Meanwhile, whisk the eggs with the yoghurt or milk and season quite generously. You want the egg mixture to become really voluminous, so use an electric whisk if you have one. Mamushka came out of a big jumble of things that were happening to me in 2014. I lost my job, I was a single mum, my son Sasha was nearly two years old. I was alone in the UK with no job and no prospects. Parallel to that, the Maidan [uprising] happens and the war starts in the Crimea. So it began, actually, as me writing down names of recipes in my notebook as a way of just doing something, and not sitting around and plunging myself into depression. Then I ended up getting this book deal, miraculously, everything came together. I never looked for an agent or to publish, it was just for me. Put the butter and oil in the largest, deepest frying pan you have (mine’s a 26cm deep stainless-steel one) on a medium-high heat, until sizzling. Carefully drop in all the potatoes, add a generous pinch of salt and stir once to distribute it evenly. Leave the potatoes be for a few minutes, then stir in one big sweep and leave them alone again. Be patient: give the potatoes at the bottom time to catch and crisp up a bit. The whole process will take about 15 minutes, by which time the potatoes should be crisp and brown in parts. Put the paprika in a small bowl. Put the sunflower oil in a small frying pan, add the garlic, then heat over a low heat, swirling the pan gently. As soon as you see some of the garlic turning golden, reduce the heat or switch it off entirely, and keep swirling until most of the garlic has turned pale gold. Do not let it go too brown or it will taste acrid. As soon as the garlic colour is good, pour the oil and garlic over the paprika in the bowl.

Olia Hercules: ‘When Russia invaded Ukraine, I couldn’t cook Olia Hercules: ‘When Russia invaded Ukraine, I couldn’t cook

Recent events have rejigged so many family dynamics. My brother Sasha ended up moving to Kyiv from Lviv, and living in the same flat as his older son, Nikita, and his fiancee, Yana. Nikita is a very good meat cook, often roasting big slabs of this or that. My brother, however, who also loves cooking, really missed vegetables, so he started making this salad, which is hearty, because of the cooked aubergines and cheese, and fresh, because of the tomatoes. It’s the simplest thing with a short ingredients list, but it’s full of flavour and hits all your vegetable needs. Sasha calls it his Armenian salad but, to me, it is my brother’s. She has written the recipe book Mamushka which is a collection of Eastern European recipes. 2017 saw Hercules' second book published. [13] Leave the cake in its tin to rest and cool down, then slice and serve. Unsweetened tea with lemon goes perfectly with this.Divide the dough into four equal pieces and knead each one into a ball on a well-floured surface. Roll each ball into a long sausage, then put it on a barely floured surface and roll from the centre to the edges, stretching it out to 45cm or so. Put the dough sausages parallel to each other, perpendicular to you. Squish and stretch the top ends with your fingers, so they become a little thinner, then pinch together. Now, working from right to left, take the sausage on the right, feed it over its neighbour to the left, under the next sausage, and then over the final sausage. Again starting with the sausage on the right, feed it over, under and over again, and keep going until you have plaited the full lengths of the four dough sausages, then pinch together the bottom ends. The middle will look a bit bulkier, so stretch the whole thing delicately to even it up. Melt 25g of the butter in a frying pan on a medium heat, add the apples and cook for two to three minutes on each side, until they start to turn golden. Sprinkle in the brown sugar, cook the apples for another minute on each side, until caramelised, then transfer to a bowl and leave to cool slightly. Hercules has appeared on Saturday Kitchen, [10] [11] Sunday Brunch, [12] and Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Television. Steam the pumpkin chunks for about 20 minutes, until very soft (if you don’t have a steamer, pop the pumpkin in a metal or enamel colander, set it over a pot of boiling water, then cover with a lid that fits as tightly as possible), then blitz to a smooth puree. (If you’re doing this the night before, leave it to cool down and keep, covered, in the fridge.)

Olia Hercules Books – Olia Hercules

Put the butter and 150g caster sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whisk until fairly fluffy. Break the egg yolks with a fork and gradually add them to the mix, whisking them in well as you go, then whisk in the vanilla extract and cheese. Transfer the mixture to another bowl, then fold in the semolina or polenta (if you use the latter, you’ll will get a cake with more texture). Olia lives in London with her sons Sasha and Wilf, and husband – fellow food writer and photographer Joe Woodhouse, writing, cooking and feeding her unceasing curiosity by researching food culture and culinary traditions of countries less explored.The only food I really don’t like is avocado. I don’t get it. I mean, it’s OK in guacamole, when there’s loads of lime juice and flavourings. But avocado on toast? I’d rather eat a shoe. The recipe I’m sharing with you today is Stefa’s Stone Fruit Cake. I rather feel I’ll be making it all summer long. Hercules’ cookbooks are special not only because of her recipes – many of which are new to readers in the UK – but also due to her evocative writing. Many cookbooks these days have essays written alongside the recipes but not everyone has the skilled writing style of Hercules. She is a natural storyteller who enables the reader to feel they are sitting under the trees with the Hercules family eating a summer feast. Hercules has written movingly about her family so that we feel we know them. Followers of her social media account have been kept up to date with recent events in Ukraine and the challenges facing her family and friends. I wondered whether it might be rather trite to review a cookbook under these circumstances. Still, perhaps at times of stress – political and personal – the ability of food to unite and comfort is as important as ever.

Home Food: 100 Recipes to Comfort and Connect | Book by Olia Home Food: 100 Recipes to Comfort and Connect | Book by Olia

Recommending books is always a profound pleasure, and that’s really why CookbookCorner exists. But I have to admit that I do get a bit flustered and anxious when so many great titles come out on the same day. I’d normally expect that in September and October, but now summer seems to be equally crowded on the cookbook front; indeed, the proliferation of titles seems all-year-round. I’d much rather highlight a book in the week it’s published, but it isn’t always possible. As it is, I’ve still got quite a few books lined up to tell you about that have already been published, but I will stop fussing about what’s not been written about (yet) and focus on the real belter I have for you today! They also received an award called Champions of Change from 50 Best Restaurants, as well as a grant. They have consequently set up an initiative called Ukraine Hub, where they provide free workshops (from cookery to flower arranging to intuitive drawing) for displaced Ukrainians in the UK. For hard-boiled eggs with a soft yolk, put the eggs in a pan of cold water and put on a medium-high heat. Watch them, for as soon as the water comes to a rolling boil, you must turn the heat down to low and set a timer for four minutes. When the time is up, drain the eggs and submerge them in cold water.

Try this recipe from the book

Olia’s latest two cookbooks with Bloomsbury are Summer Kitchens, a book that explores Ukrainian regional cooking and Home Food, an ode to cooking for her family. Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6 and grease a 20cm square or round cake tin with butter. Lay the apples in the base of the tin.

Olia Hercules

Her second cookbook is called Kaukasis: a culinary journey through Georgia, Azerbaijan and beyond. It was published on August 10th in the UK and Australia and in October 2017 in the US, Canada, Germany and Poland. Summer Kitchens Inside Ukraine's Hidden Places of Cooking and Sanctuary (Weldon Owen, July 14, 2020) [15] I cannot emphasise enough that you need a lot of fat to make a super-juicy kebab, so use the fattiest minced lamb you can find. Take a large spoonful of the egg white mixture and fold it quite vigorously into the butter and cheese mixture, to loosen it up. Gently fold in the rest of the egg white mixture, then pour over the apples in the cake tin. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the cake is a little wobbly, but not liquid: it will set more firmly as it cools.Style Department Represents Olia Hercules, Food Stylist". Style Department . Retrieved 15 December 2016. Home Food takes readers on a culinary journey through the places Hercules has lived and the influences this has had on the food she enjoys cooking and eating at home. She grew up in Ukraine, moved as a child to Cyprus and as a student to the UK where she studied Italian and International Relations. Her language studies took her on to Italy for a year abroad. Later she trained as a chef and began to write.