Before the war, Igor Mezencev loved to go into the forest with Ukraine’s best chefs, equipped with just four ingredients – salt, sugar, vinegar and oil – and try to cook high cuisine in the wild.
Now, with his city, Kharkiv, under heavy bombardment, Mezencev is confined to his high-rise flat. But using whatever ingredients he can find, he has continued to cook and invent – baking bread from untoasted buckwheat groats, cooking on his balcony and revisiting childhood recipes. He says this has helped him to cope with the terror of the shelling and airstrikes.
