The organizers of the Taste, Country! all-Ukrainian competition for the promotion of national cuisine before the Euro 2012 European Football Championship have drawn up the national menu of Ukraine and announced the start of the voting to choose the best dish.

"The voting officially starts today. Over two months Ukrainians will vote for dishes they consider authentically Ukrainian ones," President of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club Association Alex Lissitsa said at a press conference.

According to him, the voting will be done via sending SMS messages and on the official Web site of the competition.

Lissitsa said that during the first stage of the competition ten dishes were selected for the national menu.

"Over a month, until March 15, Ukrainians sent us recipes that they think are traditional, authentic, and popular all over the territory of Ukraine," he said.

According to Lissitsa, the organizers of the competition received more than a thousand recipes from various regions of Ukraine, and even from abroad.

He noted that a special commission of historians, ethnographers, restaurant owners, representatives of the Agrarian Policy and Food Ministry, as well as agrarian companies, selected ten dishes from the list. The national menu of Ukraine includes Ukrainian borsch, kapusniak zaporizky (cabbage soup), kholodets (jellied meat), lard with garlic, deruny (potato pancakes), domestic sausage, pancakes with cottage cheese, piglet baked with buckwheat porridge, varenyky (dumplings) filled with cabbage and mushrooms, and apple pie.

According to Lissitsa, the dishes from the national menu will be served in the Taste, Country! restaurants chain in the Euro 2012 host cities – Kyiv, Donetsk, Lviv, Kharkiv - for three months.

He added that the first tasting of the dishes would be held on March 30 at the Spotykach restaurant in Kyiv. The winners of the competition will be announced on May 20 at a gala concert.

Lissitsa said the winner of the competition would receive Hr 10,000. The person that takes second place will win Hr 5,000, and third place will be rewarded with Hr 3,000. The winners will also receive prizes from Ukrainian farming companies.

He added that the organizers want to promote Ukrainian cuisine among foreigners and Ukrainian consumers with the help of the competition.

Ukrainian Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Mykola Prysiazhniuk also supported this initiative.

"Such a competition, especially before the Euro 2012 European Football Championship, is very important, as many tourists will visit our country and our task today is to show our achievements in tourism development and, of course, delicacies," the minister said at the press conference.

KyivPost