A couple of years ago the only thing I knew about Ukraine was about Shevchenko, an amazing football player, who I remember played for Milan. Pretty basic knowledge, but that’s my truth. However, talking almost every day with an old friend, Hector, who is married to a Ukrainian, Olha, the curiosity for Ukrainian cuisine grew quickly. Geographically speaking, Colombia and Ukraine are thousands of kilometres apart (about 10600).

My first deeper approach to their culture was thanks to an exquisite cookbook, written by chef Ievgen Klopotenko. Although the book is in English, the recipe titles are in his native language (how does a dish get its name?). Moving up to a second state of knowledge, the ingredients are surprisingly correlated with those my family used in Colombia: potatoes, onions, carrots, beetroot, wheat flour, tomatoes, pork fat, pork meat, garlic, sour cream, corn flour, lemon, etc. But spices or herbs such as dill, mustard, coriander seeds, horseradish are not regularly used in Colombian cuisine. Probably these last ones must bring very particular flavours, forming that Ukrainian style.

In parallel attempts, on the one hand trying to cook new dishes for me here in Germany, and on the other hand cooking with seasonal ingredients, I decided to start with their most traditional recipe: Borscht. Three recipes were my basis for creating my own: Klopotenko’s Borscht; the recipe of school instructor Kseniia Amber and Olha’s recipe. More than the proportions, sizes or weights of each ingredient, it was the words Olha told me about her recipe that were the most relevant in this sensory – cultural – gastronomic journey:

Each family, each village has its own recipe, some add vinegar, others add chicken or pork ribs broth, and others eat it the same day the dish is cooked.

Hector told me:

You have to eat Borscht stale, or in other words, the day after it is cooked.

(I am firmly convinced and I can confirm: this kind of food (soups) “not fresh” are tastier).

Reading and understanding these three recipes and sage advice, I couldn’t escape connecting with our traditional Colombian soup: Sancocho. At the same level, our soup is based on the ingredients one has, and each family has its own style, its own tricks, its own recipe. For me, with enormous respect, Borscht is a beetroot sancocho or a red/purple sancocho, Colombianising its name. It thrills me when I discover similarities between distant cultures, where each dish is part of an intangible cultural heritage, becoming consolidated for a long time as part, almost, of their genes.

Side notes:

  • What is the recipe for sancocho?
  • Is there a recipe? No!
  • Only an AI today could analyse thousands of sancocho recipes to have an averaged guide, trying to find the Sancochoness or Sancochidad.
  • (It won’t be many years before we see such homogenisation of AIs).