Fermented, foraged, whole-grain and invigoratingly herbal, everything we’re craving is straight out of Central and Eastern Europe. Why does this old-world food seem so right-now?
How Slavic Became the Flavor of the Moment
Fermented, foraged, whole-grain and invigoratingly herbal, the flavors of the moment are straight out of Central and Eastern Europe. Why does this old-world food seem so right-now?
By
SARAH KARNASIEWICZ
STICK-TO-YOUR RIBS stews, vegetables simmered into submission, doughy dumplings as chubby and pale as a child’s fist: Mention Eastern European food to most Americans, and these are the images they’ll conjure. Never mind that at its largest, the U.S.S.R. covered one-sixth of the earth’s land, swallowing spice routes and diverse empires that were sustained by much more than pork and potatoes. Twenty-five years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—and with more than 14 million Russian, Ukrainian and Polish Americans among...
Soviet cultural imperialism should be dismissed: borscht belongs to Ukraine. But beet-stained bowls litter tables the world over. From The Economist’s 1843 magazine
