From borsch to hope: Olia Hercules on food, family and the power of empathy

The process was raw and immediate: “With memoir writing, most of the time you’d have some distance between writing something and the event. As I was writing it, the war in Ukraine literally raged on. So yeah, it was very difficult.”

Yet the result is a work that entwines family stories, historical trauma and the everyday rituals that keep hope alive. “One story kind of led into another and it kind of happened organically… one theme connected to many others that have happened in the past.”

Borsch, bread and the bonds of home

Food for Olia is more than sustenance, it's a lifeline. The book is studded with recipes that are “part of our DNA,” she says – and none more so than borsch. When her parents were forced to flee Ukraine, she raced to Italy to greet them, determined to fill their new, empty house with the familiar aromas of home.

“I wanted to be there in advance so I could go into the kitchen, tidy up, go buy some ingredients and cook them borsch. I felt like if they came in after this gruelling journey and everything that they’d been through… they will come in and smell borsch and feel kind of this atmosphere of a kitchen that’s been cooked in recently… you know, represent a bit of a home to them and make them feel safe and loved.”

Even in the most harrowing moments, humour and family dynamics peek through. “My dad was like, huh, oh yeah, you should take some lessons from your mum,” Olia laughs, recalling her father’s critique of her borsch after a cabbage mishap. “But, we did laugh about it and then brought like a little bit of lightness to our situation as well."

The power of empathy and the fight against numbness

For Olia, sharing her family’s story is a call for empathy in a world battered by headlines and “war fatigue.” She is passionate about cutting through the numbness that comes with relentless bad news.

“I wanted people to feel us through this emotional landscape, through our personal histories, which are, I feel, as important or even more important than the big history,” she says. “When you zoom out, there’s just like, oh, there’s one country and there’s another country and this is happening. But, when you actually zoom in and you are there with us at that kitchen table and you listen to my parents’ story as they told it… it kind of just makes you empathise a lot more.”

"Empathy is our driving force, and it’s something that makes us human."

Ukrainian cuisine: a cornucopia of colour and resilience

Ask Olia to sum up Ukrainian food, and her answer overflows with pride and sensory detail: “Ukrainian cuisine is extremely diverse. It’s a huge country; up north you’ve got things that are similar to northern Italy, with marshes and forests and porcini mushrooms and wild bilberries. In the south, where I come from, is an almost Mediterranean climate – there’s this incredible black soil called chernozem; you drop a seed on it, it grows.”

Markets brim with “mountains of herbs,” snake beans, purple basil and all manner of beetroot. She grows sorrow and lemon balm in her own wild garden, recreating the flavours of her childhood. Spring means green borsch, a soup of “sweet and sourness and this kind of earthiness from the eggs; it’s a beautiful thing.”

Resilience, rituals and the return to cooking

The trauma of war once robbed Olia of her appetite and her ability to cook. “I couldn’t eat for two months… I couldn’t chop cabbage, for example, because it’s such a huge thing for Ukrainians… it really just made me think of my family, so I would cry.” It was only when she cooked borsch for her parents in Italy that she began to reclaim her joy in the kitchen.

Now, she finds herself the “project cook” at home, fermenting, pickling and baking sourdough, while her husband Joe, also a food writer, handles the everyday meals. “When you really, really enjoy making something, that’s when you make it best.”