Festive Ukrainian Cooking

by Marta Farley

Overview

Ukrainian cooking embodies national and ethnic tastes and reflects the spiritual and social awareness of Ukrainians. More than just a cookbook, Festive Ukrainian Cooking is a definitive account of traditional Ukrainian culture as perpetuated in family rituals and celebrated with elegantly prepared food and drink. Working from original sources in Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish, and drawing on experience as an accomplished cook, Marta Pisetska Farley arranges these recipes as they were enjoyed throughout the year, beginning with kolach, a glazed braided bread sprinkled with poppy seeds, for Christmas Eve, and ending with succulent dishes made with wild mushrooms harvested in the fall. Chapter introductions describe the folkways associated with major holidays and family events and the symbolic and celebratory role of food appropriate to each. Festive Ukrainian Cooking, originally published in 1990 and now newly repackaged in paperback, records these traditions and adapts old-style recipes for the modern kitchen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822966784
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	08/10/2021
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Marta Pisetska Farley was born in the Ukraine and has lectured in Ukrainian studies. She has made a lifelong study of her native culture, and is recognized for her leadership in the Ukrainian community.

Table of 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 (Imenyny) 142

13 Gathering Wild Mushrooms (Hryby) 177

Appendixes 191

Notes 195

Glossary 201

Bibliography 207

Index to Recipes 211

Editorial Reviews

Handsomely designed, this is a wonderful book for exploring the holidays of another culture or for wiling away an afternoon in the kitchen mastering the intricacies of korovai or kolach.” —Wilson Library Bulletin

“The foods, like the traditions, are hearty: cabbage rolls, meatless or meat-filled; two kinds of borschsic, varying with the season; meat stuffed in casings or covered with aspic; numerous sweet or savory breads, rolls, dumplings, fritters and pancakes, some topped with cabbage or cheese for ordinary meals, others containing a hefty half-pound of butter, a cup of cream and thirty large egg yolks to create a lavish Easter spread.” —Publishers Weekly
 

From the Publisher

The festivities of the title follow the usual Christian calendar--Easter, Christmas, Pentecost and various saints' days. But Christianity in the 19th-century Ukraine, the focus of Ukrainian-born Farley's well-researched book, coexisted with a rural paganism in which ancestors were appeased and fed at Christmas, river spirits blessed and, in a typical grace, God appeared simply as prima inter pares : ``Gracious Lord, sun of truth, stars of beauty, moon of light, wind ferocious, rain bountiful, weather beautiful, ancestors' fathers, we feast with you and greet you in summer.'' The cuisine, likewise, derives from an agrarian prototype shared by other Eastern Europeans and by the Ashkenazim as well. The foods, like the traditions, are hearty: cabbage rolls meatless or meat-filled; two kinds of borschsic , varying with the season; meat stuffed in casings or covered with aspic; numerous sweet or savory breads, rolls, dumplings, fritters and pancakes, some topped with cabbage or cheese for ordinary meals, others containing a hefty half-pound of butter, a cup of cream and 30 large egg yolks to create a lavish Easter spread. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly