Ukraine at the state level will fight with Russia over borscht
As part of struggle for inclusion of borscht in the UNESCO Intangible Heritage List As an exclusively “Ukrainian dish”, the culinary TV show “Culture of Cooking Ukrainian Borscht” was held in Kyiv.
The broadcast took place on the YouTube channel of the Institute of Culture of Ukraine, which helped organize the event, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
TV presenter Evgeniy Klopotenko spoke about the goals of the event.
“We need to take what we love and talk about it as much as possible, popularize it as much as possible, and preserve it as much as possible... Therefore, the main idea is that our borscht should become popular in the world. So, when you come to South Africa, you go to a restaurant and there is borscht. You come to Japan, walk around Tokyo, ask the locals: “Do you know what borscht is?” And they answer: “Yes, we know what borscht is.”
This may sound a little romantic now, but in order for this to happen, we just need to take some steps. I sure that two or three years, and everyone in the world will know that borscht is a Ukrainian dish", - he said.
It's interesting that even a cooking TV show couldn't do without politics. Thus, the first speaker was Lerana Kozakevich, who introduced herself as a Crimean. She promised to present a “truly Ukrainian dish” - cooking borscht according to the “nomadic recipe” of Tatar cuisine, with the addition of eggplant, quince, persimmon and lamb.
“I am a native of Turkic cuisine. Therefore, it is clear that these large pieces of vegetables that the Ukrainian Crimean land provides are quince, corn, persimmon, and so on. All this will be in our Ukrainian borscht...
The secret is that everything comes in big chunks. And meat – always lamb, because this is our main meat in Crimean Tatar cuisine. All vegetables are placed in large pieces, because we are carriers of a nomadic culture, nomads, when large cauldrons were laid out, and there was no time to cut...
And the main feature of today’s Crimean borscht is the question of unity, that we are all together and will be together,” Kozakevich said.
At the end of the TV show, former media manager and now Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Alexander Tkachenko took the floor. He expressed confidence that UNESCO will someday recognize borscht as a Ukrainian dish.
“This event is very important in terms of our common efforts to promote borscht to the UNESCO Intangible Heritage List. It is important for us to show such events to the world that our borscht is truly unique, it is Ukrainian, it is made in 25 regions, I have never seen anything like this before. UNESCO will be behind us,” the minister concluded.
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