Home food is comfort food. There is no other place I would rather be, and no other place I would rather eat in. I didn’t cook as a child growing up in Ukraine, but I ate very well because my mother, Olga, my father, Petro, and my extended family were so excellent at it. It was only when I left my family and ended up a student in the UK that I was suddenly drawn to cooking. When phone conversations failed to satisfy my longing for comfort, home and love, making my mum’s food succeeded. Suddenly, whenever I cooked, those early-wired neurons in my brain fired up very specific feelings: feelings of wellbeing.
Grate the onions into a large bowl on the coarse side of a grater, making sure to catch the juices. Add the mince, turmeric, bicarbonate of soda (it helps the meat to bind together), half a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of ground pepper, and mix. And I mean really mix it: get your hands in there and massage and work it. After four minutes of such manipulations, if you have time, cover and chill for 30 minutes (or overnight). This will help it hold together.
Get six long, metal skewers and have ready a bowl of warm water to wet your hands, so the meat doesn’t stick to them. Divide the meat mix into six equal pieces and, with wet hands, shape each into a sausage with a smooth surface (it’s important there are no cracks). Mash the meat around the top of one skewer and work it carefully down its length, so you have an even layer all along the skewer. Keep wetting your hands and rotate the skewer as you squash/distribute the meat around it. There should be no air pockets, and make sure both ends of the kebab are tightly attached to the skewer. Repeat with the remaining meat and skewers. If the meat fails to cooperate, dispose of the skewers and fry the mix as sausages.
Fire up a barbecue or oven grill (obviously, fire is where the magic is). If using a barbecue, wait until the embers have calmed down; they should be glowing red, but there shouldn’t be any flames. Lay the skewers about 20cm away from the heat, then cook, turning regularly, until lightly golden all over and cooked through and juicy inside. (You can always cut into one to check.)
Grab each skewer (with a heat-resistant glove), point its sharp end into a chopping board, then use a flatbread to slide off the kebab. Arrange the kebabs on a pile of flatbreads, so all the juices go into the bread, sprinkle liberally with sumac and serve with a salad or whole grilled tomatoes.
My brother’s salad
Recent events have rejigged so many family dynamics. My brother Sasha ended up moving to Kyiv from Lviv, and living in the same flat as his older son, Nikita, and his fiancee, Yana. Nikita is a very good meat cook, often roasting big slabs of this or that. My brother, however, who also loves cooking, really missed vegetables, so he started making this salad, which is hearty, because of the cooked aubergines and cheese, and fresh, because of the tomatoes. It’s the simplest thing with a short ingredients list, but it’s full of flavour and hits all your vegetable needs. Sasha calls it his Armenian salad but, to me, it is my brother’s.
Peel and squash the garlic, then chop it roughly. Peel off strips of aubergine skin, if you like (Sasha does, because it helps it cook more quickly), then chop into rough 3-4cm cubes; there’s no need to be too precise, though. Put a large, nonstick frying pan on a high heat without adding any oil (I don’t have one at home, so use a cast-iron pan instead, and that works, too, though it is a little trickier), then dry-fry the aubergines, moving them around from time to time, for about five minutes, until cooked through and soft. Add two tablespoons of olive oil and the garlic, cook, stirring often, for about two minutes, to moisten and colour the aubergines, then turn off the heat.
Meanwhile, put the sliced onions in a medium bowl, spritz over the lemon juice and a pinch of salt, and leave to sit while you finish the salad.
Cut the tomatoes into chunks over a serving bowl, to catch the juices, then mix with the aubergines, remaining olive oil, the sesame oil, the onions and their juices, herbs and feta, and serve.
