Olia Hercules

This has got to be one of the most gorgeous cookbooks I've encountered. The pages are thick sturdy paper, and nearly every single page has at least one photo if not more, in color, excellently shot & arranged. Every recipe begins with a paragraph (some shorter, some longer), with a brief mention of what the dish is and either some memory Olia has related to it or some other little familial tidbit about it. The recipes all look excellent and while some take a little more work, all are very show more straight-forward.

One thing to note, this is Eastern European food, so it's pretty meat-heavy (though there are a handful of the mains without, and some others that can be adapted), and it also would not be recommended for those who are GF/low-carb, as a good deal of the recipes use some sort of standard flour dough (bread, pastry, pasta, dumplings, etc).

I will add, vegetarian that I am, this book is a favorite to me in spite of the meat-heaviness. It's just a lovely book that I'm delighted to have on my shelf. show less

Olia Hercules, who now lives in the UK, writes about her experiences growing up in Ukraine and about the experiences of her family, particularly her grandmother. For a book that purports to be a memory about food, there is very little of it. We do get a small section about borscht in the pages, but little beyond that. I was also a bit disappointed in the author's treatment of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict over time, but we still get a good sense of it. The author was repetitive. Tighter show more editing would have provided more room for better discussion of the foodways. I also felt the author, although her Ukrainian roots were strong, had adapted to the British culture and provided more of a view through a British lens than a Ukrainian one. show less

nonfiction/family memoir - collection of essays documenting the author's family's (including grandparents' and great-grandparents') experiences of Ukrainian and Russian history through Lenin, Stalin, German occupation, etc. up to the current war through August 2024 (published 2025). The author has been living in the UK since she was 18, and so full of worry and grief over current events (for her family and country) that she was temporarily unable to eat or cook.

Well worth a read for its show more drawn-from-life portrait of a country and its resilient people and history. show less

The beet and stuffed cabbage dishes you would expect but plenty of other recipes to try. Quite a few fry type breads along with fermented vegetables. Everything seemed doable with ingredient access.