What borscht means to Ukraine at this moment

PHOTO BY MONIKA GRABKOWSKA ON UNSPLASH

The Financial Times’ recent piece (paywall) by American journalist Wendell Steavenson on the resurrection of Ukrainian food, heavily features borscht.

That’s at least partly because “Ukraine’s Jamie Oliver”, a chef called Ievgen Klopotenko, turned to borscht when he set out to overcome past culinary annihilation in his country. “Seventy-five years of the USSR changed our memories,” he is quoted to say. “I would ask people, tell me five Ukrainian dishes, and no one could. I was almost crying.” So, he decided to start resurrecting borscht.

Every Ukrainian’s favourite borscht is their mother’s or their grandmother’s. — Ukrainian maxim

So far so good. The problem is that Mr Klopotenko is also quoted to say that people mostly mentioned “borscht and salo”, salted pork fat, in response to his question about Ukrainian dishes. Why then would he need to focus on borscht in order to, as the FT piece says, “resurrect Ukrainian food”.

Perhaps it’s because he wante…