The Slavic east and the Balkans · Volume 27, Steppe, Forest and the Reclaimed Kitchen
Banosh
Ukraine
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Cornmeal cooked in soured cream diluted with water or cream, roughly one part cream to three parts liquid, stirred constantly clockwise with a wooden spoon in a thick-walled pot over low heat for about 30 minutes, to a smooth, rich porridge. Served topped with grated brynza, sheep's-milk cheese, and shkvarky, crisp-fried salo cubes, a shepherd's dish built from what a summer on the high mountain pasture, the polonyna, actually provided.
As tradition built it
About 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 180 g cornmeal
- 1 part to 3 parts liquid soured cream, diluted with water or cream
- about 100 g, grated brynza, sheep's-milk cheese, grated, to serve
- about 100 g, fried until crisp shkvarky, crisp-fried salo cubes, to serve
Method
- Cook the cornmeal in the diluted soured cream, roughly one part cream to three parts liquid.
- Stir constantly clockwise with a wooden spoon in a thick-walled pot over low heat for about 30 minutes, to a smooth, rich porridge.
- Serve topped with grated brynza and shkvarky.
What a modern chef changes
Toasted, water-bathed and passed through a chinois
Rung 4
Method
- Toast the cornmeal dry in the pot before the cream goes in, deepening its flavour beyond what the traditional method draws out.
- Cook the porridge in a water bath rather than direct low heat, holding it at a precise, gentle temperature to avoid any risk of catching, then finish it in a high-power blender for a silken, fully smooth texture entirely unlike the traditionally coarser porridge, passed through a chinois.
- Serve the brynza as a quenelle rather than grated.
- Finish with shkvarky rendered from cold-smoked salo per rung four, for a smokier, more structured garnish than the plain fried cubes.