Borscht by аny other name

By Volodymyr Kish

Over the Christmas Holidays, while looking up some recipes on the Internet, I did a Google search on borscht and was pleasantly surprised to find a rather comprehensive treatise on this Ukrainian staple on the Wikipedia web site.  Although it correctly identifies this hearty soup as being of Ukrainian origin, it also notes its widespread adaptation by Ukraine’s many ethnic and geographic neighbours.  This extends all the way into China, where, for example, in its north eastern province of Harbin, there is an adaption called hongtang (literally red soup) made mainly with red cabbage. Wikipedia lists its many ethnic variations – barszcz (Polish), bors (Azerbajani, Romainian, Estonian, Turkish), boršč (Czech), Borschtsch (German), barščiai (Lithuanian) and борщ (Ukrainian, Russian).

Emboldened by this discovery I next searched for varenyky on Wikipedia, and was once again rewarded with an interesting article, which though short on the history of this delicacy, was quite comprehensive in describing its many variations, all accompanied with some mouth-watering photographs that were narrowing my arteries through appearances alone.  It was there I learned that a monument to varenyky was inaugurated in Cherkassy in 2006, while Poltava put up a monument to halushky (a close doughy cousin to varenyky) that same year.  Of course, Ukrainian Canadians recognized this hero of Ukrainian cuisine some time ago, putting up a giant perogy (as varenyky are more commonly known in Western Canada) some 25 feet tall in Glendon, Alberta in 1991. 

I was on a roll with Wikipedia, so I looked up cabbage rolls next, and was not disappointed.  Cabbage rolls, or holubtsi as they are known to Ukrainians, are prevalent throughout Eastern and Central Europe as well as the Middle East and Scandinavia.  It is thought that stuffed, rolled cabbage was originally a Jewish culinary creation some two thousand years old that spread with them as they wandered in their forced diaspora.  The Ukrainian version is primarily made with rice with a little ground meat, though kasha (buckwheat) is also common in certain regions of Ukraine.  In Serbia, Croatia and Russia, ground meat fillings tend to prevail. In the Middle East and around the Mediterranean, grape leaves are used instead of cabbage and the end product are called dolmas.

I had great fun surfing through the Internet searching on Ukrainian food names, learning some fascinating things, even some I wish I had not stumbled across.  One such example was when I looked up paska and found that it is a Finnish word for something rather unpleasant (which I will leave my readers to discover for themselves, should they so desire to pursue this bit of trivia).

You can search on almost any common Ukrainian dish or food and find tons of information on it, and I am referring here to information in the English language alone.  There is of course the Ukrainian language version of Wikipedia (http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Головна_сторінка) which opens up a whole new source of information if you are at all proficient in the Ukrainian language.

Obviously, Wikipedia is a great source for information on Ukrainian food.  But we are just scratching the surface of the Internet.  Googling borscht yields you 1,770,000 results.

Google varenyky and the search yields you 190,000 results!

If you want to learn how to make varenyky yourself, you can go on YouTube for a demonstration by a qualified baba (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amiwEkdm24c) which is accompanied by a rambunctious Gogol Bordello sound track.  If you want to see how holubtsi are made, YouTube has Momma Hewko’s homemade recipe (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDvmVuik0sk), though incomprehensibly, this Ukrainian recipe is accompanied by a very Russian sound track playing “Kalinka”?!  Ah well, there is a lot of culturally challenged content out there.  Just bear with it and have another varenyk with shkwarky.