Now, more than ever, Ukrainian cuisine and culture deserve to be known around the world. In The Authentic Ukrainian Kitchen, Ievgen Klopotenko shares the true food of Ukraine—the way it is really cooked today—with modern recipes for familiar and forgotten dishes.

Klopotenko is Ukraine’s most internationally celebrated chef, appearing on the cover of TIME magazine and on CBS Sunday Morning. A top restaurateur in Kyiv, winner of Ukraine’s MasterChef, and an activist promoting Ukrainian food around the world, he has also worked with First Lady Olena Zelenska to revamp the country’s school lunch program and campaigned for the United Nations to recognize the heritage of borshch.

The recipes he collects in this book are the result of years of research into regional Ukrainian cooking. After training as a chef in France and cooking professionally in the US and elsewhere, he returned to Ukraine with a desire to catalog and promote his own national cuisine—free of influence from Soviet-era propaganda.

These dishes form a Ukrainian cuisine all its own, shaped by tradition, geography, and agriculture. Known as the “breadbasket of Europe,” Ukraine’s beloved national dishes include

Borshch, the national treasure, a savory beet soup—with many variations Pampushky, easy garlic bread rolls Holubtsi, stuffed cabbage rolls Varenyky, dumplings stuffed with sweet or savory fillings Deruny, fried potato pancakes Lviv-Style Cheesecake, and more

American cooks will find fresh ideas about how to use common vegetables, new approaches to fermentation and pickling, the delight of dumplings and simple baked goods, hearty braises, and the pleasure of desserts such as Kyiv Candied Fruit. But this cookbook is about more than the food: It stands for the preservation of a culture under threat and the independence of people under attack.

Other cookbooks by this author

• Ukrainian Cuisine in 70 Dishes