Horokhova Yushka (горохова юшка, pea soup)

Yellow peas do a quiet trick in the pot: they begin as hard little stones and end as velvet, thick enough to drag the spoon through, pale gold under the green scatter of dill. This is the soup for the end of the week, when the market bag is light and the jar of smoked salo still has a few good pieces hiding in the back. Enough for eight guests or one hungry Ukrainian.

In the south, where my family cooked through long dry summers and sharp bare winters, dried peas were not sad food. They were insurance. A handful could feed a table if you gave them time, a smoked bone or a strip of salo, and the patience to let the boil soften from clatter into that low thick blip-blip Aunt Nadia called "until it sounds right."

The thing that decides the soup is not the peas, though they must cook until they give up completely. It is the zasmazhka, the slow-sweated onion and carrot, added at the end so its sweetness sits brightly on the broth instead of flattening into the stock. Do that and the whole pot wakes up. Skip meat if you need to; mushrooms and sunflower oil will carry you. Just make a big pot. There is no tradition of a small one.