Olia Hercules' top 5 ingredients for Ukrainian cooking

Ex-Ottolenghi chef on the how to bring Eastern Europe onto your tables

Mars El Brogy @melbrogy|Marta Portocarrero

2 August 2016

Olia Hercules is a London-based chef, recipe writer and food stylist bringing Eastern European cooking to our homes.

Her first cookbook, Mamushka, dispels myths that Ukrainian food is “grey and bleak". In the video above, the former Ottolenghi chef shares her top five Ukrainian kitchen essentials.

1. Dill

“Everybody laughs at me and they even told me that I should have called my book that… we absolutely love it and we don’t only put it on fish, we put it on absolutely everything – stuffed in breads or on top of a soup,” said Olia, who was born in Kakhovka, a town in the south of Ukraine, a couple of hours drive from Crimea.

2. Kefir

This is a fermented milk drink. It is sometimes referred to as the “champagne of dairy”.

3. Buckwheat

Energising and nutritious buckwheat is up next for Hercules, who was also exposed to Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani food when she was growing up.

“It’s an underused grain here in the UK and I think it’s just so delicious. You can do so many beautiful things with it. I even make buckwheat ice cream,” she said.

4. Tomatoes

Olia, who takes pride in her cultural diversity, says: “No good Ukrainian borshch can come out with a really, really good tomato.”

5. Beetroot

Versatile veg beetroot is the last ingredient on her top five list.

“There are so many amazing things we do with beetroots and it’s not just borscht and we also use the beetroot tops and leaves to stuff into flatbreads”, said the Mamushka author, who learned how to cook from the strong female influences in her life.