Malosolna Khamsa (малосольна хамса, salted anchovy)

The most beautiful thing about khamsa is that you barely cook it at all. The tiny anchovies go into the bowl silver and nervous, layered with salt, and by morning they have turned firm, glassy, and briny enough to make bread taste necessary. This is food from the Black Sea edge: cheap, quick, sharp with onion, softened with green sunflower oil, eaten with fingers if the table is honest.

Malosolna means lightly salted, so the salt must be measured against the fish, not thrown in like a handful of winter road. Too little and the fish stays soft and uncertain; too much and you've made something for storing, not eating tonight. Six percent by weight is where I start. Aunt Nadia would write, "until it looks like glass," and annoyingly, she was right.

Keep everything cold. This is the one place where I want your scale and your fridge working harder than your romance. Once the fish has tightened and the flesh turns translucent at the backbone, you rinse only if it tastes too salty, then dress it simply: onion, dill, black pepper, Ukraine in a bottle of oil. Enough for eight guests or one hungry Ukrainian.