The first festival-fair “Ukrayinske Salo-2004” [Ukrainian Fatback 2004] was definitely a success. Lasting two days, it attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors and not only helped further popularize this traditional Ukrainian dish, but also lent a philosophical touch to cooking and trade, leading one to ponder the reasons for the decline in cattle- breeding, as well as various aspects of our daily diet. Seventy- five firms supplying fatback and related products took part in the festival, which took place in a friendly and cheerful atmosphere, with songs, music, and various humorous elaborations on the fatback theme. A variety of fatback dishes were on sale. First Deputy Prime Minister of the Crimea Anatoly Korniychuk declared during the opening ceremony, “Festival participants will have a hard time because they will have to taste and buy every kind of fatback to treat their families; considering the assortment, no one is likely to do this.” Visitors bought all kinds of products made from fatback, even live piglets, but first they tried to contribute to the revival of domestic animal husbandry. Simferopol’s confectionary, for example, supplied chocolate-coated fatback. Its business manager Ihor Fedorovsky said “salt and sweet, being two opposites, are a must for the table, but we tried combining them in a single dish. We believe that we succeeded in combining opposites and producing another kind of sweetmeat.”
It didn’t appeal to jury head Borys Burda, a noted humorist and expert cook, who said that making fun of fatback was in bad taste. Fatback and chocolate are so different that they shouldn’t be combined, he added. Considering that fatback chocolates were one of the festival’s nominations, Borys Burda declared that, as head of jury, he would vote “to put an end to that joke.”
Borys Burda tried to explain why fatback is consumed in hundreds of countries, but is considered germane only to Ukrainian cuisine. Simple: “No one can prepare fatback as skillfully as we do in Ukraine; no one can fatten a hog, salt, and smoke fatback the way we can. That’s OK, we have enough for all.” In response to a remark that fatback was facing a crisis, he said, “So fatback is retreating from its positions today, so what. It will regain them tomorrow anyway. The main thing is that it remains a unique product with special substances, like the redfish, which act on satiation receptors and prevent obesity. Although weight control is a problem these days, fatback is not to blame, only our ignorant, bad diets. Fatback deserves a place of honor in Ukraine, the way wine does in France. They have a Beaujolais Nouveau Day. These kinds of holidays are celebrated in other countries, like Garlic Day in California. Why not have a Fatback Day in Ukraine?”
The festival served as graphic proof of fatback’s universality as a traditional product of many nations. In a corner of the park Vira Synyhovets from Novoandriyivka, a village in Simferopol district, dressed up as Solokha [a character from Nikolai Gogol’s Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka] made quite a show of serving fatback and samohon moonshine from a three-liter long-necked bottle popularly known as suliya. In another corner, you could hear Belarusian jokes (“Fatback in the morning, fatback during the day is how we’ll live to see our V-Day!”) There was also a “Cossack camp,” where visitors could taste the traditional kulish — corn flour with various additions boiled up into a thick soup, with fatback as an invariable ingredient. Simferopol circus performers offered visitors the chance to buy a “cat in a sack that used to eat fatback.” Local craftsmen sold their merchandise, declaring that none of the goodies would’ve come out right without fatback. Various kinds of fatback were on sale at the Green [open-air] Theater. Among the vendors was Elheir Suleiman, a Sudanese student at Crimean Medical University, who told journalists that people back home also eat fatback, but prepare it differently.
Incidentally, the festival organizers are planning to turn this event into an international one next year and will invite more than ten fatback-producing countries to participate. Hopefully, the livestock crisis in Ukraine will have been overcome by that time, a distinct prospect judging by this year’s good harvest yields. So there will be even more fatback and the festival may well be even more attention grabbing.
Meanwhile, the first festival jury nominated Rykon, a member-firm of the Saky District Consumers’ Union, in the Salted Fatback category; the Shyroke joint venture, Simferopol district, won the Boiled Fatback nomination, and the Crimean production combine Skvortsovo was nominated in the Smoked Fatback category. The public joint- stock company Vetona won two nominations: Chocolate-Coated Fatback and Shaped Fatback. The jury also decided to establish an additional Festival Know-How nomination, which was awarded to the agricultural firm Druzhba Narodiv [Friendship of Nations] for its sandwich fatback and “most exotic fatback recipes,” including pork sausages. A Fatback House won the Shaped Fatback nomination. Several special prizes went to public joint-stock company Simferopolske in the Fried and Smoked Dairy Products category, PJSC Krymkhlib for their Bakery and Confectionary Piglets, and the private company Kravchenko for best storefront design.
See you at the next fatback festival!
