‘There was a time,’ says 40-year-old Julia Bonsema, ‘before 2014, when the biggest disagreement between Ukrainians and Russians was about how to cook the borshch. With or without garlic, with or without pork bacon and white or dark brown bread. I wish those days were back.’
In the meantime, she is cooking an enormous amount of that famous beetroot soup in the kitchen of her Dutch mother-in-law on an apartment in Amsterdam-West. The pot of meat stock she made the night before is at least 10 liters. Now the onions, carrots and beets are cut. Son Klaas, age 4, asks almost routinely if he can help. Bonsema (maiden name Koz) is part of the growing group of Russian-Ukrainian volunteers who cook for war refugees in Amsterdam hostels and other reception locations.
She does not have an age-old family recipe. She simply ate the borscht that she received from her mother at home in Russia as a child. Only later, when she worked in Odessa as an assistant to film director Kira Muratova, did she learn the merits of Ukrainian borshch. It’s more refined, she says. The onion, beet and carrot are fried separately to give them more flavour, at the end some finely chopped or pressed garlic is added. ‘Ukraine and Georgia are much more culinary-oriented. Taste is also important there, food is not just to fill your stomach.’
Form of connection
What at first was a bit of good-natured contention about the soup’s origin, also took on political significance in 2019, when the Russian government tweeted borshch as “one of Russia’s most famous and beloved recipes” and a “symbol of the traditional kitchen. The Ukrainian reactions were bitter: “As if taking the Crimea was not enough, now you also have to steal the borshch from Ukraine.”
For the Ukrainians and Russians in Amsterdam, the soup is not a divisive thing, but a tangible form of connection. With the arrival of the many refugees, it also became clear how the Dutch eating habits differ from the Eastern European ones. ‘Do you have hot food, do you have soup?’ was the most frequently asked question. Because two sandwiches and only one hot meal – and then meals like curry, rice and stew – their bodies were not prepared for that. ‘Our children don’t eat,’ said parents at their wits’ end.
Cooking groups have been hastily set up via Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and personal circles of friends with volunteers who prepare meals in their own kitchens and bring them to the reception locations for lunch or dinner. ‘We know the culture, we understand what kind of food they are used to and can prepare it without any problems,’ says Bonsema. Not only does she now make liters of soup (for example, chicken soup with vermicelli), she also organized a borscht benefit takeaway at her home for #CookForUkraine, a British initiative where money raised from cooking events, among other things, is donated to Unicef.
Walk-in day
But today the food does not go to a reception location, but to community center De Aker in Amsterdam-Osdorp. Here it is Marina Godovalova-Lubberding from Dnirpo with her husband Erwin, who is now organizing a walk-in day for Ukrainian refugees for the second Saturday, thanks to the manager of the building and a subsidy from the municipality.
When Bonsema walks in with her soup at 12 o’clock sharp, the children and their parents have just entered the theater where Christina Boukova, who settled in Edam from Odessa more than twenty years ago, takes them on a journey through the adventures of Molletje with her Puppet Theater Koekla. On the door is the daily program in Cyrillic script: Dutch lesson, business English lesson, hourly explanations about work in the Netherlands and other issues. From 13.00 to 14.00 dealing with stress. And there is always free hot food.
The community center has a professional kitchen and in addition to the pans from Bonsema there are at least three pans sized orphanage with borscht, plus two pans with kasha (buckwheat porridge), one with zharkoye (stew with chicken and potato), large bowls with filled pancakes and a generous bowl of salad. ‘For about 120 people’, estimates Daria Kremenskaia from Rotterdam. With four girls she stomped hard yesterday. “This is home food,” she says. ‘We were raised on soup, my children also ate beetroot soup at least twice a week. At breakfast already, in the morning at 7 o’clock. It’s warm, nutritious, not too hard and good for bowel movements.’
Zlata, 9 years old, is sitting at one of the tables, eating her soup. ‘It tastes like Mom’s,’ she says with satisfaction. And that’s exactly what it’s about, according to Bonsema and the other volunteers.
‘Imagine coming home almost frozen on a frigid winter’s day and your mother has a pan of steaming borscht ready. That is a feeling of warmth, security, family, connection with your youth, protection, safety. It is not restaurant food, although you can eat borshch on every street corner in Odessa. But it’s mother food. It’s food that makes you feel like someone cares about you.’
Even if your life has just exploded and you have to start over with a single backpack in a totally foreign country.