Home Food: Recipes from the founder of #CookForUkraine

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Steam the pumpkin chunks for about 20 minutes, until very soft (if you don’t have a steamer, pop the pumpkin in a metal or enamel colander, set it over a pot of boiling water, then cover with a lid that fits as tightly as possible), then blitz to a smooth puree. (If you’re doing this the night before, leave it to cool down and keep, covered, in the fridge.) My death-row, apocalypse dish would be my mum’s Ukrainian dumplings called varenyky, which are filled with her homemade cheese that we call syr. It just wires some really crazy things in my brain and makes me release all of the endorphins. Style Department Represents Olia Hercules, Food Stylist". Style Department . Retrieved 15 December 2016. Mamushka came out of a big jumble of things that were happening to me in 2014. I lost my job, I was a single mum, my son Sasha was nearly two years old. I was alone in the UK with no job and no prospects. Parallel to that, the Maidan [uprising] happens and the war starts in the Crimea. So it began, actually, as me writing down names of recipes in my notebook as a way of just doing something, and not sitting around and plunging myself into depression. Then I ended up getting this book deal, miraculously, everything came together. I never looked for an agent or to publish, it was just for me.

Home Food by Olia Hercules | Cookbook Corner | Nigella Lawson Home Food by Olia Hercules | Cookbook Corner | Nigella Lawson

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 ] Divide the dough into four equal pieces and knead each one into a ball on a well-floured surface. Roll each ball into a long sausage, then put it on a barely floured surface and roll from the centre to the edges, stretching it out to 45cm or so. Put the dough sausages parallel to each other, perpendicular to you. Squish and stretch the top ends with your fingers, so they become a little thinner, then pinch together. Now, working from right to left, take the sausage on the right, feed it over its neighbour to the left, under the next sausage, and then over the final sausage. Again starting with the sausage on the right, feed it over, under and over again, and keep going until you have plaited the full lengths of the four dough sausages, then pinch together the bottom ends. The middle will look a bit bulkier, so stretch the whole thing delicately to even it up. Put the paprika in a small bowl. Put the sunflower oil in a small frying pan, add the garlic, then heat over a low heat, swirling the pan gently. As soon as you see some of the garlic turning golden, reduce the heat or switch it off entirely, and keep swirling until most of the garlic has turned pale gold. Do not let it go too brown or it will taste acrid. As soon as the garlic colour is good, pour the oil and garlic over the paprika in the bowl.I know my mum is protecting me: she doesn’t want me to see her cry’: Olia Hercules’ mother, Olga. Photograph: Kris Kirkham/Mitchell Beazley

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Stewart, Victoria (2015-06-22). "Meet Olia Hercules, the ex-Ottolenghi chef putting Ukrainian food on the map in London". The Evening Standard . Retrieved 14 December 2016. Working with really soft, leavened dough is my favourite thing. I find the whole process extremely therapeutic and rewarding, and I love the smell. 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. 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.For hard-boiled eggs with a soft yolk, put the eggs in a pan of cold water and put on a medium-high heat. Watch them, for as soon as the water comes to a rolling boil, you must turn the heat down to low and set a timer for four minutes. When the time is up, drain the eggs and submerge them in cold water. It was not, as Ms Timoshkina told ITV News, a coincidence they show to fundraise through food as they felt it is a way of helping people understand the conflict on a very human level.

Olia Hercules

Hercules has appeared on Saturday Kitchen, [10] [11] Sunday Brunch, [12] and Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Television. Cut or break the cauliflower into small florets, keeping any small leaves, too. Blanch the cauliflower and its leaves in a pan of boiling, salted water: take out the leaves after about two minutes and the florets after five. Refresh both in cold water, then drain well and pat dry with kitchen paper. They also received an award called Champions of Change from 50 Best Restaurants, as well as a grant. They have consequently set up an initiative called Ukraine Hub, where they provide free workshops (from cookery to flower arranging to intuitive drawing) for displaced Ukrainians in the UK. 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. Her second cookbook is called Kaukasis: a culinary journey through Georgia, Azerbaijan and beyond. It was published on August 10th in the UK and Australia and in October 2017 in the US, Canada, Germany and Poland.For sure Towpath on the canal in London, also 40 Maltby Street and Rochelle Canteen. You get the gist: restaurants that use really good ingredients and you can feel the skill in cooking, but it’s not fussy. I cannot emphasise enough that you need a lot of fat to make a super-juicy kebab, so use the fattiest minced lamb you can find.