Home Food: Recipes from the founder of #CookForUkraine

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For sure Towpath on the canal in London, also 40 Maltby Street and Rochelle Canteen. You get the gist: restaurants that use really good ingredients and you can feel the skill in cooking, but it’s not fussy. Grate the onions into a large bowl on the coarse side of a grater, making sure to catch the juices. Add the mince, turmeric, bicarbonate of soda (it helps the meat to bind together), half a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of ground pepper, and mix. And I mean really mix it: get your hands in there and massage and work it. After four minutes of such manipulations, if you have time, cover and chill for 30 minutes (or overnight). This will help it hold together. Cut the potatoes in half so they are stable on their cut sides, then slice into fine half-moons. Cut the onion in half and then into very fine slices. Divide the dough into four equal pieces and knead each one into a ball on a well-floured surface. Roll each ball into a long sausage, then put it on a barely floured surface and roll from the centre to the edges, stretching it out to 45cm or so. Put the dough sausages parallel to each other, perpendicular to you. Squish and stretch the top ends with your fingers, so they become a little thinner, then pinch together. Now, working from right to left, take the sausage on the right, feed it over its neighbour to the left, under the next sausage, and then over the final sausage. Again starting with the sausage on the right, feed it over, under and over again, and keep going until you have plaited the full lengths of the four dough sausages, then pinch together the bottom ends. The middle will look a bit bulkier, so stretch the whole thing delicately to even it up. Acclaimed Ukrainian chef and food writer Olia Hercules shares 100 comforting recipes that can unite us no matter where we are from and where we end up.

Home Food – Olia Hercules

Pour the oil into a cast-iron casserole set over a medium-high heat. Once the oil is sizzling, add the onion, carrots, celeriac, celery and leek, and saute, stirring from time to time, for about five minutes: you want them to become caramelised in parts, but not scorched. (If the pan feels too crowded, fry the vegetables in batches.) Add the garlic and cook, still stirring, for about two minutes, until fragrant and starting to colour. Olia Hercules: 'Let's not forget that Ukraine is not headlines, it's people' ". the Guardian. 2022-03-04 . Retrieved 2022-03-07. I know my mum is protecting me: she doesn’t want me to see her cry’: Olia Hercules’ mother, Olga. Photograph: Kris Kirkham/Mitchell BeazleyTake a large spoonful of the egg white mixture and fold it quite vigorously into the butter and cheese mixture, to loosen it up. Gently fold in the rest of the egg white mixture, then pour over the apples in the cake tin. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the cake is a little wobbly, but not liquid: it will set more firmly as it cools. I cannot emphasise enough that you need a lot of fat to make a super-juicy kebab, so use the fattiest minced lamb you can find. For the potatoes, put a pot of water on the hob, season well with salt and add the whole potatoes, skins and all. Boil them until they are very soft, but not completely disintegrated (20-30 minutes, depending on size). Drain them and leave to cool enough so you don’t burn your hand. If I can, I will take them outside to speed up the cooling. In the morning, take the poolish out of the fridge: it should look bubbly and slightly raised (if it doesn’t, I am sad to confirm that your yeast is dead). Whisk in the pumpkin puree, orange zest, eggs, one and a half teaspoons of salt and the sugar. Now add the flour: just dump it all in and stir with a fork or spoon. Knead the dough well, then leave somewhere warm for an hour or two, to rise. Cut or break the cauliflower into small florets, keeping any small leaves, too. Blanch the cauliflower and its leaves in a pan of boiling, salted water: take out the leaves after about two minutes and the florets after five. Refresh both in cold water, then drain well and pat dry with kitchen paper.

Home Food: 100 Recipes to Comfort and Connect | Book by Olia Home Food: 100 Recipes to Comfort and Connect | Book by Olia

Meanwhile, whisk the eggs with the yoghurt or milk and season quite generously. You want the egg mixture to become really voluminous, so use an electric whisk if you have one.Olia lives in London with her sons Sasha and Wilf, and husband – fellow food writer and photographer Joe Woodhouse, writing, cooking and feeding her unceasing curiosity by researching food culture and culinary traditions of countries less explored. Hercules’ cookbooks are special not only because of her recipes – many of which are new to readers in the UK – but also due to her evocative writing. Many cookbooks these days have essays written alongside the recipes but not everyone has the skilled writing style of Hercules. She is a natural storyteller who enables the reader to feel they are sitting under the trees with the Hercules family eating a summer feast. Hercules has written movingly about her family so that we feel we know them. Followers of her social media account have been kept up to date with recent events in Ukraine and the challenges facing her family and friends. I wondered whether it might be rather trite to review a cookbook under these circumstances. Still, perhaps at times of stress – political and personal – the ability of food to unite and comfort is as important as ever. Exotic, earthy dishes, vibrant colours, big flavours. This is real cooking, written about with so much love’ Diana Henry Centering comfort and connection, acclaimed Ukranian chef Olia Hercules weaves influence from her childhood in Eastern Europe and years in Cyprus, Italy, and London into 100 recipes. Dishes like radish and pomegranate salad, roasted potatoes topped with feta, yogurt, dill, and chopped carrots, and baked apples stuffed with creamy tvorog or ricotta get woven together with stories that make her fourth cookbook her most personal yet.”