The Veselka Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Landmark Restaurant in New York's East Village
Search in google:
For more than fifty years, customers have crowded into Veselka, a cozy Ukrainian coffee shop in New York City’s East Village, to enjoy pierogi, borscht, goulash, and many other unpretentious favorites. Veselka (rainbow in Ukrainian) has grown from a simple newsstand serving soup and sandwiches into a twenty-four-hour gathering place, without ever leaving its original location on the corner of East Ninth Street and Second Avenue. Veselka is, quite simply, an institution.The Veselka Cookbook contains more than 150 recipes, covering everything from Ukrainian classics (potato pierogi, five kinds of borscht, grilled kielbasa, and poppy seed cake) to dozens of different sandwiches, to breakfast fare (including Veselka’s renowned pancakes), to the many elements of a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve feast.Veselka owner Tom Birchard shares stories about Veselka’s celebrity customers, the local artists who have adopted it as a second home, and the restaurant’s other lesser-known, but no less important, longtime fans, and he offers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to serve five thousand gallons of borscht a year and to craft three thousand pierogi daily—-all by hand.The Veselka Cookbook will delight anyone with an interest in Ukrainian culture, New York City’s vibrant downtown, and the pleasures of simple, good food. Publishers Weekly What started as a modest candy shop/newsstand in 1954 grew into a “humble lunch counter” and is now a bustling 24-hour restaurant in New York's East Village. Ukrainian fare mixed with American favorites fill the pages of this gift-sized restaurant cookbook, interspersed with the history and stories of the people behind the business as well as an introduction to and celebration of Ukrainian culture. Broken down by course (with additional chapters including “Breakfast Anytime”), recipes for popular dishes such as borscht, pierogi and banana chocolate chip cupcakes are accessibly written. Diner food, including tuna melts, hamburgers, buttermilk pancakes and apple pie, have more than their fare share of space, but are offset with Ukrainian gems such as kutya, a wheat berry dish; uzvar, dried fruit compote; and bigos, a pork stew with sauerkraut and onions. The spirit of community that grew from this beloved neighborhood spot (veselka means “rainbow”) informs the pages of this unique cookbook, which brings readers everywhere a little piece of a New York institution. (Nov.)
