Shulyky (шулики, broken cake in poppy-honey sauce)

The beautiful thing is the breaking. You bake one thin, plain wheat korzh until it smells nutty at the edges, then you ruin its neatness with your hands, snapping it into rough pieces and letting them fall into a bowl of ground poppy seed and honey. That is the dish. Not a cake sliced politely, not a biscuit kept crisp, but shards made soft on purpose.

Shulyky belong to Makoviy, the August feast when poppy heads, herbs, and honey come to the table together. In the villages of central Ukraine, especially around Poltava and Cherkasy, this is the sweet that appears after church, after the makoviichyk bouquet has been carried home, after somebody has found the big bowl. My Aunt Nadia wrote only, "break it small enough to drink the honey," which is unhelpful until you do it once and understand she meant each piece must have torn edges, because torn edges drink.

The one thing that decides the dish is the poppy. It must be ground until it darkens, releases its oil, and starts to smell warm and grassy, not just sprinkled in like decoration. Whole poppy seeds roll around your teeth and do nothing. Ground poppy becomes milk, sauce, memory, the black-speckled sweetness that clings to every softened piece.

Make more than you think. Shulyky look modest when dry, then swell in the bowl, and still somehow disappear by the spoonful. Enough for eight guests or one hungry Ukrainian.