5+ Questions With…Olga Koutseridi

Originally from Mariupol but based in Austin, Texas, Olga Koutseridi is a historian and recipe developer working to preserve Ukrainian recipes and the complex cultural knowledge surrounding them. (By the by, she’s also deeply passionate about panettone and burnt Basque cheesecake.) She generously agreed to chat with us about her research, the nuances of Ukrainian cuisine in general, and the pain of seeing her hometown demolished by war.

[This interview was first published in our newsletter, a roundup of all things food/family/history-related that pique our interest. Click here to subscribe!]

When did you first become inspired to start collecting and preserving your family’s recipes?

A little context: I am a historian by training, working on getting my PhD in ancient history, and I am kind of obsessed with data and record keeping. I’m very conscious about trying to preserve things, both for preservation purposes and also so it can evolve and people can study it. When I was transitioning out of graduate school, back in 2014, I was going through kind of an identity crisis. So I started reconnecting with my ethnicity—my ethnicities, rather—and that was when the war broke out in Donbas for the first time. So I think [my identity crisis] was compounded by things that were starting to be erased and under threat in the part of Ukraine that I’m from, while at the same time having a kind of existential crisis about who I am, and trying to reconnect with my past and learn more about myself. 

And at this point where were you living?

In Austin, Texas. I moved here in 2011 for graduate school, and stayed put for a while. So it was kind of a self discovery journey, but it was also a way for me to be more mindful about preserving something more personal to me. As a historian I studied ancient Rome, which I don’t have a direct connection to—I’m ethnically Greek-Ukrainian and did study ancient Greece—but I wanted much more immediate history. Family history. My dad was actually the one who was obsessed with family history—he’s probably why I went into this field—so I started interviewing my parents; not interviewing them formally, but definitely picking their brains about what Grandma went through—that sort of thing. And then my mom is an amazing cook, so I wanted to write down her recipes. That was the first big drive—the need to learn how to make my mom’s recipes. I want to eat her food all the time, and I just need to make sure that her recipes are preserved so that other people can enjoy her delicious versions of these traditional dishes. 

Especially if the knowledge is stored in her head, and not necessarily written down.

My mom has one cookbook that she doesn’t really use, and has some notes and recipes written down, but everything is in her head. Her actual recipes that she cooks for holidays and every day, nothing is written down. And so I was trying to get her to tell me a recipe, which is hard. At first I just wanted to get as much out of her as she would allow me; she gets tired of it pretty quickly, so I try and ask her about a recipe every time we talk on the phone. 

She’s been making these recipes for 60+ years now, so to her she doesn’t think of it as a recipe—it’s a habit. 

Once the next leg of the war broke out, did you feel like the motivation kicked into a different gear?

Yes, I think that’s exactly what happened. I became even more concerned about preservation; I mean, things were being literally destroyed on a scale that was different and more severe than we’ve seen since 2014, although Donetsk got hit insanely hard in 2014….anyway, I think the closer the war got to Mariupol, which is where I’m from, the more intense it felt. Once Mariupol was under besiegement, and once I was seeing the level of destruction, I just went into action mode. I needed to get people making these recipes; the more people that make them, the better chance they have to survive. So I started submitting recipes to food media outlets, and I really wanted people to be exposed. Especially in America—there’s not a huge appetite for Ukrainian cuisine, and I think that with the war, people have become more curious; it’s more in the social consciousness of Americans than it’s ever been. Americans need to be eating and cooking Ukrainian cuisine. 

And it’s another way to bring people’s attention to the crisis at large.

Yes, especially because I look at recipes as cultural heritage objects. To me, if people make [the recipes], they’re in essence preserving the culture itself. The cooking traditions and ingredients are emblematic of Ukrainian cuisine. It’s this symbolic way of showing that even if Ukrainians are displaced—even if you’re destroying the material culture, the infrastructure, and the landscape—you can’t destroy the more intangible culture, things like recipes. Because Ukrainians will persevere. 

And in the war, you think of the amount of knowledge that’s just in people’s minds, not written down, like your mother’s culinary knowledge; with all of these people dying in the war, there goes that knowledge with them. 

Generational information, if you will. That was terrifying—thinking about that still scares me daily. Everything I’ve ever known is being erased; my memories often connect to spaces and places, so if all of that is being destroyed, it felt like a part of me was being erased or destroyed. I think my focus on the food culture was something I could actually hold onto; I could go into my kitchen, and bring that into my world, even though the rest of it was being destroyed. 

It’s a semblance of control. 

Yes. Not that I was cooking a lot during that time, especially the first two months of the war; I was focusing more on fundraising or writing, but I did try and collect a much bigger database of recipes. That was a way I could get through the war at that time, but people were dying, so talking about food wasn’t necessarily perceived as the most important. But, as a historian, I could combine the two and still make a difference, in my own way. 

What kinds of dishes are common or popular in Mariupol?

Ukrainian cuisine is really fascinating. There are so many staple dishes that happen at the regional level, or at the familial level, so everyone has a slightly different variation on something that’s ubiquitous. For example, borshch has thousands of family varieties, and then there are hundreds of regional varieties in every city. So, speaking of borshch, Mariupol is definitely known for a borshch made with canned fish that’s in a red sauce, which adds that acidity. Borshch in that region is less beet-centric and more tomato-centric, because in the southern part of Ukraine there are so many tomatoes. 

What kind of fish is it?

It’s bychky—in English, ‘gobies’—a specific type of small fish. My grandpa used to go and fish all the time for gobies, and he would actually salt them, dry them out, and then we would snack on them—the heads and everything. You can still find them if you go to an Eastern European grocery store. Because there’s so much water—Mariupol is a port city—fish plays a role in the regional preferences. 

Another kind of unique thing about Mariupol and the surrounding villages is that there’s a lot of ethnic Crimean Greeks; they were displaced from Crimea back at the end of the 18th century by Catherine the Great. There was a mass deportation of this ethnic group, so they moved us from Crimea to Mariupol and then people settled all over; obviously, the ethnic cuisine came with them, so we have a lot of dishes that are part of that ethnic community. A lot of carbs are involved, a lot of savoury pies. Some can be meat versions, and some can be vegetarian versions: A vegetarian version called shmush or turta is made with pumpkin (with lots of sugar), but some people do pumpkin and ground meat together, and it’s all in between a flaky dough. 

Filo-esque or thicker?

It’s a type of laminated pastry, so not quite filo. There’s no name for the type of laminating technique that they use, per se, but yes, it involves a lot of dough stretching and layering and fat—butter and lard! The one that’s more traditionally meat-based is called kobete, and that’s another very famous savoury pie; usually it’s chicken and onion or lamb and onion, and once again, it’s made with a type of laminated dough. That’s the one my dad would always talk about, that he really misses; this kind of pie is such a labour-intensive recipe, it’s kind of a communal thing.

So it would be a big pie as opposed to individual ones?

Yes, exactly. Often shmush is more of a circle, and kobete is more of a rectangle or square, but there’s a lot of varieties even within those two types of pies. Crimean Greek culinary culture is very similar to the culinary culture of Crimean tatars, so they also have kobete, but their own version. We all lived in Crimea side-by-side, so there was a lot of cross-pollination. We came from Pontic Greeks, who came from what is now Turkey, so we all really came from the same place if you go far back enough—to ancient Greece; Crimea has beautiful ancient Greek ruins. 

What are some things you’ve learned through this research that you didn’t know before?

Through the preservation of culinary knowledge, I feel like I am learning all the time, because there’s no same recipe for any dish. Even something as ubiquitous as borshch—I was like, “How many varieties can there be?!” I found a Ukrainian cookbook, I think it was from the 60s or 70s, and it was just borshch. And now I want to write a cookbook that’s all about it! There’s the traditional beet-centric borshch, but then there’s also green borshch—my mom made that growing up—and then there’s also white borshch. I know Polish cuisine has a type of white borshch that comes from the Carpathian region, and there are so many nuances to that one dish. 

Olga’s oxtail borshch with buckwheat sourdough bread.

Then the baking culture of Ukraine is vast on a level that I kind of knew, but didn’t really understand until I started doing this level of research. Like the history of different grains such as buckwheat, which used to be the more prevalent type of grain. The famous pampushky buns that you serve with borshch, for example, were traditionally made with buckwheat flour, so it was a much heartier experience. And then I knew corn was an important staple food, because I grew up eating corn on the cob on the beach, but I learned about the different variety of corn that was actually cultivated in Ukraine. It’s much darker in colour, takes much longer to cook, and is not sweet; we eat it with lots of salt. So it’s a big culture shock for Ukrainians when they come [to the United States] and eat American corn—it’s like eating sugar. 

Then pork is probably the meat staple of Ukrainian cuisine in many ways; that was actually part of the resistance to the Ottoman empire, which was constantly trying to take over that area. Consuming a lot of pork was a way to ‘other’ themselves from the Muslim invaders, if you will. It was a cultural way to distinguish themselves. I could keep going because it’s kind of endless; the layers of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural influences that make up Ukrainian food culture are insane. 

This question is obviously hard to answer, but if you had to sum it up, what does Ukrainian food mean to you? 

Ukrainian food is part of who I am—it’s part of my identity. I think during times of war, especially, when you’re losing so much, you really want to cherish and hold onto things, and Ukrainian food is definitely something you could make anywhere in the world. Obviously, as an immigrant, you kind of have to adapt things because you don’t have access to the same ingredients, but it is universal, in that sense, that you could eat it anywhere and feel like you’re in Ukraine. I guess I learned that lesson earlier on because I am an immigrant, but when I left, I always felt I could go back. When the war came, it started challenging that idea….I mean, now those places don’t, in many cases, exist anymore. So, it’s like taking Ukraine with you, anywhere you are, and feeling connected to that place through food. When I smell those smells, or when I see Ukrainian food on a plate, it literally transports me to a different time and place. 

And to a place that physically may no longer exist, but very genuinely still exists in its own way. 

Yes, exactly. Since that region is still occupied and everybody had to leave—cousins and more immediate family like my grandma and aunt—everyone is kind of all over the place. Pretty much no one from my immediate family is in Ukraine. Some friends are, in other places, like Crimea or Kyiv, but most everyone else are refugees all over Europe for the most part. 

Having to leave not knowing if you’ll ever come back is a truly unimaginable concept. 

At least for some immigrants you can go back and forth. But, the fact is, those places are being literally destroyed, and corrupted and soiled. Because what Russians are doing, it’s more than disruption, it brings up a lot of disgust in terms of emotion, to be honest. Anger and sadness, of course, but disgust comes up a lot. Just cause what they’re doing is so disgusting. 

And goes so far beyond the logistical acts of war. 

The horrors of every type of warfare, that’s not even legal warfare, the way people are being tortured…it’s a level of hate that’s just sickening. 
___

Here’s how you can support Olga’s work, as well as three organizations she supports:

Liberty Ukraine, a nonprofit based in Austin, Texas that’s focused on saving lives on the frontlines and helping children overcome war trauma. You can donate through Paypal here. 

Tu Mariupol is a nonprofit organization from Mariupol, Ukraine now based in Berlin, Germany. They’re focused on preserving the cultural memory of Mariupol as well as raising awareness of the local impacts of the war through art and documentaries. Donate through PayPal at tu.mariupol@gmail.com

@obnimi_Sobaku, a small charity in Ukraine, helps find dogs new homes, reunites dogs with their owners, and provides injured dogs with much needed medical attention. Donate through PayPal at olga@kuts.net