Family Recipes Worth Keeping

Mama Tetiana loves experimenting with homemade dishes — soups that simmer half the afternoon, breads shaped by hand, little jars of things put away for later. She is happiest when the kitchen table is covered in bowls and there is more food than there are people to eat it.

Lately the kitchen has seen a lot of experiments. Trays of homemade sushi with salmon and avocado, rolled and cut with more patience than any of us have. A bright poke bowl — my own creation, thrown together one afternoon with whatever looked good in the fridge and instantly requested again. Deep bowls of chicken ramen with soft-boiled eggs and nori, made properly by me and Shahin, with the broth started long before anyone was hungry.

Then there is the baking, which is really where she is happiest. Cream-filled puff pastry horns that disappear the same day. Wafer rolls stuffed with whipped cream. A golden sesame-topped pie that comes out of the oven and has to sit for twenty minutes while everybody hovers around it.

Some of these recipes came from Ukraine and are written in a notebook in handwriting we can barely read. Some were picked up here in Kraków. Some were invented on a Tuesday because we had too many apples and it seemed a shame to waste them.

She is slowly gathering the favourites into something like a real cookbook — the measurements corrected, the steps written down properly instead of "until it looks right". We'll share them here as they're finished: the meals, the baking notes, and the small tips that never make it into printed recipes. In the meantime, you can already find her first collection of Diabetic recipes on Amazon.