Diverse Traditions
Early into their conversation, many differences were already clear. Take the name of the food they were making. In Ukraine, those famous dumplings are called varenyky, not perogies. And DON’ YA kitchen manager Nataliia Vynohradova was shocked to see how Canadians made their varenyky.“ I never saw someone use cheddar cheese to make varenyky before coming to Canada,” she said.“ I wouldn’ t even have been able to imagine it.” The same can be said of gluten-free and dairy-free varieties, which the women now make to cater to Canadian tastes.“ In Ukraine, we don’ t have allergies,” Nataliia joked.
The DON’ YA staff were equally surprised to find that many Ukrainian Canadians preferred sour cabbage rolls over sweet, blueberries instead of cherries, canola oil over sunflower oil, and were more reliant on supermarkets than family gardens. And it’ s not just ingredients that differed— there are whole dishes unique to the Ukrainian identity on each continent.
What happened to cause this culinary split? Gordon says it happened slowly, over time.“ There were many waves of Ukrainian settlement in Canada,” he says.“ Each generation brought something new to Canada, depending on the region they were leaving and the state of Ukraine at the time. And each wave adjusted to life here and the ingredients available.”
First-wave Ukrainians of the 1890s were fleeing Austro-Hungarian rule in the west, while many of today’ s newcomers come from the east, where the Russian invasion has been most deadly. Ukrainians seeking stability after the devastation of the First World War came from a more rural tradition without much refrigeration or global trade; those seeking new opportunities as the Soviet Union collapsed had diets influenced by strict agricultural planning. Today, Ukraine is a highly modern, globalized nation where, according to Nataliia and her staff, you can find far better sushi than in Canada.
( Recipe provided by Cathie Gordey)
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