Rybni Tefteli (рибні тефтелі, fish meatballs in tomato)

The sauce tells you first. It goes into the pot red and sharp, then the smetana softens it to orange, the sunflower oil beads at the edges, and the fish balls swell quietly until they look less boiled than tucked in. This is the kind of southern supper that takes a modest catch, or a bag of frozen hake from the shop, and turns it into enough for eight guests or one hungry Ukrainian.

What decides the dish is gentleness. Fish tightens if you let the pot shout, so the tefteli barely murmur in the sauce while the rice and bread inside drink tomato, onion sweetness, and dill. Aunt Nadia would have written "until it sounds right," and for once she was exactly practical: the right sound is a sleepy blip at the edge of the pan, not a rolling boil.

The zasmazhka here is the sauce's backbone, onion and carrot sweated in green sunflower oil until the smell changes from raw cellar to sweet garden. Then tomato joins it, smetana rounds it, and the fish has somewhere kind to land. Serve with buckwheat, potatoes, or just bread for wiping the bowl; the point is not a perfect fillet, the point is a full table.