Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S13 Ep 5: Olia Hercules & Alissa Timoshkina

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

On today's special episode we speak to Ukrainian chef and activist Olia Hercules and Russian chef, podcaster and writer Alissa Timoshkina. Olia and Alissa are best friends who have joined forces and set up #CookforUkraine, a culinary campaign encouraging people to cook traditional Ukrainian and eastern European food to raise money to support the humanitarian effort in Ukraine.Cook for Ukraine's donation page has raised more than £300,000 in donations already, with the money going to Unicef to support children and families impacted by the fighting.We are honoured to have these incredible women on the podcast today, particularly given the circumstances. We talk about family, food from home and friendship during this difficult time. Listen to the podcast and see how you can support this worthy campaign. We want to see photos of the food you cook, the supper-clubs you host, whatever you can manage to do with the #cookforukraine hashtag. Thank you to Olia and Alissa for taking the time to speak to us during this time. Xx Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Table Manners. This is a special episode and on this episode we are joined by two chefs and food writers, Alyssa Timoshkina and Olya Hercules. Alyssa is Russian and Olya is Ukrainian and they are best friends from university. They've set up Cook for Ukraine. You may have seen the hashtag coming up on Instagram or maybe Twitter, Cook for Ukraine. It's a culinary campaign encouraging people to cook traditional Ukrainian and Eastern European food to raise funds to support the humanitarian effort in Ukraine. We were meant to be having these ladies around for brunch.

We've been trying to do it for a couple of weeks, but obviously are very busy setting up this i mean managing all this managing yeah and then i went and got covid so now we're on uh zoom however i did make from olia hercules's uh cookbook it's a ukrainian cookbook called mamushka which is beautiful I made the apple sponge cake with my kids yesterday and it's the first cake that's ever worked for me. Mum, tell the listeners what you were going to cook. Well, I was going to cook potato pancakes, which are quite similar to latkes, but I think a bit wetter and flatter,

so it's not quite as dense. And you serve those with sour cream. I was going to try and get hold of a bit of smoked salmon as well. Sadly, we aren't together. However, the show must go on. And we are desperate to speak to these women who I think are waiting in the waiting room of Zoom. Back to bloody Zoom, aren't we?

And we're going to be talking all about Ukrainian food, their friendship, Alyssa's heritage, and how you as a Table Manners listener who is obsessed with food can get involved. It's really quite simple. We're thrilled and honoured to have Oliya Hercules and Alyssa Tomoschkina coming up on Table Manners. so on this very special table manners episode we have the chefs olia hercules and alissa timoshkina um joining us on zoom because i have bloody covid so annoyingly i had this all planned that they were going to cook me delicious food um but alas no we're on we're on zoom though and it's a pleasure to have you both thank you so much for joining us i know you have been probably

overwhelmingly busy recently of course with everything that's going on and this fundraiser that you've instigated that's doing so amazingly thank you for being here thank you for having us do you do you want to explain from the outset just how the fundraiser works cook for ukraine that would be really interesting so the fundraiser works mostly in three ways um basically we've created the cook for ukraine hashtag for social media in order to raise awareness about the conflict but also use the beautiful language of food to enable people to connect to what's happening so we're encouraging people to educate themselves about Ukrainian food and of course Olya's beautiful cookbooks is the best source for that and then cook something at

home and post the picture of what they've made with the hashtag cook for Ukraine and a little bit of story behind the dish and then also share the link to our Just Giving page and kind of create a flash mob in a way you know the more people hear about it the more they share the link and of course the more conversation is starting and then the second way that the campaign works is to create events like supper clubs and talks and bake sales and it's been really amazing to see people taking initiative and doing that so we have a core team a really beautiful team of volunteers and we are initiating events ourselves but of course you know we can't be in 100 places at the same time so it's been amazing to see people just messaging to say you've inspired us and we've just hosted a

big sailor to local school or a fundraiser at a restaurant and you know it's it's a really amazing kind of grassroots movement and thirdly we have over 200 restaurants in the UK signed up to support Cook for Ukraine. And the way it works is that they add an optional one pound to the bill and then people have an option to pay that or not. It's amazing what you've done. And I salute you. How much have you raised so far?

We have raised over 300,000 already, which is just unbelievable. Yeah. Well, hopefully we can raise a little bit more with some of the listeners um who are obsessed with food on this podcast hopefully maybe they're doing their own supper club I mean that's how I learned about you guys um chefs like Easter Belfridge was posting um a really it was a message that you put out um Oliya about your family in um in Ukraine and I think it was your brother that you were talking about and um that's how i first learned about you and please forgive me i've now bought

your book and it is fantastic and i made the apple sponge yesterday with my children and it's the only cake that's actually worked for me so thank you very very much it's delicious i feel like anybody that just wants to start with the kids do do the apple sponge cake. It's so good. And they would have to whisk for five minutes, which kept, you know, five minutes of activity. It was fantastic. But it's a beautiful cookbook all about Ukrainian food. And I saw people like Martha DeLacy doing the stuffed cabbage leaves. And then, you know, I saw Tom Kerridge and Angela Hartnett talking about how they were doing a fundraiser. You know, it has spread and it's amazing, but there's so much more money that we can make. How did you two meet? So we met at university almost 15 years ago, I think. I want to apologize to all listeners for my voice today. I'm croaking.

But, yeah, so we met at university we went to university of Queen Mary in London and we just met outside of um of the university building just started talking and immediately you know I asked where Lisa was from and she said Siberia and then I said oh my grandma is from Siberia on my dad's side and then I said and I'm from Ukraine and she said oh my grandma on my mom's side is Ukrainian, you know, and we just kind of hit it off. And at first, it was like a connection that we had through kind of the same love of independent film and literature and music. And then later on, you know, seven years later or something, we've also connected over all of the food when I became a writer. And yeah, we've just been friends for a very long time.

And Alyssa, you're of Russian descent. So it's not actually as easy. And the more I learn about myself, the more confusing it becomes to give a straightforward answer. So I was born in Russia, in siberia in in the 80s so technically it was the soviet union but my mom's family is ukrainian jewish and actually i've recently um found out that there's actually more ukrainian lineage than we thought so basically my mom is mainly ukrainian jewish and then on my dad's side even though he grew up in the far east in a city called Khabarovsk which is on the border with China which makes the whole

food history of our family very fascinating but ethnically he's actually from eastern Europe he's definitely has roots in Belarus and Ukraine as well so kind of ethnically speaking I'm definitely more Jewish Eastern European Ukrainian than Russian which is a very strange thing to realize in your kind of late 30s that what you thought you were is not actually true yeah right and do you think it will change the way that you cook are you more kind of were you cooking lots of Jewish dishes before yes I mean it's fascinating you know it was fascinating to the point of then going off to study and do a PhD in the subject or kind of close to Jewish studies subject um that when I grew up um my Jewish Ukrainian great-grandmother she actually cooked a lot of you know what we consider as Ashkenazi food but

because of the Soviet Union where of course Jewish identity or any you know unique ethnic or regional identity was not allowed to be celebrated we just kind of perceived it as standard Soviet food and she never referred to it as Jewish food either but then only coming here to London and kind of engaging more with the Jewish community here and, you know, obviously with food history and food culture in general, I kind of had light bulbs going off thinking, oh, that's actually a ruggala. And I only knew it as a poppy seed roll and I never kind of connected the two. All that latkes, we just kind of thought of them as potato pancakes, I suppose. But also my great grandmother, she converted to Christianity. I don't actually know why, but I'm assuming it's because they were quite wealthy Jews. I'm assuming it's in order to be able to kind of integrate into

the terrorist Russia, even though the war in Ukraine was still, you know, part of the colonial projects of the Russian Empire. She kind of didn't really have that very strong, clear Jewish identity. And it's mostly kind of through her heartbreaking story of surviving the Holocaust that we kind of cherished that. Though we did hide matzah, it was our kind of guilty pleasure because we're not allowed to openly, you know, enjoy any kind of religious Jewish food rituals. But matzah was quite a big part of that. And Olya, can you tell me about you growing up? What's a really memorable dish for you as a child, a Ukrainian dish?

Sure. So I grew up in the south of Ukraine in Kakhovka in the Kherson region. And one of the most memorable dishes, it was the first cucumbers that we would get. So it'd be kind of maybe even end of May or beginning of June, because Ukraine becomes really, really hot. And especially in the south, it's almost like a mediterranean climate where i'm from so the first prickly little cucumbers picked that morning and still kind of warm like we we think of cucumbers as these big monsters that are straight out of the fridge but actually they have such an amazing flavor when they're just picked from uh from its kind of vine and my mom would be uh chopping it and for some reason

she insisted on chopping it in in the air if you know what I mean so just like with a small knife and just over the bowl just like slicing them into the bowl and then she would also um grab you know a tomato and do exactly the same thing and it was like the first kind of like spring uh summer salad that she made so it would be these cucumbers super sweet and delicious uh incredible tomatoes and as she would chop it over the bowl as well some of the juices of the tomatoes would fall in the bowl and help create the dressing and then it'd be loads of dill loads of spring onions um and a good kind of like a few big spoonfuls of um a sour cream that we call smithana. So it's like a really good quality homemade creme fraiche.

So once the smithana would mix with all of the tomato juices and everything, it would just create this absolutely delicious salad. But the best bit was at the end where you got that pink pool of sour cream with all of the dill and spring onions. And we'd fight for the juices without which would be there without big pieces of fluffy bread just to dip it in and eat it it's something that takes me back oh I love that that resonates with me so much so our family are Russian um well we now think because Jessie did a DNA that she's Ukraine that she's Ukrainian but I

always thought my grandfather was russian so my family we've got russian heritage and my father used to eat on a sunday morning schmetzner and kez which was cream cheese very thick cream cheese with kez with schmetzner or how you say and then he would slice cucumbers on the top and tomato and that would be his sunday breakfast so it's very very similar yeah and do you ever make well i don't know whether you call them blitz we used to call them blintzes but it were like little pancakes filled with sour cream or cream cheese and they were slightly sweet and we'd often have those, if there was a wedding, we'd have that as a starter, as a kind of vegetarian starter.

But we're very keen on latkes, which, and I was going to, I was going to make those for you today, your potato pancakes, which are slightly different, but similar. But you serve it just with sour cream, not with caviar or a bit of smoked salmon? No. That's a luxury. Oh, that's why. But you wouldn't have been averse to that, would you?

We just have no access to it in the Soviet days. Really? Was it very hard growing up when you were younger with very limited produce? Not for us. Not in Ukraine? you were younger with very limited produce? Not for us. Not in Ukraine? No, we never had limited produce. We lived in the countryside and we've always, and actually we did have black caviar sometimes

because my dad knew a guy who knew a guy. So we would have that. But right now, I think Alyssa was saying right now, it's a huge luxury. That's just, yeah. But latkes are just sour cream for us i think um but you know caviar does sound amazing on top of it i mean but but when you were growing up alissa was it more difficult to access food i think the difference is quite big of course um you know

growing up in the soviet union was tough for everyone involved in, you know, for many reasons, but it's, you know, especially in the context of food, but of course, for Olya, who, you know, was born in such a fertile region, it was different, you know, I grew up in Siberia, obviously not the most fertile land because of the climate, but we still, I do remember, you know, the summers are very warm, and I do remember having really lovely picnics. And we didn't have a dacha or, you know, a plot of land where we could grow our own food. But, you know, to be honest, I don't remember huge scarcity. But the repertoire of dishes was obviously quite limited.

So, you know, things like caviar or salmon didn't exist until, you know, we were well into the post-Soviet era. And we survived mainly on, you know, lots of fermented stuff. So, you know, we would get, like the Siberian forests are quite rich in mushrooms. So we'd pick lots of, you know, forage for lots of mushrooms in late summer and then preserve them for the rest of the winter and they have beautiful you know go into soup so you dry them and they go into soups and you know fry potato like fry up with mushrooms and sour cream of course and then lots of Siberian dumplings which you just fill up your freezer and they can last you a really long time and And lots of hearty stews, again, with lots of sauerkraut and other fermented foods. So, yeah, I mean, it wasn't, you know, particularly diverse.

But I think, again, maybe depends on the family, of course, because I was very lucky the same way as Olia is to grow up with fantastic cooks. Like all the women in my family were very wonderful cooks. And there was always something really delicious and very nourishing to eat. Can I ask you know you were both you both met at Queen Mary's but you weren't doing cooking then you weren't you weren't chefs then you were studying what film or literature or so what was what was the first meal that you remember cooking for each other? We didn't really cook for each other back at uni and I don't think food was something that we as Olya said we really bonded over

culture because we also worked in a cultural sphere together after uni that was really our thing so we would talk a lot about you know philosophy literature film but I remember the first meal that Olya cooked for me when she already was a chef, when she trained as a chef. And it was just before Mamushka came out. She made a really delicious sort of Thai style broth with noodles. I remember it so well. It was so good. Well, there's a reason. My oldest son is half Thai so you know I have oh wow I have links um to that side of the world as well with his dad but um I remember the I well one of the most memorable things that Elisa cooked for me was actually from her cookbook uh we came over

with my son and my husband Joe and. And she made chicken with prunes from her cookbook, Salt and Thyme. And it was just the most insanely delicious thing ever. She's such an amazing cook. Thank you, my love. I'm wondering, there are going to be lots of people leaving Ukraine and coming over to England and leaving behind everything that they're familiar

with say they've been here a couple of months what would you like to cook for them just to remind them of home and all the lovely things in the Ukraine that they they're leaving behind a starter remain a dessert and a drink of choice so we do two lots yeah one from me and one from Melissa yeah that'd be great yeah okay we don't start start to kind of like it's not really we cook in a slightly different way I feel um there's just like a big table of different things so I'll give you I'll give you three things definitely some kind of a broth it's so essential like a borscht or or or like a very simple chicken soup made out of a very good chicken with loads of dill and noodles uh that's you know every time that my mom would come to visit us in the uk

she would have to have a broth every single day or like some kind of a soup it's just like her her day is not complete if she doesn't have so i guess that could be your starter. So yeah, a borscht or a chicken broth would be amazing. And then for kind of main, I would say, you know, the cabbage rolls that you mentioned that Nancy made, they, you know, either made with a regular cabbage or a savoy cabbage or even chard leaves or something like that and that could be made either with meat or you can make a vegetarian version um and it's made in this really delicious tomato sauce sauce that you enrich with a little bit of sour cream or creme fraiche oh fancy that oh it's just of course whatever you do loads of dill loads of sour cream and you'll take them straight to home. Is dill crucial in most of your cooking? Dill is life. If I write another book, this is going to be the name of it. Dill is life. I love dill.

I feel like it's very underestimated dill. It is. And it has this, you know, reputation like as a fish herb, you know, in Europe. But actually we put it on top of our borscht, you know, with the cabbage rolls, with anything. Like we just love it. Yeah. Do you grow it? Yeah, I do. Yeah.

I do in England as well. Is it easy to grow? You know what? It's a couple of years I had a problem growing it, but last year it was good. I bought these seeds called, it's called mammoth dill and it grows up to six feet tall wow okay well dill is life so there you go you're all right yeah and I've got the and for dessert I just wonder maybe something like cheese well a Ukrainian cheesecake is something that we really love. So you'd need to get a twarog in the Polish shop, which is like this curd cheese, maybe something that your dad used to put on his toast.

Or ricotta as well works really well. And with vanilla and a little bit of semolina. And it's just like the most beautiful thing in Polish and the Western Ukraine. It's called syrnyk. OK. And what drink would you have oh right um yes so drink wise um i mean kvas uh probably like a beetroot kvas would be amazing so you you will you get some beetroots um and you put a little pinch of salt and some water and maybe some caraway seed or other you know a little pinch of salt and some water and maybe some caraway seed or other, you know, a little bit of garlic and you let it ferment. And then it becomes this effervescent, um, you know, a beautiful beetroot, slightly sour and sweet drink. And it's obviously really good for you. So I think those people would really appreciate the healthy kind of option as well. Failing that, if they want something a little bit stronger you can get a

really good bottle of vodka and infuse it with some berries or some horseradish or something or some honey and chili I think that would go down well too now Alyssa your go oh that sounded so good yeah I also just wanted to say that it's been really touching to receive emails to our cook for ukraine account from people saying um we would love to host a ukrainian family could you give us a shopping list for things that we want to stock our fridge with and it's just the care that people put into it and we're actually even thinking of um maybe hopefully partnering up with a big supermarket to actually have like a special cook for uk Ukraine basket where people can just you know log into that and they already have all the

recommendations from us that's brilliant amazing idea yeah and it really just warmed my heart and you know just despite the obviously deeply sad circumstances I have a bit of excitement thinking that how the face of, you know, culinary culture in Western Europe will change because of the influx of Ukrainian refugees, you know, the same way as we're now so familiar with Middle Eastern cuisine and can get tahini and hummus everywhere. Hopefully people will be more familiar now with Smith and Rye. So what are you putting on that shopping list i need to

know what's on that shopping list that you're suggesting well i mean definitely smithana rye bread uh dill beetroot buckwheat um anything fermented but not pickled there's a big difference between you know pickled cucumbers and fermented cucumbers so sauerkraut and any other fermented tomatoes and so on um they must have very good guts the ukrainians with all that fermented stuff yeah um maybe some sunflower oil unrefined sunflower oil so it's um it's the stuff that uh that tastes and smells like toasted sunflower seeds so very similar to sesame oil i think clear spring i can actually do it um so that's another thing that would put like on salads or even um a slick of it on ferments to make like a fermented salad with a little bit of thinly sliced uh shallot or something like that um some honey i think would be a good idea um what else some uh yeah

definitely some curd cheese of some sort um so either polish twarog or you know at least ricotta something like that that's something that would be very much appreciated um just trying to think cabbage potatoes of course and you know for ages i had a big complex about that because people just be like you're writing a ukrainian book is it just about you know potatoes and cabbages well there's of course a lot more to Ukrainian cuisine than that but potatoes and cabbages are essential so yeah I'll stock up on those now Alyssa um yes over to you for your welcome meal that you would offer somebody I think I would love to start with um zakowski which is like a kind of eastern European equivalent of tapas or meze and have um different you know things that you can eat with

rye bread um there's a really delicious aubergine dip which i always thought the recipe in my book um belongs to my um grandmother but actually turns out it belongs to my jewish great-grandmother and she always used the ukrainian word forgines, sininkia. Which means little blue ones. Yeah, little blue ones. So the sininkia caviar, it's called. And then I absolutely love horschmak. It's another classic that my great-grandma would make. And I love, actually, that's Olya's recipe recipe and I had it as a kid but I never actually

realized that's a classic Odessen snack it's very simple boiled eggs grated with cheese some garlic and mayo and you have it on top of rye bread it's just the best thing ever delicious boiled eggs with cheese garlic and mix I think I almost have that because I love it I love cheese and eggs together but I hadn't added the garlic and the mayonnaise so it's like a sexy egg mayonnaise sandwich with rye bread specifically yeah delish where do you get your rye bread in in london for example what's your favorite do you make i'd have to plug a lovely eastern european baker called caraway they're the best yeah they're very good where is it they have a big stall in borough market but also around

farmer's market and the thing they have a shop in Stratford Westfield as well. I'm pretty sure that you can get it through Ocado as well. Yeah, they're very, very good. Yeah, caraway with a cake. That sounds delicious. I'm going to do that today, I think. I'm going to have that for lunch. I'm going to have one later.

Me too. Go on, what else? And then I think I'd have to go with borscht as well. It's just quintessential soul food to go with borscht as well it's just quintessential soul food so definitely borscht and then for dessert I think I'd go for blintzes I have a recipe for so you would have sweet tvaroge inside but I also blitz it with apricots like nice plump juicy apricots and then you just have this extra kind of flavor to it and it's one of my favorite desserts of all time. Alyssa can I ask you about your um your podcast Mother Food is it Mother Food? Yeah yeah yeah

can you just explain to everybody what it is because I mean look we all love sharing stories about food you've created this whole initiative about it to raise money and awareness for the Ukrainian crisis. But you also have your own podcast, which is about that connection between. Well, you explain. Yeah. So initially it started, it came out of my personal challenging experience of becoming a mom. challenging experience of becoming a mom um you know I love food and I love cooking and just the thought of you know nourishing myself as I nourish my baby was like the most beautiful idea but the reality of it was a bit different and I really struggled with a bit of postpartum depression and food obviously you know not being able to cook or eat was a big part of you know

not feeling like myself and I just thought well you know if someone who like myself who is professionally connected to food and loves food and writes recipes struggle then you know what about other women who might not necessarily know exactly what to eat and have that sort of support network And it just gave me an idea to reach out to women like Olya in the food industry who are professionally connected to food and who are mothers as well, to talk to them about their experience of motherhood through the prism of food. And the more I thought about it, of course, it became, you know, it was initially a play on words, motherhood, mother food sounds very similar but the more I thought about it of course it's about us as mothers being food to our babies you know

we literally you know they eat us in a way as they grow inside of us and then as we breastfeed if we are doing that but also the role of food as our mother, you know, that's the paramount kind of caretaker that we have in our lives. And it's been really beautiful in the way it was really healing for me and in the way women open up about it. You know, it was the episode that I've done with Olya was, I have to say, is the top listen to episode of all on the podcast. And, you know, we're very close. So it was very natural to speak about intimate experiences like birth stories and breastfeeding but women who I've not met before in real life and just invited them on the podcast they opened up so beautifully and I've made some

really special friends through that so again just a beautiful reminder of how food is such a fantastic language that just brings us together. I had my second son just two months before the first lockdown and listening to Alisa's podcast throughout the lockdowns and the pandemic has really you know saved me it was the interviews were so you know heartwarming and there was so much amazing information so I cannot recommend mother food to any kind of expected mothers or or just mothers of any with children of any age it's just like such an amazing podcast with fantastic information and very soulful too thank you so where do you both cook at the moment so So you've written cookbooks, but do you cook for people?

Do you run supper clubs or you've got restaurant? I don't know. I don't have a restaurant. And I used to do a lot of supper clubs. But obviously at the moment, I'm not even cooking at home because I just can't bring myself to cook because it's all very traumatic at to cook uh because it's all very traumatic at the moment so it's hard um yesterday was the first time in three weeks that

I cooked my son asked me for the blintzes actually it's his favorite thing that his grandma makes him and he asked me and immediately I just said no sorry I just can't cook and then he started getting all of his little things together and he he opened the book, you know, Summer Kitchens. And he started looking at the recipe. Sorry, just getting really emotional. And I just thought, what am I doing? I need to snap out of it. And I helped him, you know, and I made him these pancakes that my mom makes him all the time.

And he said, you know what? Even though I have this very precise recipe, they don't always come out as good as my mom's but they did yesterday and uh yeah. Alia where are your family at the moment? They are all in Ukraine my parents are in the south and my brothers in Kiev so and my nephews and nieces are in western Ukraine and my whole extended family is dotted all over Ukraine but yeah so I so I made the pancakes yesterday and it was good. It was good for all of us to eat them. Yeah. And they tasted great.

And yeah, I mean, I just, yeah, I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine what you're going through. And we do really appreciate you doing this and this initiative that you're doing. You know, you're putting so much effort into raising awareness and and it's working what is what where will the money go so at the moment our main partner charity is unicef and again as a mother to me it was so important to work with someone who is there to support children. And of course, by supporting children, you are supporting their parents.

And I've been, even though it's, you know, it's quite mildly put difficult to look at those pictures of, you know, children displaced. Or there was this just unbelievably powerful picture that unicef ukraine posted about it was a picture of a woman who had obviously she survived an air raid and had um cuts like from the glass all over and she had a bandage on her head and she was sitting in a hospital bed breastfeeding a child i mean to me that was just i mean the most heartbreaking but at the same time, the most beautiful thing that, you know, motherhood is just more powerful than war. And yeah, so seeing that and, you know, just gives us inspiration and purpose to keep going. And sometimes people have been a bit, not critical, but, you know, just a bit concerned saying, oh, well, what's the point of all this food? You know, you're just posting pictures of food on Instagram. Like, how does that actually help?

And, you know, seeing UNICEF's Instagram account, it just puts it in perspective and you know exactly where that money is going for. You know, they provide so much support for hospitals, so, you know, it's, they provide so much support for hospitals. So, you know, hospital equipment, sanitary equipment, but also beautiful things like they organize play kind of experiences for kids in refugee camps. And, you know, Oli and I both have small children. So we know very well what it's like for a child to have a healthy psychological environment where they can play together so you know they organize toys and invite um how would you call them performers to kind of entertain the kids and that's I mean you know that's as essential as any other contribution to the war effort um so kind of that's that's where money the money goes

to I'm a UNICEF ambassador and and I've seen the work they do on the ground and it is amazing the way that they try and let children be children in emergency, in disasters, in war. And it's really amazing what you're doing. We don't want to take up too much of your time and we appreciate everything that um you're doing and we're going to encourage everyone to do the hashtag cook for ukraine so they can be doing supper clubs uh cooking something just to celebrate ukraine and ukrainian cuisine and sending and putting the link to your just giving page i wondered if you might think about doing a cook for ukraine cookbook yeah it would be amazing to to get on it at some point in the future yeah i think at the moment we're like so in the throes of you know immediate

kind of trying to just do things that have done very immediately like a cookbook obviously takes time loads of effort but but we we have definitely thought of it. And it would be amazing to, in my view, to collect recipes from all of the kind of different regions of Ukraine, especially those that have been affected the most, just to keep, you know, even though those cities have been razed, you know, but to let those people know that their culture and their recipes and all of that keeps going you know he can he can he can raise the cities and destroy buildings but he can't kill our culture absolutely thank you so much for joining us on table manners and we wish you all the best and we'll do our best to put it out there too but we really appreciate you taking the time when this is a really horrendous time for you both and um but yeah sending sending you loads of love and

thank you and go and enjoy your sunday and thank you and yeah go relax a little bit in the sunshine and have some honey on that voice thank you thank you so much i really hope that one day you can invite us over and cook us those latkes absolutely please i'm making that you're coming absolutely you're you're welcome any time. We'd love that. Anything that you can do, whether that is inviting your friends over, because we have the luxury of being able to do that, and having a supper club and hashtagging it and asking everyone to put in a tenner, a fiver, one pound, 50p, anything.

And that all goes towards this cause. But to celebrate Ukraine and their cuisine. And we've just heard from Olya and Alyssa and, you know, Olya's whole family are in ukraine as we speak she's found the time to speak to us she's i mean i can't even imagine how distraught and um well we heard it they're doing amazing amazing work and unicef is an amazing a charity and i know the money goes straight to those children and to those families that need it most and we'll put up um throughout the week we'll be putting up links for the just giving page to make it as easy as possible for you i'll put up my apple sponge send us all your hashtags hashtag cook for ukraine but at us and send us what you're cooking and we can't wait to see it um get involved it's so easy

and it's through the beauty of food and togetherness and us having the luxury of being able to cook for each other at the moment. And not being in a war zone is just something that I will hold on to as I make my way through this whole book. And the recipes are on the Just Giving page as well. JustGiving page as well. The fundraising page is www.justgiving.com forward slash fundraising forward slash cook for Ukraine forward slash. It was an absolute honor to have these women on our podcast to talk. Please go and try and do your bit. And we are sending all our love to everyone in Ukraine. And thank you to Oliya and Alyssa for taking the time to speak to us on this. Thank you.