THE THINGS WE DO...: What's for Sviat Vechir at your house? (12/25/05)

THE THINGS WE DO...

by Orysia Paszczak Tracz

What's for Sviat Vechir at your house?

So what are you having for Sviat Vechir? The usual? The 12 dishes? Of course. And just what are they? In casual conversation with your friends, you may be surprised to discover that your 12 dishes are not exactly their 12. And if their grandparents and more distant relatives were from villages and regions different than your own, well, those dishes can be quite distinctive.

There will be kutia, and uzvar (the compote of dried fruits), and borsch, fish, varenyky/pyrohy, holubtsi and mushrooms for starters. But what kind of borsch? And what fillings for the holubtsi and varenyky? And even the kutia - thick or more liquidy, with or without raisins, walnuts, and/or pieces of dried fruit, and with or without a touch of brandy? And your kutia may not have wheat grains, but millet or barley. When is it served - as the first food of the evening, or the last?

The variety is endless, but does contain that central common theme of simple but special revered foods, meatless and non-dairy. Usually it is 12 different dishes that are served, a reminder of the important lunar symbolism of the Paleolithic era although in some areas seven, nine, or 17 different dishes were presented (also symbolic numbers).

In past years, this writer has written about the ancient prehistoric symbolism of this Holy Night and its rituals and foods, the coming together of the extended family (past, present and future) and the continuity of pre-Christian beliefs intertwined with later Christian rituals. This material is available in The Ukrainian Weekly Archives online and, to no one's surprise, on the Internet in sometimes the most obscure and strangest websites.

Let us return to the foods of Sviat Vechir. The borsch (beet soup) for this evening is not meat-based, but a vegetarian tour de force often started on a dried Boletus mushroom broth. It could also be based on fish stock (Poltava region), or on fermented beets and kvas (the beet liquid in the process). Whether it is served full of all the vegetables that went into its simmering is up to the cook and her family traditions. Some prefer it full of all the vegetables, or thickened with zaprazhka (roux), while others serve just the ruby liquid, sometimes with only the slivered beets.

Most often, the borsch is served with vushka (little ears). Yes, this is a meatless meal, and these vushka are harmless - they are tiny dumplings filled with chopped mushrooms. In many regions of Ukraine outside of Halychyna, borshch is always served with pamPUSHky (with the accent on the second syllable, not pampushKY). The former are small baked buns, slathered with butter, bacon-fat or oil and crushed garlic. For this non-dairy meatless evening, the butter would be replaced with oil, usually hemp oil - oliy. This hemp oliy is used in preparing most dishes for Sviat Vechir. In Manitoba, warm pyrizhky (tiny, flaky savory pastries, filled with sauerkraut and/or mushrooms, or kasha) are served with borsch.

The variety of fish served at Sviat Vechir can be endless: various marinated herring, baked (whole or filets), fried, in aspic (studynets', studynyna), gefillte-style, or dried and smoked fish. In Bukovyna they baked a fish stew with tomatoes and sliced peppers in a clay pot.

Linda Forsberg lives in Puyallup, Wash. Her grandparents, who came to the United States from Kobaky near Kolomyia (in the Carpathian foothills) in the early part of the 1900s, made a warm salad that included dried fish (now the family uses smoked salmon). It was "always eaten only at Christmas Eve or Day." It contains grated cooked beets, mushrooms, garlic, sautéed onions, and the dried or smoked fish, and is made a few days in advance to blend the flavors. Tsvikle, or grated beets with horseradish (usually served at Easter) is one of the dishes served in parts of the Carpathian region.

Khrystia Habrovych Momryk of Ottawa serves a fish casserole - "my mother made this fish only for Sviat Vechir, and she remembered her grandmother making it in the pich" (large clay hearth oven). It contains very many sautéed onions and fish pieces, and is baked at a low temperature for about six hours. "Serve hot on Sviat Vechir, delicious cold the next day. I think the secret to this recipe is using a very heavy casserole that holds the heat and the low temperature of the oven."

This dish is from the selo Rusiv, Sniatynskyi raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast - the region known as Pokuttia [the foothills of the Carpathians]. "Rusiv was the birthplace of [writer] Vasyl Stefanyk, he and my great-grandfather Matviy Stefanyk were first cousins, and my grandmother on my mother's side, her name was Evdokia, is the little girl Dotsia teaching the villagers to print their names in his novella 'Pidpys' - or so family lore has it," says Ms. Momryk.

The late Maryna Antonovych Rudnytska, who grew up in Kyiv in an accomplished family of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, told me once what she remembered about Sviat Vechir at home in the 1930s. There were so many varieties of fish caught in the Dnipro River, prepared in so many different ways, that most of the 12 dishes were fish. Varenyky were considered peasant food, not for city folk. While not traditional, caviar is also fish, and visitors to Ukraine bring it back and do serve it on this evening.

Varenyky (pyrohy in western Ukraine) can have a multitude of fillings, and potatoes are a later addition (from a few centuries ago, after their arrival in Europe from the Americas). The savory fillings are sauerkraut, cabbage, mushrooms or a combination of these, while the sweet fillings include various fruits and berries (plums, prunes, vyshni - sour cherries, pears, and - especially - poppy seeds, ground and flavored with sugar or honey).

Holubtsi are also varied, with kasha (buckwheat) and mushrooms, corn and garlic (in some Hutsul regions), barley, grated raw potatoes (Boyko region). Rice filling is also a later addition. Sometimes sour cabbage leaves are used (a whole cabbage head pickled in the manner of sauerkraut).

Mushrooms are obligatory, especially the mushroom sauce for the holubtsi and varenyky. Just any mushrooms will not do, and even though we are now used to the champignon and Portobello varieties, for Sviat Vechir nothing but the Boletus will do. This is the porcini, cepes, or bilyi hryb, the borovyk, which cannot be cultivated and must be gathered in the wild. It is available dried for an exorbitant price per gram, and worth every penny. The mushrooms are also served with the beet salad, in nalysnyky (crepes), in the vushka, with garlic, mixed with other fillings in the holubtsi, and other dishes. On the Canadian prairies, pidpenky (honey agaric) are popular.

Kapusta (cabbage) is served both fresh and as sauerkraut, again, in many varieties. Kapusniak (sauerkraut soup) is very important, ecpecially in the Carpathian regions. It may include dried peas, much garlic and mushrooms. In the Poltava region it was thickened with millet). A baked sauerkraut and dried peas casserole is the original "horokh z kapustoyu" (later used as a phrase to indicate a hodgepodge). Sauerkraut filling in varenyky is a big favorite.

Dried broad beans and peas are served also. For example, in the foothills of Carpathian Bukovyna, a dried pea soup with home-made noodles, sweetened with sugar is a Sviat Vechir dish. Beeb - dried broad beans, are served mashed with garlic, and/or with onions, and baked in a clay pot. Then there is the broad beans and prunes casserole. Kasha (buckwheat) is served in some regions, as is kysil (a thickened pureed fruit or berry-based drink). Kokoshka is cooked corn kernels, a Hutsul dish.

Breads and buns are not a major part of this ritual dinner. But many pyrohy (the original pyrih - a filled baked bread) and knyshi (smaller filled buns) were prepared, because later in the evening these were taken along by the children with samples of the rest of the dinner to the grandparents, godparents, other relatives and the midwife. The kolach or kolachi in the center of the festive table were not eaten that evening.

There was another bread in Carpathian regions called a krachun, or vasyl', filled with whole grains of wheat, rye, corn, beans and garlic cloves. Clearly the grains were symbolic of earliest agriculture. Sometimes the bread was filled with samples of each dish of the evening. It remained on the table until the end of the holiday season, and was shared with the farm animals.

In her book "Tradytsiyi i Zhyttiediyalnist' Etnosu" (Traditions and ways of Life of the Etnos, Kyiv: Kyiv University - UNISERV, 2000), historian and ethnographer Valentyna Borysenko notes that in western Ukraine, in the Carpathians and Polissia, vegetable, mushroom and fish dishes predominated, while in central and eastern Ukraine, the Dnipro and Poltava regions and southern Ukraine, various dishes made with flour were also included: mlyntsi (pancakes) and varenyky with berries. Traditional for all Ukraine were: kutia, uzvar, honey, kapusniak, fish, peas, beans, and varenyky.

The meal ends with uzvar, the compote of dried fruits. Then there are the sweets, the pastries, the various medivnyky and medivnychky (honey cakes, and honey cookies), pampushky (yeast-raised doughnuts filled with jams), cookies, tortes, makivnyk (poppy seed roll), khrustyky and so many more.

As to the question of whether alcoholic beverages were part of the meal - of course! The ancient pre-Christian koliadky (carols) mention the zelene vyno (green wine), the mead and the horilochka (horilka - the Ukrainian word for vodka). Borysenko mentions that after the first three spoonfuls of kutia, the family toasted each other with horilka in which fragrant plants or berries were steeped.

The family members wished each other health and bliss (schastia) for the coming year, and remembered those away from home as well as those departed into the next world. "Dai zhe, Hospody Bozhe, zdorovia nam usim! Dai zhe, Bozhe, shchaslyvoyu tsiu kutiu provesty ta i druhoyi dochekaty u schasti i zdorovyi!... Prystavshym dushechkam tsarstvo nebesne, nekhai yim zemlia perom!"

We now have the convenience of mixers, food processors and freezers, as well as the church groups who sell Ukrainian "fast food." Here in Manitoba, I can buy the whole Sviat Vechir meal, if I needed. One year, after major surgery, I was convinced by my husband that I could not and would not prepare the full dinner. I did make kutia, borsch and the mushroom sauce, but the rest was bought at Alycia's Restaurant Deli, and Mom's Perogy Factory, and our "kuma" brought a few dishes.

One other "benefit" of living in the sub-Siberian climate of the Canadian prairies is that if you run out of room in your freezer when you are preparing some of the foods in advance, there is always the unheated garage or porch as the second deep freezer.

No matter how the foods we serve for Sviat Vechir arrive on the table, they are there because we want to celebrate this very special evening with our families in all its reverence, beauty and tradition. How fortunate we are that we have this heritage!

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