A Ukrainian chef is promoting borsch — a traditional beet-and-beef soup — as a way to reclaim the nation’s culture and identity. He even helped get UNESCO to declare it a bite of cultural heritage in need of preserving.
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Ukrainian chef Ievgen Klopotenko poses with a tray of Pampushky bread in his kitchen in Kyiv, Ukraine on Feb. 5, 2023. Klopotenko has been outspoken during the Russian invasion in promoting national dishes, especially borsch, as a way of establishing a definite identity for Ukraine. Ukrainian chef Ievgen Klopotenko poses with a tray of Pampushky bread in his kitchen in Kyiv, Ukraine on Feb. 5, 2023.
KYIV, Ukraine — Don’t tell Ievgen Klopotenko that borsch is just food. For him, that bowl of beet-and-meat soup is the embodiment of everything Ukraine is fighting for. “Food is a powerful social instrument by which you can unite or divide a nation,” said Klopotenko, Ukraine’s most recognizable celebrity chef and the man who in the midst of a bloody war spearheaded what would become an unlikely cultural victory over Russia.If that seems hyperbolic, you underestimate how intrinsic borsch is to this country’s soul. More than a meal, it represents history, family and centuries of tradition.
And now, at the one-year mark of the war with Russia, Klopotenko uses the dish as a rallying call for preserving Ukrainian identity. It’s an act of culinary defiance against one of Moscow’s widely discredited justifications of the war — that Ukraine is culturally indistinct from Russia.Thanks to a lobbying effort that Klopotenko helped lead, UNESCO issued a fast-track decision last July declaring Ukrainian borsch an asset of “intangible cultural heritage” in need of preservation.
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