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Ukrainian Buffet


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I'm going to be preparing a Ukrainian buffet for my annual Eurovision Song Contest party I've been doing some research about Ukrainian food and am starting to come up with some ideas, but I figured people on here would know a bit.

Ukrainian food doesn't strike me as the easiest to turn into a sort of finger food buffet (given the length of the show it's hard to incorporate a full meal and it's nice to have stuff to graze on throughout) but I might be wrong. So far I'm thinking of the following:

Varenyky with cottage cheese (does anyone have a mushroom filling for these or ideas for other fillings?)

Mini chicken kievs (will take some trialling- any ideas how to best make them stick together?)

Radish salad (who knew?)

I'm completely stuck for anything sweet and I don't really want to repeat the Varynyky thing. I saw a recipe for Halvah on a Ukrainian site but that didn't feel especially authentic to me. Am I wrong?

Would caviar be wrong? Smoked salmon and blinis?

Any help, recipes and ideas appreciated!

Suzi Edwards aka "Tarka"

"the only thing larger than her bum is her ego"

Blogito ergo sum

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Varenyky can be made with so many fillings and they are easy becuse you can use the same dough for all of them. The basic savoury fillings are the potato, bacon and cabbage and wild mushroom. My grandfather serves them for dessert too with a sour cherry compote filling, blueberries, apples, pressed cottage cheese with raisins and honey. The fruit filled ones are great with sour cream as well as the savoury ones.

May I also suggest cabbage rolls for your buffet. You can make them little three bit ones, both vegetarian and non veg. For the veg ones you can make a filling out of kasha, rice or both mixed with some shredded carrots, onion and dill. The meat ones are traditionally filled with ground pork or beef with either rice or kasha again.

Platters of various sliced kiebalsas and smoked fish, with horseradishes (red and white), pickled beets, crispy pickles, and rye crostini are also good grazing platters. Think of it as a Ukrainian antipasto platter.

As for salads, a combo of cucumber, green onion, sour cream and dill is nice to accompany the starchier parts of the meal.

Smoked salmon on blinis is also a good idea with lots of dill and lemon.

As for Ukrainian desserts I most commonly see walnut tortes, ricotta/cottage cheese cheesecakes, honey cakes, prune filled rugelach type cookies or just fresh strawberries topped with sour cream and brown sugar (we call it a Ukrainian summer sundae).

Hope this gives you some ideas :smile:

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Fantastic stuff. Could you share your recipe for Varenyky dough? What would the wild mushroom filling be made of exactly?

What is the correct spelling of perogies? I have seen about two dozen this evening already ;-)

Suzi Edwards aka "Tarka"

"the only thing larger than her bum is her ego"

Blogito ergo sum

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kasha kasha kasha!

buckets o borsht, shissels of sour cream, chicken kiev (of course!), a big fat zakuski table, pickled mushrooms, more herring than you ever thought humanly possible, oh and a pile of blinis and smoked salmon/caviar too of course why not. sour rye bread. marinated cucumbers with onions and dill. beetroot salad ( a decliious one is potatoes, beetroot, dill pickle, sour cream, fresh dill).

and oh i could go on. vodka of course. lots and lots of vodka!

actually i went to a ukrainian/russian feast a few weeks back and am just now finishing digesting.

how wonderful was it!

x marlena

ps did you see javine win eurovision britain tonight? were we rooting for her?

Marlena the spieler

www.marlenaspieler.com

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Fantastic stuff. Could you share your recipe for Varenyky dough? What would the wild mushroom filling be made of exactly?

What is the correct spelling of perogies? I have seen about two dozen this evening already ;-)

This is one of my grandmother-in-law's recipes for perogie dough. It makes a soft dough which is very nice with the sweet fillings as well.

2 cups flour

2 eggs

2 cups mashed potatoes

1/2 tsp salt

The only instructions are "Roll out 1/4" thick".

We've always spelled it "perogies" but I've seen many other spellings as well. I don't think there is one correct English spelling for it.

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One word: pieroghies.

Heh. Another word--same dish, only Ukrainian: Varenyky. :wink: Although I for one believe one can never have too many of these, whatever you call them. Not sure if you've already found this site on your own--it has a couple of different recipes for piergie/varenyky, with a bunch of different fillings, including mushroom as well as cabbage, sauerkraut, potato, meat, etc. (click through the "breads, noodles, dumplings" link on the front page).

I haven't cooked anything from the above site myself, but it looks like it's got a whole bunch of recipes with buffet possibilities. In addition to the things they have under the appetizers/canapes and the dumplings/etc., I'd be tempted to try and produce hors d'ouvre-sized stuffed cabbage rolls (golubvci). There's also a bunch of desserts on this site.

My understanding is that chicken Kiev is not an authentic Ukrainian dish--as explained here. But hey, chicken Kiev is cool, so why not? (Unless the goal is high authenticity...) Don't have any bright ideas about how to stick mini-Kievs together, other than perhaps a well-placed toothpick?

Not totally certain whether caviar, blini, or smoked salmon are authentically Ukrainian (as opposed to Russian) either, but again, they're cool so why not? :smile:

And of course, there's always the ever-popular chocolate salo (probably not advised if you want your buffet guests to keep their dinner down) :wacko::laugh:

Edited to add: Simul-posts R Us :biggrin:

Edited by mizducky (log)
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What is the correct spelling of perogies? I have seen about two dozen this evening already ;-)

First item on this page has some notes on the various names for this dumpling, and where they come from (as well as a bunch of other useful info and links on Ukrainian cuisine).

Edited by mizducky (log)
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Well the correct american spelling/pronunciation is pyrohy and I would suggest fillings of potato/onion, pot cheese, sauerkraut, mushroom, and lekvar (this is pretty much the gamut of my mothers pyrohy repertoire)

I'm annoyed that I didn't find this thread earlier as finally a topic comes up that I am somewhat well versed in and alot of the good suggestions are gone already :angry: but I will give mine nonetheless!

Definitely Holubtsy, both meat/rice and kasha to cater to vegetarians; bigos made with kraina kielbasy (chunky, not ground) Not sure if you want to make a soup, but you can always make borscht, or if you are brave, czarnina.

For dessert, poppy seed roll and definitely khruschyky (I could eat a whole batch of these without blinking)

Get your bitch ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie!!!

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Well the correct american spelling/pronunciation is pyrohy

"Correct" American spelling is just a transliteration. There are about a million different ways of spelling my Mom's maiden name (Nowatzky).

Other than that, great ideas in your post!

Pot cheese = cottage cheese, which was my grandma's classic filling.

(2nd gen Amerikansky)

Edited by crinoidgirl (log)

V

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Well the correct american spelling/pronunciation is pyrohy

"Correct" American spelling is just a transliteration. There are about a million different ways of spelling my Mom's maiden name (Nowatzky).

Other than that, great ideas in your post!

Pot cheese = cottage cheese, which was my grandma's classic filling.

(2nd gen Amerikansky)

You're right, "correct" was a poor choice of words. Its just the way I would phoneticize what I consider the pronunciation to be. By the way I would hate to think of all the spelling permutations of my family's various names (maiden, etc) :unsure:

Now I'm not sure if this is "allowed" but I have always thought that kutya would make a great dessert, no?

Edited by Taboni (log)

Get your bitch ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie!!!

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