Kutia

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About an hour.

Ingredients

• 350 g wheat
• 1.4 litres water
• 50 g poppy seed
• 50 g walnuts
• 50 g raisins
• to taste honey
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• as needed warm water

Method

1. Rinse the wheat to clear it of chaff.
2. Boil it in the water, one part wheat to four, 30 minutes from the full boil, longer for softer grain.
3. Pour boiling water over the poppy seed and soak 15 minutes. Drain and grind it in a mortar or grinder until milky.
4. Crush the walnuts small in a bag with a rolling pin, not to flour.
5. Mix the wheat with the walnuts, poppy seed, raisins and honey. Add the lemon zest and juice.
6. Stir well, loosening it with warm water to the consistency you want.

Notes

Belarusian tradition marks three separate kutias across the winter cycle, before Christmas, before New Year and before Epiphany, each tied to securing ancestors' goodwill and a good harvest, a more elaborated structure than the single-kutia framing common in Ukrainian material.

The recipe is Ievgen Klopotenko's traditional kutia. Charter97's Belarusian version, credited to UAportal, soaks the wheat overnight and boils it an hour, boils the poppy 20 minutes, dries the nuts in a pan, adds salt, and leaves it several hours in a warm place to serve cold.

What a modern chef changes

A silken poppy-seed milk and a dry-distilled honey essence

Method

1. Toast the wheat berries lightly before boiling, drawing out a nuttier base note the traditional plain boil does not reach.
2. Process the poppy seed in a high-power blender with a little of its soaking water into a genuinely silken, grit-free "milk," passed through a chinois, rather than leaving it coarsely ground.
3. Fold the finished kutia through with a dry-distilled honey essence rather than stirred honey, for aroma without added sweetness, in keeping with the dish's own fasting restraint.
4. Serve chilled in a small glass rather than a bowl, closer to a dessert course than the traditional spoon-eaten dish.