Шеф-повар Бонни Райхерт готовит голубичные вареники по рецепту бабушки Сары

Channeling Baba Sarah Growing up on the Canadian prairie, I had only one grandparent. My father’s family was murdered in the Holocaust and my mother’s father died well before I was born, so Baba Sarah had to stand in for all four of them. Every Friday, she came to stay with us for the weekend and the house brightened. Sher arrived as though she were fleeing Ukraine all over again, with parcels and packages and a giant soup pot wrapped in a tea towel, knotted to make a handle. I didn’t know to wonder if she’d stayed up all night rolling and pinching and stuffing for us. Pekeleh, she called her bundles. Little packages. Pekeleh also means burdens. Yiddish is like that. The contents of the package depended on the season. In winter, she brought rich kishka that snapped and potato knishes that flaked. In warmer weather she might make cheese blintzes, fried to a crispy gold. But August? August was best of all, because that was the time for blueberry varenikes, pinched closed and boiled like dumplings, ready to squirt their purple juice into your mouth. Baba Sarah died when I was in middle school. It was years later when I started to dream about her. She was an earth mother with long silver hair. She was a blaze of white, telling my fortune with her tea leaves. Everything about her had been generous and ample: her body, her food, her love. She had modelled a kind of intuition and wisdom – a female power I was eventually able to name, but only much later. * *Excerpted in part from How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty, by Bonny Reichert, Ballantine Books, 2025. Baba’s Blueberry Varenikes This recipe is easily doubled to feed a crowd (and Baba Sarah would approve!) Dough 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little more for kneading and rolling 1/4 tsp baking powder pinch salt 1 tbsp cold butter, cut into small cubes, plus another tbsp or so to prevent finished varenikes from sticking 1 egg + milk to make 1/2 cup, lightly mixed together 2 tbsp cold water (approximately) Filling and Topping 3/4 cup granulated sugar 2 tbsp all-purpose flour 3 cups washed fresh blueberries, the smaller, the better, plus an extra ½ cup berries to finish 1/4 cup water Squeeze lemon juice To make the dough: Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a work bowl. Crumb in butter, then stir in egg mixture. Working with a wooden spoon or an electric mixer, add cold water until a soft dough forms. Knead by hand a couple of times on a lightly floured surface, form into a disc and refrigerate half hour or longer (up to eight hours). To fill varenikes: Mix sugar and flour in a small bowl. Pick stems and leaves out of blueberries and put them in another small bowl. Roll dough on lightly floured surface to ¼ inch thick. Cut into rounds with a standard Mason jar lid. Fill each round with a little teaspoonful of sugar mixture and a spoonful of berries. Pinch closed. (See video.) To cook: Working in batches as necessary, boil varenikes in a large pot of salted water until dough is cooked through and sugar mixture has melted, 10-15 minutes. (I always check one first and always burn my mouth, a bit, but that’s all part of the pleasure.) Remove from water with a slotted spoon and slather hot varenikes with remaining tbsp butter. To finish: Combine remaining blueberries plus additional half cup berries, remaining sugar and flour mixture, lemon juice and water in a small saucepan. Simmer over low heat until thickened into a deep purple sauce, about 10 minutes. Serve finished varenikes with sour cream and hot blueberry sauce. Bonny Reichert is a chef and author of the culinary memoir How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty, an NPR Best Book of 2025.