Moving along

I have been a little less adventurous than I could have been as far as Ukrainian food is concerned. This is partially because I had a little wonder as to whether I might be getting sick, decided that the Ukraine was high on the list of countries in which I didn’t want to be sick and alone, and so resolved to eat lots of garlic and raw vegetables. I could eat borscht and potato dumplings and blinis and curd cheese pancakes with cherries and potato salad three times a day but otherwise, to be sadly frank, Ukrainian cuisine doesn’t appeal to me enormously. I’m proud of my stout constitution and can generally cope with dishes that draw together three different kinds of fats. When heavy animal fats are the main ingredient in every dish (hello lard! hello suet! hello dripping!), I’m less enthusiastic. I like chocolate, but I couldn’t face the bacon in chocolate dessert that I saw advertised in a few places. The dish that stopped me in Lviv, Cossack bacon fat with raw garlic, is more frequently known as Salo, I discovered. Mussolini, Pasolini, lick it up; the rest of you, avoid it like the Black Death. I endorse the film but I cannot endorse the dish, dubbed a ‘strategic snack’ in one Kyiv restaurant.

Tomorrow I take the bus to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, a country known for difficult bureaucracy, obscurity, organised crime and cheap wine. I’ll be stuffing American dollars into my socks, staring into middle distance throughout the customs checks and readying to sample the best and the cheapest the Moldovan sommeliers can bear to pour once I’ve made it through.