This week, Ben and I made Christopher Kimball’s Chicken Kyiv, featured in the September – October 2023 issue of his magazine, Milk Street. I was fascinated to learn that this Ukrainian dish (known by different names) actually dates back to the 1800s. When the Soviet Union took over in 1922, some Ukrainian cuisine lost its distinctive qualities. The Russian version of Chicken Kiev we all know of uses a flattened chicken breast wrapped around butter, which is then breaded and deep-fried. The pre-Soviet Ukrainian version that we made has been recently making a comeback in Kyiv. It stays moist, tender and flavorful because it uses highly seasoned ground chicken and heavily herbed and spiced compound butter that infuses the chicken during baking. Delicious!
The article suggests serving Chicken Kyiv with varenyky. Now you’re speaking my language! Many Kansas Mennonites have Russian or Ukrainian ancestry, so attending a Mennonite college in Kansas gave me my first taste of these cheese dumplings swimming in ham cream gravy. My roommate’s extended family made a serious Mennonite feast every year, and I was delighted to help Cindy eat leftovers – especially the varenyky!
I don’t often take the time and trouble to make varenyky, but when I do, it is usually on or after Easter because the gravy is so good if it has baked ham and drippings in it. This week, Ben and I were cooking on a weeknight, and I just didn’t have it in me to make authentic varenyky. It involves making and rolling out a soft dough, making a cheese filling, creating the dumplings by cutting, filling, and pinching the dough, cooking them, and making a gravy for them to finish in. I’m exhausted just telling you about it. What we did have time for, however, was ricotta gnocchi that we make quite often from scratch. We just swapped in cottage cheese for ricotta and produced a delicious dish that was nearly as tasty as the filled Mennonite version. Varenyky + Gnocchi = Varenocchi.
Varenocchi
2 cups small curd cottage cheese
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1 1/4 cups flour, plus more for rolling
1 tablespoon butter
1-2 ounces ham, chopped finely
3/4 cup cream
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper that is lightly dusted with flour.
Mix cottage cheese, eggs, cheese, and flour with 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. It will be a very wet dough. You can add a little extra flour, but it is better to rely on a heavily floured board and a light touch than it is to add as much flour as you think you’ll need to roll it into a 1-inch-thick rope.
Heavily flour a large board and plop half the dough on it. Sprinkle some flour on top of the dough. With floured hands, and the help of a bench scraper, lightly form it into a shaggy snake. If you press until it is densely compacted like play dough, that’s probably how it will taste. Just sayin’.
With a bench scraper, cut into 1-inch pieces. Place on lightly floured parchment-lined sheet. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
Cook varenocchi in two batches in boiling salted water, about 3-4 minutes. Scoop out with slotted spoon and drain in colander.
Meanwhile, make cream gravy by melting butter in a pan, and adding ham, cream, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to simmer. Add cooked varenocchi and stir gently to coat them in gravy.
Our cooking adventure this week, along with an article that Ben’s aunt just published in Anabaptist World (“My cookbook shelf as a mirror of Mennonite history,” by Mary Sprunger) made me think about how food shapes our identity. To me, food is just as much about where, when, why, and with whom we eat it as it is about the food itself. I wonder how much of our cooking and eating is about remembering and recreating a time or a place, honoring our past, and reclaiming what is ours. Maybe a butter-filled chicken meatball is an act of resistance. Maybe a simplified version of a dish you first ate with your roommate in your 1980s dorm room on the plains of Kansas is a connection you can’t put words to. You don’t need to. Eating it fills you up.