Food From the Borderlands

When Jane's monthly book group meetings roll around, she often looks to me for kitchen inspiration. One of the central features of this San Diego-based group is that participants bring along dishes representing the culture of the book under discussion. In the past, they've offered Indian food, Mexican dishes and meals from the Deep South. When they read a book about military life, Jane dug up some (very) old MRE's from a Navy pal's bunker. I often see these book meetings as an opportunity to flex my gourmet muscle.

The book this month (nominated by Jane herself) was Jonathan Safran Foer's 2002 Everything is Illuminated. An exploration of the aftereffects of the Holocaust, a treatise on American ancestor-worship and a partially ironic update of the myth of the Wandering Jew, the book takes place mainly in the formerly Soviet republic of Ukraine (not The Ukraine, please). Luckily, I own a well-thumbed-through copy of Culinaria's Russia cookbook, which features an extensive section on Ukrainian dishes (major sidenote: the formerly out-of-print Culinaria series, quite possibly the best books on food and cuisine I've ever come across, are being re-printed in affordable softcover this fall. Check out Amazon for more details). So, while Jane waltzed off to choir rehearsal, I set about concocting everyone's favorite Ukranian dish, Buryakovy salat z kvsoleyu i yablokamy, or beet salad with apple and beans.

3 medium sized beets
2 medium sized apples
1 cup white beans, cooked
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons white vinegar
salt and pepper
salad leaves for serving

Boil the beets for 1 hour and peel. Chop the beets and apples into small dice.
Combine with the cooked white beans, oil, and white wine vinegar.
Season, and arrange on the salad leaves.

The only snag with a recipe like this is peeling and dicing the beets. The cutting board and surrounding paper towel wads looked like toss-asides from a surgical room. I even deigned to tie an apron to myself, a rare event in this house. But the skins slipped off the beets perfectly as I held them under cool running water, and they sliced apart with ease. I made enough for Jane to fill an entire serving platter while leaving a healthy amount for myself, which I enjoyed solo at our kitchen table. The warm earthy beets stained the beans and played off the tart crispness of the apples, and the rare bite of black pepper added an additional element to the wonderful interplay of flavor. It was both familiar and faintly exotic - exactly the way you'd hope Ukranian cuisine would be.