#jayvik recipes

I feel like cooking together for the first time, especially making something that reminds you of home, and a partner from a different culture helping you make it, is such a defining moment of a relationship. As a foreign student myself, sometimes I didn't go home for years. I crave flavors that only seem to exist in my memory and although I can create most of them with the right ingredients, some are just impossible to replicate. I get Viktor's frustration at the cheddar pierogi too! While I completely encourage and support the adaptation and the accessibility of recipes according to personal taste, skill level, and resources available, one part of me does cry if a key ingredient is replaced, as if there are no generations of stories behind why and how something is used.

That's why anytime I learn to cook something new, I feel nervous but also excited. Besides Borscht, I have never made or had any eastern or central European food. Of course, I have heard about pierogi and have made various other types of dumplings from around the world. But for today's recipe I wanted to keep everything as authentic as possible, especially as I knew one of the authors was Polish! This meant not only making pierogi, but making Twaróg first! I looked up many recipes online and then followed a Polish lady for both the recipes. Apologies if I didn't get something right 🙏.

Twaróg is a type of farmer's cheese and the process is very similar to chhana or chhena, a kind of Indian cheese. But there is an additional step of slow fermentation in Twaróg, so it takes longer to make it. And the end result was SO good! I honestly just wanted to break bits of Twaróg and keep eating it! Once I had the cheese ready, the rest of it was easy! I made around 30 and froze nearly two dozen pierogi to have later. Thanks to the authors, I now read a lovely fic and I, an Indian woman, learned to make a Polish dish! I hope I was able to do justice to the recipes and that Viktor approves of my efforts at least!

Here are a few excerpts from the fic:

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Jayce looked curiously at his fork. “What’s…wrong with the food?”

Viktor sighed at it. "...These…are not like any pierogi I’ve ever made. The dough is off and they have cheddar in them, which, I suppose is fine but it…” he waved the fork around, at a loss for words.

“Well, why don’t you make some? You could teach me, maybe."

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Viktor was incredibly nervous.

Coming in, Jayce would be in the little entry room...Two steps forward, he would be in the kitchen, if one could call it that...

The potatoes were already boiling when Jayce came in, about to be ready, actually.

It took a long time, all things considered, but Jayce was diligent. He listened as Viktor explained, as he told Jayce about why he preferred the twaróg and how to properly season everything. He mashed the potatoes to his specifications.

The dough came out pliant and beautiful and Viktor wanted to cry. [Funny, I don't have a KitchenAid, so just used my hands to make the dough as usual😆!]

“Is there some sort of technique to it?” Jayce had asked, holding a circle of dough in the palm of his hand.

Viktor smiled, “You sort of just…” he took a spoon and scooped up a portion of the filling, putting it in the centre of the dough. Then, he put one hand behind Jayce’s, stabilizing it, and the other pinched the dough together, keeping the filling in. “I suppose you could go back over it again, make it more clean, if you want, but I think this is good enough. They shouldn’t fall apart now.”

When all was said and done, Viktor had decided to boil and pan fry some immediately.

“Get the sour cream from the fridge, will you?” Viktor asked, doling out the pierogi onto two plates. He poured the rest of the butter from the pan over them and stood back to look at them...

"You sort of, ah, dip it?” He asked, quickly demonstrating to Jayce.

Jayce copied him and Viktor found himself unable to move until he visually saw Jayce take his first bite. The man's eyes closed, and a small noise escaped him.

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“Jayce, how often does your mother cook?” Viktor asks one night as they stuff themselves on street corn and chicken tortilla soup.

“A lot. I remember my childhood from great smells coming from the kitchen. She’s where I learned this from.”

Viktor freezes. “You… you’ve been making these dishes?”

“Yeah, actually.” He wipes his mouth. “Been learning from my mom. Realized that, now that I’m an actual inventor and all, I should probably be functional by myself.”

“Hm.” Viktor accepts his half-excuse, half-lie, and continues to eat. Jayce would like to pretend that seeing Viktor happy isn’t warming his heart, but Viktor’s his friend. He won’t lie to himself like that.

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Viktor, one night, stares into the bowl of soup Jayce has made him.

“Do you…” Jayce swallows past the nerves in his stomach. “Do you like it?”

“Jayce Talis.” Viktor looks up, and his eyes are so full of light joy that Jayce wants to dance. “This is the best fucking soup I’ve ever eaten.”

Jayce laughs. He could sustain all of Hextech from the joy in that moment.

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“What are these?”

“Hm?” Jayce turns. He drops the cutting board as he sees Viktor holding his folder titled Viktor.

Well, shit.

“It’s…” Jayce’s mouth flops open and close like a fish. “I…”

Viktor raises a single eyebrow; the judgement in his face is clear. He opens the folder, slowly, carefully, giving Jayce every possible moment to try and stop him.

Jayce doesn’t.

Viktor blinks as he grabs one of the first papers. It’s a more recent one; a recipe for a chocolate opera cake that Jayce was thinking of making once Zaun was truly independent. It has scribbles on the side in Jayce’s handwriting of “too heavy? Viktor prefers lighter desserts.”

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I'll let you read the rest!