Olia Hercules calls her cookbook autobiographical
The full title of her book is 'Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine and Beyond'; in it, Olia offers not only recipes but also describes the cultural and culinary features of Ukraine.
Olia Hercules has lived in Britain for over 10 years; she has worked as a chef in a local restaurant, runs cultural and culinary projects, but admits that the British interest in Ukrainian cuisine and Ukraine has awakened precisely now. And this is not least due to events in Ukraine itself.
"In January [2014] I was unemployed, and by April I had signed a book contract. I wrote 20 pages literally in one night. Before that, my agent said it would hardly happen for a couple of years," Olia says of the rapidly growing interest in her creation. She herself does not consider her book purely culinary: "I hope it is anthropological, biographical, giving some insight not only into my family but also into the history of many other Ukrainians."
Snow and bears – with that kind of perception of Ukraine, says Olia Hercules, she encountered while preparing her book. And Ukrainian cuisine, she says, is mainly seen as something exclusively potato-based with lots of fatty meat.
Olia herself is from Kherson region in Ukraine, but her recipes are full of influences from Caucasian, Uzbek, and Siberian cuisines. It was in these regions that the culinary skills of her family's 'mamushkas' – grandmothers, aunts, mother – were shaped.
Olia says that with her book she tried to show how much Ukrainian cuisine has absorbed from outside: for example, Korean-style carrots and Uzbek plov have long become familiar dishes in many Ukrainian families. But her recipes also bear the imprint of British cuisine: the popular post-Soviet vinaigrette salad, Olia Hercules now makes not from boiled vegetables but slightly fried ones.
As the author admits, 'Mamushka' started as a personal project, a kind of therapy at a time when war was beginning in her homeland: "I'm from Kherson region, very close to Crimea. I remember waking up at three in the morning, reading the news, not understanding what awaited my family."
"When it all happened, I called my mom and said: 'Mom, we have to write down these recipes. Now!'" Olia recalls 2014. "I was shocked that no one was writing properly about Ukraine and Ukrainian culture, only headlines full of stereotypes."
Now she is thinking of another cookbook, but about a different region, dreams of opening a Ukrainian restaurant in London, and is preparing a cultural project about Ukrainian 'summer kitchens'. "I'm so afraid this tradition will decline, and it has so much history. In the 1960s, when people began to live a little better, they started building separate summer kitchens, and often the life of a young family began there. And then they built the house around such a kitchen," says Olia Hercules.
In her restaurant, Olia would like to treat guests to Ukrainian salo and canned tomatoes – it was these appetizers, with a shot of pepper vodka, that she offered guests while watching 'Viy' the day before in London. The organizers chose Gogol's story because food plays an important role in Nikolai Gogol's works. "Now you better understand where I come from," with these words Olia Hercules invited the audience to a Ukrainian dinner.
According to the BBC, among the several dozen people who were not deterred either by the exoticism of Ukrainian cuisine or the London tube strike, there were those who had never tried borscht or heard of Gogol, but came to fill a cinematic or culinary gap. And some were attracted by borscht. For example, Nicole was born in Ukraine but left as a child; she came to the evening with her British friend: "I don't know how to cook borscht, so this is your only chance to try it."