Author name: Elena DeYoung

What is buckwheat? Most Americans have a vague sense that it exists. Buckwheat pancakes, maybe. Something they’ve seen on a health food label. In Russia, it’s been on the table at almost every meal for centuries. Breakfast porridge, a side dish with meat, a filling for pastries. It’s so embedded in Russian daily life that

Russians didn’t discover fermentation because it was trendy. They discovered it because without it, they wouldn’t have made it through winter. That’s the short version. The longer version involves centuries of necessity, a climate that makes fresh produce a seasonal luxury, and a food culture that quietly developed one of the richest fermentation traditions on

Eastern European dishes have a reputation problem. Ask someone who hasn’t spent time with the cuisine and you’ll hear variations of the same thing: heavy, starchy, brown, not very interesting. The kind of food that fills you up without doing much else. That’s not a description of Eastern European cuisine. That’s a description of bad

Cold weather comfort food in Boise is easy to find. What’s harder to find is food that was actually designed for the cold. Most comfort food in the American sense is just familiar food. Mac and cheese, pot roast, a bowl of chili. Good things. But they weren’t engineered for survival in a country where

Americans put hot sauce on everything. Russians put sour cream on everything. Both groups have good reasons, and both are right. The difference is that sour cream in Russian cooking isn’t a condiment. It isn’t something you add at the end if you feel like it. It’s a core ingredient, woven into the cuisine at