Pechena Ryba

The story

Baked fish, one of the twelve dishes of the Holy Supper, takes the place of the meat that is excluded entirely from the menu during the fast before Christmas. In folk tradition fish, being cold-blooded, does not count as meat and so is allowed on the meatless Holy Supper table, even though the strictest church fasting rules exclude it on certain days, which made it the natural centerpiece of the Christmas Eve table in many Slavic traditions, from Polish carp to Ukrainian baked fish. The kind of fish varies with region and availability: river fish inland, saltwater fish in coastal areas such as Odesa. It is most often baked whole with a little oil and herbs, prepared simply so that its own flavor, rather than a wealth of seasonings, takes the foreground on a table crowded with other, more complex dishes. For Ukrainian families in the diaspora, where the choice of fish differs from that in the homeland, this item on the menu adapts easily to locally available species without losing its symbolic role as the “meat” dish of a meatless supper.