DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:
For many Americans, there's no set menu for New Year's besides champagne as the ball drops, maybe black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. But if your family comes from what was the Soviet Union, you're probably going to be cooking up a feast this New Year's Eve - caviar, honey cake, and especially Olivier salad.
POLINA CHESNAKOVA: Olivier salad for us is sort of No. 1. It's very much a comfort, nostalgic dish. We never get tired of it.
ESTRIN: Food writer Polina Chesnakova was born in Ukraine to Russian and Armenian parents from Georgia and left for the U.S. as the Soviet Union collapsed. Her latest cookbook is "Chesnok: Cooking From My Corner Of The Diaspora: Recipes From Eastern Europe, The Caucasus, And Central Asia," and it includes New Year's Eve recipes.
CHESNAKOVA: Olivier salad is essentially this sort of Russian, Soviet potato salad. It's diced potatoes with diced carrots, boiled egg, a bit of pickles, peas, and it all comes together with mayo. And I think any family in the diaspora would revolt if it didn't appear on the holiday table.
ESTRIN: How big of a deal is New Year's for people from the former Soviet Union today?
CHESNAKOVA: I would say it's still, for many, the big holiday.
ESTRIN: The Bolshevik leaders of the Soviet Union were antireligion and banned Christmas in the early 1900s.
CHESNAKOVA: So, not to have people totally revolt, they kind of took traditional Christmas rituals and associated them with New Year.
ESTRIN: The Christmas tree became a New Year's tree. Santa became Grandpa Frost. And New Year's Eve became the one time of the year to celebrate abundance - abundance, and mayonnaise. That industrial condiment helped disguise the bland, limited ingredients of the Soviet era. And it still features today in Russian New Year's Eve cuisine, like shuba, also known as herring under a fur coat.
CHESNAKOVA: Yeah. So herring under a fur coat - it's this beautiful layered salad of pickled herring and potatoes, carrots, onion. And then it's topped with grated beets mixed with a little bit of mayo, and it turns into this beautiful fuchsia-pink topping. You take some boiled eggs and work them through a sieve, and you sprinkle that all on top. It's this sort of, like, beautiful savory cake. That, along with Olivier salad, are maybe the most iconic New Year's dishes.
ESTRIN: Today, though, among Ukrainians, there's a culinary revolution - stepping away from the Soviet shadow and all that mayonnaise and stepping away from New Year's back to Christmas, rediscovering traditional holiday dishes...
(SOUNDBITE OF POTS CLATTERING)
ESTRIN: ...Which I got a taste of in the kitchen of a Ukrainian restaurant in Washington, D.C., called Ruta with chef Mykola Yudin.
MYKOLA YUDIN: A lot of Ukrainian chef discover our old culture, and we try renew our rich culture. We want to show and share it.
ESTRIN: We were there to make kutia, a sweet, warm porridge that's at the center of the Ukrainian holiday table.
YUDIN: It's old recipe of my grandmother.
ESTRIN: It's pearled barley...
YUDIN: Pumpkin seeds.
ESTRIN: ...Pumpkin seeds...
YUDIN: Walnuts.
ESTRIN: ...Mixed with berries and nuts and stewed dried fruit.
YUDIN: A mix of cranberries and raisins and - oh -poppy seeds.
ESTRIN: What is this?
YUDIN: It's poppy seeds.
ANASTASIA BRYUCH: Poppy seeds.
ESTRIN: Poppy seeds.
YUDIN: Yeah.
ESTRIN: Wow. Oh, that's a paste.
Mykola Yudin is 36 years old. He grew up in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. When pro-Russian separatists captured the region in 2014, he moved to the capital, Kyiv.
YUDIN: For me, war started 2014.
ESTRIN: And when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, he fled again - to the U.S.
YUDIN: Now, we add hot boiled water, add dried fruit. Five minutes? Yeah. That's enough.
ESTRIN: Yudin is head chef at this Ukrainian restaurant in Washington.
YUDIN: Now, we need to add honey.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPOON TAPPING AGAINST POT)
ESTRIN: And he represented Ukraine this year at a culinary competition of embassies in the U.S. His blackcurrant liqueur won best beverage. Anyway, back to the holiday dish.
I would call that a very heaping tablespoon...
YUDIN: Yeah.
ESTRIN: ...Of honey.
YUDIN: And added our uzvar.
ESTRIN: Uzvar - a punch of boiled dried fruits. He pours it into the barley porridge.
YUDIN: Mix it.
ESTRIN: Yudin was a chef back in Ukraine, and he's read books about Ukrainian cuisine from 200 years ago.
YUDIN: And now we need chopped apricot.
ESTRIN: He was amazed to discover natural ingredients like almond flour and vanilla. He's the most proud of his grandma's recipes...
YUDIN: And now we add it in our kutia.
ESTRIN: ...Like this kutia.
YUDIN: Oh, it's amazing. It's not very dry and a little bit juicy. You need to try.
ESTRIN: That is really comforting. It's so nicely spiced, and that poppy seed really comes through.
YUDIN: This one like part of our soul, part of our home.
ESTRIN: Do you miss home, Mykola?
YUDIN: Yes. I have my mother in Kyiv. It's very hard to live in Ukraine because they have just six hours electric per one day.
ESTRIN: Six hours of electricity a day?
YUDIN: Yes.
ESTRIN: Wow.
BRYUCH: I just talked to my mom today. And she said that, we just don't have lights.
ESTRIN: Anastasia Bryuch (ph) is the restaurant manager at Ruta.
BRYUCH: All day, they don't have it because they bombed a lot of electricity stations. And, yeah.
ESTRIN: How are your families going to be celebrating the holiday this year during war without electricity?
YUDIN: We buy a lot of power banks, batteries...
BRYUCH: Power banks, batteries.
YUDIN: ...For our moms.
BRYUCH: Yeah. A lot of stuff. They - yeah. They want to celebrate it. They are doing fine. They're like, whatever, guys. We're going to celebrate it. They just try to stay positive.
ESTRIN: Will this New Year's be the last New Year's at war? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Florida today, meeting President Trump, discussing a peace proposal. Zelenskyy is offering to compromise on territory in the area where Chef Mykola Yudin is from. I asked him and Anastasia Bryuch how they feel.
BRYUCH: Especially for people in Ukraine, it's really hard. Like, I was talking to my parents. They - first year, they really wanted all territories back. But now it's really hard. They just want it over.
ESTRIN: You think Ukrainians are ready for a compromise, a deal?
YUDIN: (Speaking Ukrainian).
ESTRIN: The chef speaks through an interpreter.
YUDIN: (Through interpreter) See, on one side, there's people, and the other side, there's territory. And for Ukrainians, people are very important. And, yes, Ukraine is always open for compromises. We value our culture and our territory a lot, but the most important part is our people.
ESTRIN: As a new year approaches, they're far away from their families under war in Ukraine. But they celebrate food that tastes like home.
YUDIN: When you have some moment in your life, in this moment, you have food. When you have celebration, something, you have food. When you have some sad period, you have food.
ESTRIN: Cooking holiday food with the chef and manager of the Ukrainian restaurant Ruta in Washington, D.C.
YUDIN: I think this food is very good instrument for unite the people and to share culture, to share part our soul, our celebration.
(SOUNDBITE OF RAPHAELA GROMES ET AL.'S "CELLO CONCERTO IN B MINOR, OP. 104, B. 191: II. ADAGIO MA NON TROPPO")
ESTRIN: How do you say...
YUDIN: Cheers?
ESTRIN: Cheers. How do you say...
YUDIN: Budmo.
ESTRIN: ...Cheers?
YUDIN: In Ukrainian, we say budmo.
ESTRIN: Budmo.
YUDIN: Budmo.
(SOUNDBITE OF GLASSES CLINKING)
ESTRIN: Budmo.
YUDIN: Budmo.
ESTRIN: This story was produced by Samantha Balaban.
(SOUNDBITE OF RAPHAELA GROMES ET AL.'S "CELLO CONCERTO IN B MINOR, OP. 104, B. 191: II. ADAGIO MA NON TROPPO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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