Olia Hercules will entice you with evocative new flavours and ingredient combinations that will leave you asking yourself why you haven't been eating Ukrainian food all your life!

I really shouldn’t have been surprised, as the Soviet Union was much bigger than Western Europe, and France (or Italy) alone have so many traditional foods specific to tiny regions.Debut cookbook from the Observer‘s Rising Star in Food Award 2015, Mamushka is a celebration of the food and flavours of Ukraine and the “Wild East”, with over 100 recipes for fresh, flavourful and unexpected dishes from across the region.

I used a dill pickle in tiny dice and mixed that with the red onion, pepper, and salt to mellow the onion. If Olia set out to paint a cultural and historical picture through food and family she succeeded admirably. I had a thought as I was making it, that perhaps, putting so much in , that I wouldn’t be able to taste the different components later.I used regular garlic, but only half the suggested amount because I was concerned it would be too spicy for my son, who doesn't like raw garlic. It’s very easy to make, the marinade smells absolutely amazing — although I missed that the sliced onions should be added to the marinating meat, so added with the carrots — and the final addition of herbs brightens everything up. A number of jobs followed before her interest in food as an amateur reached its apogee and she decided to retrain as a chef at Leith's School of Food and Wine.

It takes some time to make and chop but it made plenty for two meals plus at least one more serving in refrigerator. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes cooking (or just reading about) good and interesting food.This book is an ode to all those women (and men) that I was raised by and grew up with, and the food they lovingly prepared. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.