Food & Cooking

UNITED NATIONS — Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia on May 19, 2022, of using food as a weapon in Ukraine by holding “hostage” the food supply for not just millions of Ukrainians, but also millions around the world who rely on Ukrainian exports.

Addressing the United Nations Security Council, Blinken appealed to Russia to stop blockading Ukrainian ports. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 to carry out what Moscow calls a “special military operation.”

“The Russian government seems to think that using food as a weapon will help accomplish what its invasion has not – to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people,” he said. “The food supply for millions of Ukrainians and millions more around the world has quite literally been held hostage by the Russian military.”

The war in Ukraine has caused global prices for grains, cooking oils, fuel and fertilizer to soar.

Russia and Ukraine

As a little girl growing up in the Amazon region of Northern Brazil, Jaíne Mackievicz-Cenci had an unlikely hero — French cookbook author and TV chef Julia Child.

The Oceanside resident said she was about 7 years old when she first saw Child cooking spaghetti on a “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” episode on Brazilian TV. Not long after that, she tore an advertisement out of a cooking magazine for Le Cordon Bleu, the Parisian culinary school where Child had learned to cook.

Now, thanks to the Food Network and her own kitchen prowess, Mackievicz-Cenci is the winner of Food Network’s “Julia Child Challenge” cooking competition show, and her prize is a three-month, all-expense-paid scholarship to Le Cordon Bleu.

Oceanside resident Jaíne Mackievicz-Cenci, who grew up in Brazil watching Julia Child’s cooking show on TV, with the Julia Child book she used to learn how to cook on May 18.

(Hayne Palmour

EAST KINGSTON — A native of Ukraine, Oksana Karcha has been using her skills as a professional chef to raise funds for the people who live in the war-torn country under attack by Russia.

She said her “comfort food” sold at local farmers’ markets is making a difference in her home country. She recently heard from her friend Marianna, who is putting the funds she has donated to good use.

“She helped one family who moved from the city to a house in the country,” Karcha recalls, standing in her commercial kitchen in East Kingston. “They planted a garden, and they started to raise chickens. Marianna asked them, ‘What do you guys need?’ and they said, ‘Two bags of food for our chickens.'”

Karcha,

Andy Baraghani describes himself as curious — curious about cooking, traveling, blending those passions, and sharing what he’s learned with others.

That curiosity underlies the philosophy behind his upcoming cookbook, “The Cook You Want to Be: Everyday Recipes to Impress,” set to release May 24 from Lorena Jones Books (Penguin Random House).

“I want to gather as much information and knowledge as possible and process it, and then be able to either hold onto it or, even better, pass that information along,” Baraghani told Healthline.

A cook, food writer, recipe developer, and former Bon Appétit and Saveur editor, Baraghani seeks to do exactly that in his cookbook: guide readers through creating dishes that don’t require a lot of cooking experience, nutrition knowledge, or kitchen gadgets.

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