Home Food: Recipes from the founder of #CookForUkraine

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Like the best home cooking, it is barely a recipe, ready to bend to whatever ingredients are around, forgiving if measurements are eyeballed, and happy to hang out in the fridge for days. In this excerpt, Hercules tells us how to make it.

Olia Hercules Recipe for punched potatoes and a roast chicken by Olia Hercules

Each recipe has a story, making this a fascinating read as well as a stunning cookbook” BBC Good Food Recent events have rejigged so many family dynamics. My brother Sasha ended up moving to Kyiv from Lviv, and living in the same flat as his older son, Nikita, and his fiancee, Yana. Nikita is a very good meat cook, often roasting big slabs of this or that. My brother, however, who also loves cooking, really missed vegetables, so he started making this salad, which is hearty, because of the cooked aubergines and cheese, and fresh, because of the tomatoes. It’s the simplest thing with a short ingredients list, but it’s full of flavour and hits all your vegetable needs. Sasha calls it his Armenian salad but, to me, it is my brother’s. In response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Hercules raised money to privately send bullet-proof vests to civilian volunteers in the Ukrainian army, including her brother. [17] With her friend, the Russian chef Alissa Timoshkina, the duo established the #CookForUkraine social media initiative, encouraging businesses and individuals to raise money for UNICEF by cooking Ukrainian cuisine. [18] [19] Awards [ edit ] Olia Hercules was born in the south of Ukraine in 1984. She left her home town Kakhovka at the age of twelve, when she moved to Cyprus. Cut the florets off the broccoli, then trim the tougher outer layer off the stalk. Cut the sweet inner core of the stalk into slices about the same size as the florets.

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With beautiful photography and writing on the people and lush landscapes of Ukraine, this book will transport you to idyllic summer kitchens past and present. Praise for Summer Kitchens Ukrainian-born food writer Olia Hercules serves up two simple springtime recipes from her homeland to highlight the efforts of a major fundraising initiative for Unicef We really hope that by using food as our means of raising funds and raising awareness, we are giving people a chance to bring that conflict closer in a way that they can relate to, not just in an abstract, news headlines kind of way, but actually in a very tangible, very intimate way through food. Missing, Sophie (17 May 2015) Olia Hercules and the food of warm Ukrainian summers The Guardian. UK. Retrieved 10 October 2021.

Home Food – Olia Hercules

Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6 and grease a 20cm square or round cake tin with butter. Lay the apples in the base of the tin. Put four tablespoons of oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat – it should cover the base of the pan, so add a little more, if need be. Grate the onions into a large bowl on the coarse side of a grater, making sure to catch the juices. Add the mince, turmeric, bicarbonate of soda (it helps the meat to bind together), half a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of ground pepper, and mix. And I mean really mix it: get your hands in there and massage and work it. After four minutes of such manipulations, if you have time, cover and chill for 30 minutes (or overnight). This will help it hold together. Home Food takes readers on a culinary journey through the places Hercules has lived and the influences this has had on the food she enjoys cooking and eating at home. She grew up in Ukraine, moved as a child to Cyprus and as a student to the UK where she studied Italian and International Relations. Her language studies took her on to Italy for a year abroad. Later she trained as a chef and began to write. In her most personal book yet, Olia Hercules distils a lifetime of kitchen curiosity into her 100 most-loved recipes. She draws on her broad influences: her childhood in Ukraine; her years in Cyprus and Italy; and her simple, veg-centric family meals at home in London.

Easy, Crunchy Salad-Pickle 

Olia Hercules’ eggs with horseradish mayonnaise and wild garlic. Photograph: Joe Woodhouse/Bloomsbury When I was giving birth to my son, Sasha, my first child, the midwives were like, “Are you OK?” And I was like, “I’m a chef! I’ve done 18-hour shifts at Ottolenghi, I can do this!” And I did. It was a really fast, efficient birth. Working in a busy restaurant kitchen definitely gives you insane stamina, for sure. You learn and your body learns it as well.