Olia Hercules is inspired by her wandering grandmother

My Siberian grandmother Vera Paskova was an adventurer. She was a wanderer, both out of necessity as a result of her strength of spirit. In 1956 she left her first husband, packed a suitcase and, with her eight-year-old daughter Valya, left Siberia’s destitution for good.

She took a train to Tashkent – the place they used to call “the city of bread” – which is the capital of Uzbekistan. Apart from bread, the city promised work, friendship and markets filled with dried fruit, steaming dumplings and huge pans of plov.

On the train there, she met my Ukrainian grandfather Leonid, who charmed her with a card game he called a fancy English name: “King”. Nine months later, he wrote her a heart-splitting love letter and immediately afterwards came to find her in Tashkent. They quickly married, and, after another nine months, my father Petro was born in the Tashkent general hospital.

They were happy for a while. But, because the hot climate disturbed Leonid’s head injury from the war, he eventually insisted they return to his homeland, Ukraine.

She brought many a dish back with her, including rice plov and manti dumplings. When she couldn’t find Central Asian ingredients, such as fat rump sheep fat, she adapted (Ukrainian butter). The marriage was a disaster – Vera and Leonid divorced acrimoniously – but my grandmother remained in Ukraine until she died in 2018.

This example of migration and adaptation made me think about what makes dishes our own. Can anyone ever own recipes and food? What is authenticity?

I often have people write to me along the lines of: “I cooked your grandmother’s recipe and I changed this ingredient,” or “I altered the method slightly, I hope that’s OK, I hope you approve.” And my thoughts are always the same: the minute you cook someone’s recipe in your own home and fall in love with it deeply, while cherishing and acknowledging its source, you should feel free to consider the dish as your own. I always encourage and delight in adaptations made according to what’s local to the cook, or what’s in their fridge or cupboard that needs using up; it’s healthy, it’s good for the environment and it just makes sense.

Little changes here and there are what move food forward, stopping it from stagnating.

This is an extract from Olia’s new book, Home Food: Recipes to Comfort and Connect. You can buy a copy here.