Vurda (вурда, Carpathian whey cheese)

The most honest cheese is the one you nearly poured away. After the budz is lifted from the vat, the whey looks spent, pale and quiet, the sort of thing a tired cook might tip down the sink. Put it back over the heat and it answers with snow: small, milky curds rising through yellow-green liquid, soft as ricotta and sweeter than thrift has any right to be.

This is Carpathian food, not my Kherson steppe food, and I say that because Ukraine is not one kitchen with one accent. In the south, my litnya kuhnia, the summer kitchen, was loud with tomatoes, aubergines, whole watermelons in brine. On the polonyna, the high mountain pasture, milk is the season. Budz first, bryndza later, and vurda from what remains. The same wisdom, really: don't waste what still has food in it.

The whole dish rests on gentleness. Fresh sweet whey still carries delicate proteins, but you have to catch them slowly; boil hard and you beat the cheese into little dry grains, all scold and no tenderness. Warm it until the smell changes, until the edge of the pot sounds right, that quiet tremble before a boil. Then stop and let the curds climb by themselves.

Serve it the day you make it if you can. A spoonful of warm vurda on bread with honey is one kind of comfort; another is dill, black pepper, and green sunflower oil. Enough for eight guests or one hungry Ukrainian who has been standing over the pot too long.