Out with the mayo: How Ukrainians reclaim holiday food

"If your family comes from anywhere in the former Soviet Union, you might be cooking up a traditional feast for New Year's Eve. It's a throwback to the anti-religious Soviet era, when Christmas was canceled and replaced by New Year's. "It's still, for many, the big holiday," says food writer Polina Chesnakova, who moved to the U.S. when the Soviet Union collapsed and grew up in a community of Soviet refugees."

"Classic dishes include shuba, known as herring under a fur coat, and Olivier salad, a Russian potato salad. Both star mayonnaise, the industrial condiment that disguised the sparse, bland ingredients available in the Soviet era. Today, though, many Ukrainians are stepping away from the Soviet shadow and all that mayonnaise and emphasizing Christmas over New Year's, by rediscovering traditional holiday dishes."

"A centerpiece of the Ukrainian Christmas table is kutia, a sweet, warm porridge of pearled barley mixed with berries, nuts and stewed dried fruit. Mixed into the kutia porridge is uzvar, a punch of boiled dried fruits. It's also a drink you serve separately with the meal. "It's an old recipe of my grandmother," Yudin says. Yudin, 36, grew up in Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine. When pro-Russian separatists captured the region in 2014, he moved to the capital Kyiv, where he worked in restaurants."

New Year's Eve in former Soviet communities became the principal winter holiday after Christmas was suppressed during the anti-religious Soviet era. Soviet-era celebratory dishes such as shuba (herring under a fur coat) and Olivier salad relied heavily on mayonnaise to mask limited, bland ingredients. Many Ukrainians today are rediscovering and reviving pre-Soviet culinary traditions, placing renewed emphasis on Christmas and traditional dishes. Kutia, a sweet pearled-barley porridge with berries, nuts and stewed fruit, and uzvar, a boiled-dried-fruit punch, feature prominently. Chef Mykola Yudin fled Donetsk and later Kyiv, now in the U.S., and has researched historic Ukrainian ingredients like almond flour and vanilla.

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