Meat in Ukraine 2.0.

lana_svitankova — 18.06.2011 Я таки читаю "Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession" by Julie Powell. Як і очікувалося, в моєму розумінні це повний і нескаламучений рак мозку, якого я ніколи не зможу зрозуміти - себто, цих хворих стосунків. Але я читала заради шматка про Україну. Як завжди, страшенно цікаво, яка вона, ненька, очима іноземців. Повибирала певні шматки. Хоча, тут практично вся частина, присвячена Україні.

"...now here I am stretched out across the four seats of a middle aisle on Aerosvit Flight W132, direct to Kiev. I've got an enormous collection of Isaac Babel stories on my lap. I have just taken a sleeping pill, swallowed down with the worst wine I have ever tasted. The Cyrillic script on the bottle should have given me a clue; perhaps it actually would have, if only I could read one word of Cyrillic."
Сумніваюся, що вміння читати кирилицю їй би допомогло.

"Seriously, why am I going to western Ukraine? If you asked me, I couldn't tell you. It's not as if it's some renowned mecca of cuisine, meaty or otherwise. I've always wanted to go to the Carpathians, I suppose there's that. They're reputed to be beautiful, but that's not really the root of my fascination. Maybe it's a Buffy hangover. More likely it's an earlier, deeper yen, to see the place all the dark stories come from, Vlad the Impaler and holocausts and dictators people insultingly name "butchers" and dark Transylvanian castles on stormy nights. "
Цікаво, вона хоч цікавилася, в якій країні жив Владик?

"He's hooked me up with a young woman, Oksana, educated in the States, fluent in English, and by all accounts totally fantastic, who has agreed to do serve as my guide. The day after I fly into Kiev, she's going to meet me and we're going to take the train together to Kolimya, her hometown in the western part of the country. All I have to do by myself is get from the airport to the Tourist Hotel, near the Livoberezhna metro station on the left bank of the city, then manage to feed myself and get around for one day and night in Kiev without getting mugged or hit by a car, or falling down a manhole."
Kolimya = Коломия? Ото дивовижні перетворення

"Ten hours after frantically rushing down the gangway at JFK, I'm dully trudging up another one at Boryspil International Airport. It's a slightly shabby place, difficult to navigate, or that might just be exhaustion and Cyrillic. But I manage to find a cab, convey where I want to go, and get to the hotel room. After settling in I wander the streets, taking in the people and the feel of the place, but this not-knowing-the-alphabet thing has added a whole new layer of incomprehension. I can't even match up addresses from my guidebook to street signs."
О так, любий Бориспіль і назви вулиць винятково кирилицею.

"By evening I've at least managed to return to my shabby Soviet-era hotel, with a bottle of water (I'm not supposed to drink the stuff out of the tap, apparently), a link of cured sausage from a babushka selling them by the train station, and a hunk of bread. I hole up in my room for the night with my pen and notebook, continue working on my letter to Eric, reporting on the grayness of the city, the stiletto boots and extravagant fur coats of the unsmiling women, until I fall asleep."

"I've never traveled in an overnight train. We are in what's called a "coupe"--a sleeper car for four--and now I'm the only one still awake. I can't sleep, but I'm not unhappy about it. I like this train. It makes me want to fuck."
Гм. Цікаві враження від поїзда.

"Oksana has the top bunk, I have the bottom, a middle-aged blond woman has the other bottom, and a dark man the opposite top. We have not spoken at all to these people- Ukrainians are rather a grim-faced lot... "

"Passing between the cars is a bit of an ordeal--one door opening into a small, deafening, pitch-black space about three feet square, nothing to hold on to, floor unsteady, cold air whooshing in and the speeding tracks below... all for a warm beer from the dining car, and the small pleasure of getting a smile from the woman behind the counter when I mangle my "dyakooya." (Ukrainian for "thank you"--Oksana told me to use that instead of "spasibo." Apparently Russians aren't looked on too fondly in western Ukraine.) She smiled at me like I was a basset puppy stepping on its own ears."
Хе, цікаво, між вагонів вона ходила, а в туалет?

"Back in the office after the tour, Myroslav opens up a bottle of cognac while Katerina lays out a mountain of food-rye bread, cheese, olives, and at least ten kinds of sausage, representing a quarter of the varieties they make at the factory. There's headcheese, which is very popular in Ukraine, in part because it's cheap. Cervelat is a lean sausage made primarily of high-quality beef with a bit of pork fat; it's Myroslav's favorite. Tsyhanska, or "gypsy sausage," is somewhat fattier, at seventy percent beef and thirty percent pork fat. (Katerina can rattle off proportions from memory; Oksana then translates for me.) Drohobytska is a sausage that was traditionally made entirely of pork, but now often has veal mixed in. Myroslav explains that their drohobytska is in fact mostly beef, because in Ukraine pork is the more expensive meat.
"There is a saying about Hutsuls," Oksana translates as Katerina chats. Katerina does actually speak a bit of English. She has a daughter and grandchildren in New Jersey and is trying to learn the language. But she still feels more comfortable with Oksana in between us.
"What's a Hutsul?"
"We're Hutsuls. People from the mountains here, in western Ukraine. Real Ukrainians.
People from the east part of the country are Russians, not Ukrainian."
"Okay. What's the saying?"
Katerina is looking at my face with expectation. She has a ready grin and a nimbus of reddish blond hair, and I find myself wishing I could speak to her directly. As deft a translator as Oksana is, quick and nuanced, I find I want to talk to these people without filter. It's the international brethren of butchers, I suppose. We are of the same cloth, I can tell.
"Hutsuls would rather have good sausage and no bread. Eastern Ukrainians want bread; they don't care if the sausage is good."
"I come down on the Hutsul side of that one."
Myroslav and Katerina both laugh, nodding, before Oksana has the chance to translate.

It's funny--whenever we're talking about food, we seem closer to speaking one another's language.
Domashnia is beef, pork, and veal. "Doctor's sausage," likarska, is pork with milk, eggs, and seasonings. "Children's sausage" is finely pureed for a soft consistency and is made without any preservatives. Krovianka is blood sausage, from beef blood, which is delivered to Myroslav and Katerina directly from the slaughterhouse, along with the meat."

"Andrea, it quickly becomes clear, spends a lot of time here. She doesn't like Ukraine. She doesn't like the people: "The women are all skanky and the men are all disgusting-looking misogynists-except for you guys, of course!" She doesn't like the food: "Everything is so heavy, and there's meat in everything. "

"I eat borscht while she has something called banosh, a traditional western Ukrainian dish that looks rather like garlic cheese grits, that comforting staple back in Texas which I've not tasted in probably a decade. When Oksana lets me have a bite, I swear I will not rest until I learn how to make it.
Which I finally have done. And here it is!
UKRAINIAN BАNOSH

2 cups or more sour cream
1 cup white or yellow cornmeal
2 tablespoons butter
Salt to taste
1/4 cup crumbled goat's milk feta (optional)
Place the 2 cups of sour cream in a small pan over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until hot but not yet boiling.
Gradually add the cornmeal, stirring often, not letting the mixture come to a boil. Cook for about 15 minutes. The consistency should remain somewhat liquid; if it begins to get too dense, stir in more sour cream, a couple of tablespoons at a time.
When you judge it to be about done, stir in the butter and salt to taste and take off heat.
Let sit, covered, for 5 minutes.
Serve in four bowls with cheese crumbled on top, if desired. This dish is like a Ukrainian translation of your favorite childhood comfort food. It's a good way of remembering that, mostly, we're more alike than different."

"When Eric visited Ukraine just a year or so out of college, he came back raving about sala, which is some sort of seasoned salt pork, eaten with bread. "It's everywhere," he tells me.
"It's like the Ukrainian national food!" I've gotten several e-mails from him since I've been here, whenever I've been able to get to a cybercafe to check, asking if I've yet sampled it.
The problem is, there's no sala to be found for love or money. I've been keeping my eye out, I really have. I've looked in grocery store deli counters, on restaurant menus. I've asked Oksana about it and she's assured me we will find it at some point, somewhere in Kolimya. But so far, bubkes. We make a concerted attempt today, our last in western Ukraine. We visit groceries and markets and one semi-enclosed butcher shop, just a large room with double doors open onto the street, with men and women in aprons standing behind a series of wooden tables piled high with meat. A yellow dog wanders, mostly unmolested, under the tables, feasting on whatever scraps fall. Oksana explains to one of the women what we are looking for.
"Sala?" The woman looks just the slightest bit flummoxed, but she slices a wedge of a snowy white hunk of pork belly with her enormous knife. It doesn't look salted, but I pop it into my mouth anyway.
So it turns out sala doesn't just mean a seasoned Ukrainian delicacy. It also means, well, pig fat."

"Well, Ukraine was fascinating, as you said. I think very different from when you were here, though. I'd love to bring you back sometime, would love for you to meet Ira and Katerina and Myroslav and Misha and, most especially, Oksana. And you should see the skirt I bought for twenty bucks!"

А ще вони їздили в Шешори, ходили в сауну, у музей писанок, ліпили вареники з картоплею (рецепт теж є) і бачили всюди Юлю Тимошенко О_О Отака от Україна для Джулі Пауелл, далі вона вирушає до Танзанії. Але, боюся, до кінця я цю тягомотину не дочитаю.

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