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A review by harukacrush
Kachka: A Return to Russian Cooking by Bonnie Frumkin Morales, Deena Prichep
5.0
My family grew up in the Soviet Union so I grew up eating a lot of the food Morales writes about in her book, cooked by my grandmothers, aunts, their friends and my mom. When we came to the States, Russian food was something I felt really embarrassed about, comparing it to what I saw other kids around me eating and thinking about how weird our food was in comparison. We ate things like sauerkraut, boiled beef tongue, liver patés, pickled herring and beets, various types of dried and canned fish and pickled tomatoes. I decided that cooking Soviet food wasn’t a skill I needed to learn. My family slowly adapted to a more “American” diet and we started having less and less of the foods we grew up with.
Years later I saw this book on a shelf in Portland Oregon and just the brilliantly colored image on the cover without reading the text drew me in immediately. It was so familiar! I looked at the cover for a minute and thought “well, this all looks very Russian” then I read the actual title. Leafing through Kachka, its a genuinely stunning book. The details in every photograph, the personal stories, the familiarity around her experiences around food, family and cooking tools (its been years since I’ve heard the words “mangal”, “kompot”, and “pelmenitsa”).
What really hit home for me were the recipes themselves. She advocates for the use of the freshest possible ingredients, salting your own salmon roe and in general putting out more updated versions of recipes that have been replicated for decades (usually using not so fresh ingredients because of what was available at the time).
But I only got this book after I went and experienced her restaurant in Portland for myself. I’m not going to write a restaurant review but I will say that it was amazing. It captured so many familiar nostalgic Soviet elements down to the last detail. (Although it was kind of amusing watching people suspiciously eyeing their “kholodetz”). This experience along with this wonderful book completely renewed my perspective on Soviet food, making me see it in a refreshed way where I am no longer embarrassed by my culture and embracing the weirdness of the food that I love to eat. I’m stoked that Morales has found a way to bring these recipes into the mainstream.
Years later I saw this book on a shelf in Portland Oregon and just the brilliantly colored image on the cover without reading the text drew me in immediately. It was so familiar! I looked at the cover for a minute and thought “well, this all looks very Russian” then I read the actual title. Leafing through Kachka, its a genuinely stunning book. The details in every photograph, the personal stories, the familiarity around her experiences around food, family and cooking tools (its been years since I’ve heard the words “mangal”, “kompot”, and “pelmenitsa”).
What really hit home for me were the recipes themselves. She advocates for the use of the freshest possible ingredients, salting your own salmon roe and in general putting out more updated versions of recipes that have been replicated for decades (usually using not so fresh ingredients because of what was available at the time).
But I only got this book after I went and experienced her restaurant in Portland for myself. I’m not going to write a restaurant review but I will say that it was amazing. It captured so many familiar nostalgic Soviet elements down to the last detail. (Although it was kind of amusing watching people suspiciously eyeing their “kholodetz”). This experience along with this wonderful book completely renewed my perspective on Soviet food, making me see it in a refreshed way where I am no longer embarrassed by my culture and embracing the weirdness of the food that I love to eat. I’m stoked that Morales has found a way to bring these recipes into the mainstream.