Ukraine

In Ukraine the central Christmas meal is Sviata Vecheria, the Holy Supper, eaten on Christmas Eve. The family fasts until the first star appears, then sits down to twelve dishes made without meat, dairy, or eggs. Kutia, sweetened wheat berries with poppy seeds and honey, is eaten first, and uzvar, a dried fruit drink, opens and closes the meal. Pisnyi borshch, a meatless beet soup, and varenyky filled with potato or cabbage are among the twelve. The table holds a didukh, a decorated sheaf of grain honoring the ancestors, and a three-tiered kolach with a candle, cut only on Christmas Day.

The Ukrainian chapter is one-pot and dumpling cooking for cold weather. Kulish, a millet soup-porridge eaten by the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and kapusniak, sauerkraut soup with pork and salo, are filling winter meals. Deruny are the potato pancakes of Polissia, banosh is Carpathian cornmeal cooked in sour cream and served with bryndza, and Poltavski halushky are soft dumplings served with chicken and sour cream. Kruchenyky, meat rolls, are made for the festive table. Nalysnyky with sweet farmer's cheese and syrnyky belong to Masnytsia, the cheese week before Orthodox Great Lent, March 8 to 14, 2027.

The Ukrainian menu starts with Baklazhanna ikra, the Odesa eggplant caviar of roasted eggplant chopped with onion, tomato and garlic and dressed with sunflower oil. The main course is Kotleta po-kyivsky, chicken breast rolled around cold herb butter, breaded and fried. The specialty is Korovai, the decorated wedding bread, on which a pair of dough birds stands for the couple and periwinkle for lasting love, here a centerpiece for an engagement or anniversary dinner.

Ukrainian Easter falls on May 2, 2027. On Holy Saturday, May 1, or on Easter morning, the Easter basket goes to church to be blessed, holding paska, the tall sweet Easter bread, krashanky, eggs dyed red-brown in onion skins, and a ring of domashnia kovbasa, homemade sausage. After Lent, meat returns: buzhenyna, garlic-studded roast pork, and kholodets, a meat aspic served with horseradish. Syrna paska, a pressed sweet cheese dessert shaped like the Holy Sepulchre, is sliced with the bread, and Lviv adds its syrnyk, a baked cheesecake. Zelenyi borshch, soured with sorrel, is a spring soup.