I love Ukranian food too. My partner - who is from a Ukranian family (from Edmonton too, actually!) and his family really introduced me to it. So much good stuff Some of it, as you've probably guessed, is really, really not safe. Ukranian cuisine tends to use a lot of cream in everything, and a lot of red meat too. But it's pretty easy to adapt most things to be IBS safe.

Here are some ideas...

Depending on how you are with cabbage and tomatoes (some people just can't handle these at all) you could quite easily make holubtsi (cabbage rolls) safe - use ground turkey or TVP (texturized vegetable protein) instead of beef and skip the sour cream (or use soy sour cream if you can find it). Here's a recipe I found:

Cabbage Leaf Holubtsi

1/2 to 3/4 cup onions, chopped and sauteed (I'd use less rather than more, because I don't tolerate onions too well... you could use even less if you wanted to, or even just use poweder)
broth or oil (or cooking spray)
1 cup meat, ground ***use ground turkey or chicken - white meat only - or TVP***
4 cups cooked rice
1 teaspoon salt
1 large head cabbage
1 1/2 cups tomato juice
1/2 cup cream or sour cream (omit entirely, or use a soy version)

Saute chopped onions in broth or oil and add to cooked ground meat and rice. Sprinkle with salt. Roll this mixture up into a wilted cabbage leaf and place into pan. Cover this with tomato juice and cream or sour cream and meat drippings. Cook until done. Serve.


And borscht - oh how I love borscht The good news is that beets are a really good source of soluble fiber. Borscht usually has carrots and potatoes in it too... more SF! Just make sure your borscht recipe is trigger-free and low in fat and you should be fine - the main culprit is usually cream in borscht, but it works pretty well with soy or rice milk, or just stock or water too (not exactly the same but still delicious).

Here is a ridiculously easy borscht recipe from Kate (Wind) - not totally authentic Ukranian but aboslutely delish just the same (from this post):

Quote:

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I made a great sub-nuclear balsalmic borscht for lunch--using canned beets (you inspired me). I just quick steamed some red chard and spinach on the stove and zapped a zucchini in the microwave, added herbs and a small amount of broth and balsalmic vinegar and blenderized it. You can use as much broth as you like to get it the consistency you like. Carrot, potatoe, or sweet potatoe would have been funky in there too. Ten whole minutes of work.

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Here's a more conventional recipe:

1 cup chopped fresh beets
1 cup chopped fresh carrots
2 cups green beans, cut into 1 inch pieces
3 or 4 medium potatoes, cubed
1 quart chopped or shredded cabbage (could be a problem for some)
1 pint fresh or canned tomatoes, chopped (could be a problem for some)
1/2 cup chopped onion if onions are a problem you could reduce or just use powder
1/2 cup fresh dill weed, chopped
salt to taste
2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons oil this isn't much, but you could probably easily reduce or eliminate this
2 tablespoons flour
cream (use soy or rice milk, or water, or chicken or veggie broth)
minced garlic, to your taste

Put the chopped beets, carrots, and green beans into a 6-quart kettle with about 2 quarts of water and cook a little while. Then add the rest of the vegetables, dill, and salt and cook until vegetables are tender, adding more water for the desired consistency. Saute finely chopped onion in oil in a small frying pan and add flour. Stir until smooth. This is used as a thickener; add this to borsch when vegetables are cooked. Add some cream [soy milk, water or stock] and the freshly chopped garlic and cook for about 5 minutes more. Taste and add more salt if necessary. Serve.



If you make your own perogies, they are pretty easy to adapt too. I'd be very wary of any frozen or pre-made ones though. Most likely, they are stuffed with meat or dairy and high in fat. But the dough of the perogie is just flour and water (and salt, I think) - so that's totally safe. (I bet some recipes use milk - but that's easy to substitute soy or rice milk.) Then you can stuff it with whatever safe ingredients you please - potatoes and sweet potatoes are always good, or any pureed veggie mixture would be yummy I think, or maybe beans or chicken pieces? Oh, I bet mushrooms would be great... Here's a recipe I have (though, admit, have never used) for basic perogies:

Dough:
6 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups water

Mix dough ingredients until they form a ball. Roll out dough and cut out small pyrohy (perogie). Tip: cut the dough out with the top of a small drinking glass, put a spoonful of filling in the center, fold over so that edges meet, and crimp the edges. Fill with desired mixture. Drop pyrohy into boiling salted water and cook until they float to the top. Take pyrohy out and drain. Pour some oil in which some onions have been sauteed over the pyrohy, coating them well so that they don't stick together. (Personally, I would skip that last step and the added fat!)

Here's a recipe for "Perogie Casserole" from the archive.

My partner's grandmother often makes a potato soup that is easy to adapt too using soy milk instead of milk... it's basically just boiled potatoes, vegetable or chicken broth, parsley, green onions, salt and pepper, and soy milk, and I KNOW there are lots of great baked potato soup recipes in the archive that are almost identical. For example, this is a fabulous one of Kree's. I'm sure a search would also give you more.

Crepes might be difficult to make low enough fat and still successful... but you could try. Just replace the milk with soy or rice milk, the whole eggs with egg whites (2 egg whites = 1 egg), the butter with canola oil or a safe maragarine - and, importantly reduce it as much as you can possibly can. There are many kinds of fillings that would be safe - how about baked apples with cinnamon? Or pears? Actually, with the SF of the crepe itself, you could probably be safe with most any fruit, depending on your own tolerances of course.

Here's a crepe recipe I found online, adapted appropriately:

1 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/4 cups milk (use soy or rice milk)
2 eggs (use 4 egg whites)
2 tablespoons butter (use canola oil or a safe margarine... reduce by half maybe?)
oil (use a spray like Pam)

Mix together the flour, salt, milk and beat until smooth. Add the eggs and mix well. Add the melted butter and mix again. Let this batter stand for a while. Brush the bottom of a frying pan with oil and put over medium heat until it is just hot but not smoking. Pour about 2 tablespoons crepe batter into pan and quickly tilt the pan in all directions so that the batter covers the pan with a thin film. Fry for about 1 minute. Lift the edge of the crepe to test it for doneness. The crepe is ready to be flipped when it can be shaken loose from the pan. Flip the crepe and cook for about 30 seconds on the other side. (This side of the crepe is usually a little spotted brown and is the side the filling is put on.) As each crepe is done, spread the filling over the inside and fold the first two sides over each other and then the other two sides over each other. Place the finished crepe carefully on a plate. Keep doing this until all the crepes are made. It is easier to make with two people working. One makes the crepes, one fills the crepes.


Phew! You asked for Ukranian food... Hope that helps!

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