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Updated Sunday, February 7, 2010 1:48 pm TWN, By Stefan Korshak, dpa



	Poltava mayor Andriy Matkovsky dances with street performers during the opening of a city festival celebrating salted raw pork fat. (dpa) More Photos (2)

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Ukraine city celebrates raw pork fat festival

“Then there is the subjective factor. It is true there is a Ukrainian preference for salo and fatty pork products,” Getya said. “But we shouldn't think the Ukrainian diet unhealthy. After all, it is traditionally high in grains and extremely very low in animal fats -- which is precisely why our national cuisine values salo.”

KISB, founded in 1930, was the only research organization in the whole of the Soviet Union devoted wholly to studying swine breeding and pork production. Among its discoveries is the Ukrainian red-white striped, a home-grown pig bred for temperatures typical in Ukrainian sties and farms, and producing a bit more fat than European breeds.

But Ukrainian salo is particularly tasty, Gelya and salo salesmen agreed, because most pork in the country comes to retail consumers almost always directly from the individual farmer or rural homeowner, who feeds the pig table leavings and orchard fruit.

Some two-thirds of Ukrainian pork, even meat processed by packing plants, is raised on individual farms, according to KISB data.

Salo is also demanded by Ukrainians, even in big cities, as a traditional remedy: pressed on teeth to relieve aches, as a chew toy for babies, smeared on thighs against varicose veins or on hands to suppress eczema. Enterprising manufacturers in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa have even produced salo dipped in chocolate, although arguably sales depended less on taste than on novelty gift shock value, according other details of a two-page article on salo published in Poltava's Vistnik newspaper.

“The thing you have to understand is, salo is basic to our Ukrainian cuisine,” said Elena Cherpakina, a Poltava nurse. “We eat it on bread with garlic, we fry it for snacks, we use it to make soup stock, we mix it into our dumpling fillings.”

Cherpakina surveyed Zhovnevy Street under a blue winter sky, as Mayor Matkovsky walked by, flanked by well-wishers, subordinates and a pair of clowns handing out toothpicked salo bits dipped in champagne.

“Of course, if times are bad, salo properly salted will keep for months, which is never far from a Ukrainian's mind,” she said. “But the main thing is, we think salo tastes good.”

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