United By Food in a Ukrainian Summer Kitchen
Summertime is the season of barbeques, bonfires, and laughter. Families gather and share in each other's company, surrounded by embers that fly into the star-lit sky. It is a season of tradition, of sharing common values – and for those in Ukraine, this mentality is cherished, especially in the warmer months, as the language of food is written inside the walls of summer kitchens.
Grandmothers and Taste Memory
Take a second and think about the trips to your grandparent's house as a child, the home-cooked meals that were shared. Think about who made them, perhaps taught you a thing or two, or shared a secret recipe. For most, we attribute those memories to our grandmothers, the remarkable women who hold on tight to family history, teaching us to put love and care into the meals that fuel us.
Chef Helen Chudakova-Sanya, the Culinary Director at Zest Cooking School, praises her grandmother for bringing the value of Ukrainian culture to the table. Helen has continued the legacy – bringing the same cultural appreciation to the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Helen’s grandmother was born in the countryside of Ukraine during WWII. While her grandmother eventually migrated to the city, most of Helen’s relatives remained in the countryside, so visits were frequent as a child, “I just remember going all the time. I remember when I was 4, I was there. I remember when I was 15, I was there.” The part that Helen remembers most of all? Her family’s summer kitchen.
In Ukraine, summer kitchens are separate buildings where most families prepare meals during the onslaught of heat in the summertime since most homes are not equipped with air conditioning. “There were no doors on the summer kitchen, just a muslin cloth for fly protection. There was a room adjacent to the kitchen where I remember laying on the couch while my grandmother’s sister was frying some Ukrainian dish, and I could only hear the sizzle of food and flies buzzing around.”
Helen shared that while the heat was often grueling, it never ruined the afternoons spent climbing sour cherry trees or the sense of taste memory that enshrined her childhood, “I remember, particularly, my grandmother peeling potatoes, and I would sneak raw pieces of potato under the kitchen table. I would put some salt on it and just eat it – that is the taste of my childhood.”
Community and Perseverance
“Everything from my childhood is intertwined with food, growing, and farming.”
Apart from the meals prepared in the summer kitchen, Helen grew a relationship with the land around her, farming and caring for livestock. She helped feed pigs and chickens while also diligently safeguarding the cherished potato plants from pests. Cultivating from the land was necessary for Helen’s livelihood, as well as countless others since there were not many conveniences when it came to accessing food outside the community.
While growing up in the 1990s, Helen shared that there were no commercial grocery stores within her community, only family-run markets, “My mom would send me to the market as a seven-year-old kid. I’d cross the street, buy potatoes from one grandmother and tomatoes from another – nothing was mass produced.”
Still, despite having family markets, there remained a lack of access to particular foods, “As a kid, I remember my mom never bought bananas because they were just too expensive, yet here in the United States, it's totally the opposite, and instead of bananas we would buy cherries and apricots, but here, apricots are the expensive item, whereas bananas are cents.” The lack of convenience often exceeded food for some in other communities, seeping into lifestyle habits and the place one would call home.
This was shaped by the lingering impacts of communism in Ukraine during the time of the former U.S.S.R – where inexpensive plots of land were sold to families working in industrialized workplaces. When Ukraine gained independence, some kept these plots and their subsequent structures for summer kitchens or weekend homes, while for others, that remained their primary residence year-round. However, by the early 2000s, things slowly became more commercialized with supermarkets being constructed, and cuisine from around the world making an appearance – Helen remembers the first sushi restaurant and the positive impact that made on her budding culinary palate.
Still, while Helen acknowledged that Ukraine has had a history of economic struggle, she refuses to adhere to the notion that it is a country built and centered around poverty since, in her eyes and for many Ukrainians, values are what can shape your worldview – and for Ukraine, they are not struggling, they are simply living, just like anyone else.
The Value of Home
In 2014, tensions began rising in eastern Ukraine, “I remember then, being fearful, knowing things were not going well, and I told my husband, who was in New York at the time, to get the plane tickets; we’re leaving.” Of course, this fear was warranted as tensions hit their boiling point and inevitably led to the Ukrainian crisis and the annexation of Crimea into the Russian Federation.
Helen moved to New York City and started working with what she deemed an off-the-boat Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. “I was like, oh, this is it,” Helen noted that it was not necessarily the cuisine that made it uniquely Italian but the care for ingredients and produce used to create each dish. The produce was shipped in, and the company responsible for providing the products? Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-op.
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, remained off Helen’s radar, that is until she gifted her husband tickets to a gaming convention in the area. They made a whole vacation out of it, and by the end, she said they had found a gem. “We fell in love. We started coming every summer, bringing our kids, sometimes just ourselves. It looked like Ukraine. The farmland. The produce. The little things to buy on the side of the road.” It was safe to say that Helen was home again.
“I’m probably going to get goosebumps,” Helen prefaced before sharing her remarkable journey to the local area. While in New York, she attended herbalism school, which helped secure her a job at Lancaster Farmacy. It wasn’t until starting the position that she realized one of the partial owners of Lancaster Farmacy was also the owner of the produce company her off-the-boat Italian restaurant used – Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-op. “We actually moved into the house on the next street from theirs, and our children are best friends now, and we’re best friends – it’s just so beautiful having that full circle moment.”
Despite having to flee from the country that raised her, Helen managed to find comfort and solace among the pastures of Lancaster, Pennsylvania – formulating an unbreakable bond with the land, quite similar to the land that gave her sour cherries, salted raw potatoes, and the steady buzz of summertime.
Cook Your Heart Out
In all of Helen’s cooking classes at Zest, she tells her students, “There are no rules, and salt liberally.”
As Helen recounts childhood memories of Ukraine, she is preparing for a cooking class entitled Ukrainian Summer Kitchen – where she will explain to a room of eager foodies the value of her country’s cuisine and culture. So, what’s on the menu?
Zuccini Fritters with garlic aioli.
Summer salad with radish, cucumber, and peas.
Borsch with duck and prunes – Helen made clear it is spelled borsch in Ukraine, as it is often misconstrued for the Polish spelling, borscht. Absolutely no ‘t’ allowed.
Vareniki (dumplings) with cherries and a sour cream, mascarpone topping.
Fresh fruit compote – an incredibly light beverage made by boiling fruits of choice in water and simply straining the resulting liquid. Sweetener, optional.
Despite being the Culinary Director of Zest Cooking School, Helen is always learning, “Every onion I cut, I’m relearning the process, and I am not afraid to admit that.” From her point of view, teaching classes helps unlock the passion for preparing more foods in the respective country and culture. While she teaches all of the Ukrainian courses, she is also versed in other realms of the culinary world, having led several classes focused on Vietnamese cuisine, ramen from scratch, and dim sum masterclasses.
While working at her off-the-boat Italian restaurant, she was told by the owner to “cook your heart out.” For Helen, that is how she has continued to view the world of cooking – putting her heart and soul into everything she explores because as she learned from an early age, trying something new is only a journey of discovery into new and flavorful worlds.
United by Food
In 2022, the notion of loss was present in most people’s minds, but it became a new narrative for Ukraine. Throughout the year, the world found ways to show support for a country fighting to maintain its independence, and for those on the eastern half of the globe, they united through music.
Since the 1950s, European countries have come together each year to showcase musical talent and cultural appreciation in a song contest known as Eurovision. Each participating country sends an artist/group to compete, and whichever country wins will host the event the following year. In 2022, Ukraine won with their song “Stefania” by Kalush Orchestra. As the cheers roared across the continent, people knew the heartbreak that came after the applause settled – there was a war ravaging Ukraine. Instead, the 2023 contest was hosted in the United Kingdom on Ukraine’s behalf. But why does this matter? Why does a song contest hold any connection to the culinary world?
The answer is simple, unity.
The theme of Eurovision 2023: United by Music.
The theme of Helen’s Ukrainian Summer Kitchen cooking class: United by Food.
Finding ways to show support and solidarity with a country on the brink of losing everything is not a simple feat, but for Helen, coming together through the language of flavors is her way of assembling unity.
Helen’s generation is the first not connected to the U.S.S.R. – they were born into independence. During her grandmother’s generation, cultural identity in Ukraine was lost. Ever since Ukrainians have been seeking out a way to gain back all that was forgotten, and when Ukraine was invaded, Helen thought, “This cuisine could become non-existent. So, I feel like this is my duty now, to be a voice. We have had to dig so far back to bring back all of the old traditions, but I think people are really into that now. I want my children not to be foreign to this. I want them to continue talking about it. I wish every Ukrainian born there, or not, to know about what was lost, and to continue cooking Ukrainian food.”
Unity for Ukraine has started to become a victim of time. As it passes, we can forget and lose sight of the value of communication about the things that matter. Most of us can turn it off to put the focus elsewhere. For Helen, the war in Ukraine is something she will never be able to turn off. Yet, she can persevere through the language of food taught to her behind the muslin cloth of her summer kitchen, spreading her grandmother’s passion for the bold and bright flavors that make Ukrainian cuisine unique, that makes it unforgettable.