Biliaivska Yushka (біляївська юшка, Dniester fish soup)

The most beautiful thing about this soup is that it refuses to hide the fish. The broth comes clear and golden, with potatoes soft at the edges, dill green against the surface, and the cooked river fish lifted out whole or in generous pieces onto a separate platter. You eat both. Spoon of yushka, bite of fish, a little salamur, that sharp garlic sauce loosened with hot broth until it bites and then blooms.

Biliaivka sits by the Dniester water, so the soup thinks like a river: clean, direct, seasonal. Use what is fresh and local to you, but choose fish with bones and character, not neat little fillets that give nothing back. Carp, pike-perch, perch, catfish, crucian carp if you can get it, a mixed pot is better than one proud fish doing all the work.

The one thing that decides the dish is gentleness. Once the fish goes in, the pot should murmur, not rage. My Aunt Nadia would write, "until it sounds right," and here that means a soft knock of liquid against the pot, the smell turning sweet and river-clean, no hard boil breaking the flesh into sorrow. Make a big pot. There is no tradition of a small one.