Even for non-Orthodox Christians, traditional Easter treats are worth making and tasting.
Traditionally, the cooking time starts three days before Easter, known as Clean Thursday. It’s a day to clean house, paint eggs and prepare dough for sweet Easter bread. The traditional set of dishes for the holiday table in Ukraine is paska, eggs, homemade sausages, baked pork meat, Cahors or other red wine and salo. Optional are holodets (aspik, meat jelly), cottage cheese and vegetable appetizers. In Russia, there is also a cheese paskha, a pyramid of pressed cottage cheese with cream, eggs, raisins and nuts. Only the key dishes, those being paska and painted eggs, are welcomed to be brought to church for consecrating. Follow these receipts to add traditional taste to your Easter.
Paska (Easter bread)
Make dough from three eggs, 0.5 kilogram of flowers, 175 grams of butter, a half-cup of warm milk, three or four teaspoons of barm. Add six spoons of sugar, some salt and raisins. Put the dough in the paska forms, filling just half of the forms and leave it in a warm place for three hours to rise. After that, put forms in the oven heated to 180 degrees Celsius for about 15 minutes, then reduce the heat and bake paska for 15-20 minutes more. To decorate paskas, beat egg whites with sugar until they turn thick, then pour them on the top of paskas. Add special coloured powder for paskas, and you’re done.
Coloring eggs
While special dyes are available in shops, many still prefer coloring eggs in old-fashioned way, using natural ingredients only. The most popular one involves onion shells that must be boiled in water. Use this water to boil eggs afterwards, and they’ll turn reddish brown. Another way is holding eggs in carrot or beet juice for some time. When boiled with spinach and vinegar, eggs turn green. Leaves of red cabbage can bring blue color.
Buzhenina (baked pork)
This one is as simple as it is delicious. You’ll need a solid large piece of pork meat. Pick a big piece and consider that it will lose up to 30 percent of its weight during baking. Pour it with sauce and spices of your choice, wrap in cooking foil and bake in hot oven for approximately an hour and a half.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be reached at rudenko@kyivpost.com and on Twitter at @olya_rudenko.
