Ukrainian Christmas Eve Recipes (Sviata Vecheria)
Sviata Vecheria, Ukraine’s Christmas Eve Holy Supper, opens with kutia – wheat, poppy seeds and honey – and uzvar, a dried-fruit compote, served before anything else is touched. The rest of the twelve meatless dishes follow: boiled dumplings, stuffed cabbage, and a beet soup made without meat.
Poland keeps its own version of this night, Wigilia, and Lithuania keeps Kūčios – see the Wigilia table for that spread.
First to the Table
Dumplings, Cabbage and Soup
PIES
Traditional Pisni Pyrizhky
Lenten yeast pies, baked with a cabbage or a potato and mushroom filling.
DUMPLINGS
Lenten Varenyky
Egg-free dough filled with sauerkraut and dried mushrooms, served with oil and fried onion instead of sour cream.
SOUP
Lenten Borscht
Meatless borscht on dried mushrooms and beans, served with vushka (small mushroom dumplings).
CABBAGE
Lenten Holubtsi
Cabbage rolls with buckwheat and dried mushrooms in mushroom broth, served without sour cream.
