the supermarket, but it's over-
carbonated and lacks that zingy 'live' taste.
The situation with Ukrainian wine is not very rosé, with production still suffering after
Gorbachev's 'dry law' saw many vines pulled up in the late 1980s. Crimea still produces
wines, but most of them are sugary dessert wines akin to Madeira or sherry. Some
Koktebel-label whites and Inkerman reds are probably the best you will drink in Ukraine.
Wines are also produced in the Transcarpathian region but, sadly, the best wines avail-
able in Ukraine still come from neighbouring Moldova.
The biggest name in Ukrainian vodka is undoubtedly Nemiroff. However, although
Ukrainians seem to imbibe an awful lot of the stuff, surveys show they don't drink any-
where near as much as Russians - which is probably a good thing.