The house was empty, but the soup was still warm.

She had made it that morning and left it for us. We had gone to Boston to visit family for Christmas; Asya held the space in our house and took care of our cat. And made soup.

I ate some. It was like a hug from the vegetables and my friend. I texted her. “Thank you for the soup,” I wrote. “What do you call it? How do you make it?” “It’s Russian soup,” said Asya, and sent her recipe. Grated carrot and tomato, potato, cabbage, cilantro, water, salt and pepper. Really?, I wondered. There’s only one “Russian soup”? And how do vegetables and water taste so substantial?

There are many Russian soups, or ЩИ, schi. As restaurant owner and cookbook author Bonnie Frumkin Morales points out in Kachka, the diverse countries that made up the former Soviet Union share many techniques and cultural touchstones, and Russian soup itself has many differentiations. “To know its true soupy soul,” she writes, “you need less a recipe than a road map,” which she helpfully provides. I discovered her book at the library, as I was researching Russian and Ukrainian cooking and traditional medicines.

I wanted to know more about my roots. I had heard snippets of stories – my paternal great-grandmother Sophie escaped what is now Ukraine after watching Russian soldiers kill her father; my maternal great-grandfather was born in Russia but would never speak the language at home because, according to my grandmother, he had witnessed so much violence there. I knew shreds of these traumatic histories. But what did they eat?, I wondered. What did they know?

To be a good friend, it helps to know who you are. And sometimes, a good friend can make you soup and remind you. I know this soup in my bones, I thought. I’ve made it before.

I made it again. I used Asya’s recipe for vegan schi as a starting point. The grated carrot was important (it surfaces in Ukrainian soups too, as Olia Hercules documents in her cookbook Mamushka), the caramelized surface area adding flavor. Grated or sliced turnip was good too. White winter barley from our farmer’s market. Some additions to the broth. I left out the tomato. Asya had gone back to St. Petersburg, so I shared pictures with her and the actual soup with my friend Genevieve who lives close by. “What’s the recipe?,” Genevieve texted me. “It’s a feeling,” I said. “What a gift that is,” she said.