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Culinary Memories

Photo by Christopher Gardner

Old World Flavors: Rosalie Sogolow's handsomely produced cookbook offers a healthy dose of oral history and a dash of treasured recipes.

Filled with recipes and anecdotes of cultural heritage, 'Memories From a Russian Kitchen' chronicles flavors of the Old World

By Christina Waters

Thanks to Hollywood, the expression "Russian emigré" conjures up romantic visions of an exotic culture and foreign intrigue. For Rosalie Sogolow's English as a Second Language students, the phrase expressed a certain linguistic isolation. With the help of Sogolow and the Jewish Family Service of Santa Clara County, several hundred elderly emigrés attacked this invisible barrier with a healthy dose of oral history and a dash of treasured recipes. The result is Memories From a Russian Kitchen, a handsomely produced volume documenting old country ways, family life and kitchen memories by members of the South Bay's large Russian-Jewish community.

"This has been one of the most emotionally rewarding things I've ever done," admits Sogolow, whose own grandparents were Russian-Jewish emigrés from Ukraine. An award-winning educator who currently teaches four ESL classes to seniors through the Los Gatos-based Jewish Family Service, Sogolow got the idea to do the book as a class project.

"Nine years ago when I started teaching at JFS, there was nothing for seniors," Sogolow says. "This area has a huge Russian emigré population, thanks to the computer industry. We've attracted the engineers, and they brought their entire families with them"--families that included elderly parents who knew little or no English. "They're highly educated, but they gave up everything at an advanced age--without language they were prisoners in their own home."

So JFS brought the emigrés together. "It began as an experiment," Sogolow says. "We'd pick them up each day, they'd study English, get together and have a lunch, and then we'd drop them back at home. Pretty soon it became like a lifeline."

One thing led to another and Sogolow soon found herself drawn back into her own cultural roots. "When we had parties, they would bring their wonderful foods, and I got to thinking it would be a shame if someday nobody knew how to make these recipes."

It was going to be a simple writing project. Each student would learn to translate a cherished family recipe into English. "From Russian to English, and from metric to cups and tablespoons," Sogolow laughs. "It was going to be such a little thing!" Not content to simply compile recipes, Sogolow was determined to collect the rich anecdotes and stories her students had told her. "Their lives had been so hard, but in spite of everything their happy times were also strong."

The joy of Memories From a Russian Kitchen is that you can thumb through it savoring heirloom recipes for fabled folk dishes--knishes, piroshki, blini, kasha, strudel--and quickly find yourself sidetracked by some pithy memoir. Sogolow's authors generously poured out their treasured childhood memories--these pages cover two world wars, heartbreaking reversals of fortune, the rise and fall of the Soviet regime, as well as sweet moments with favorite relatives, fabulous village celebrations, family rituals. It's as much a slice of living anthropology as it is an engaging treasury of favorite recipes.

"Food is a way to maintain our heritage," believes Sogolow, who lovingly compiled, edited and helped test each recipe. And each recipe is seamlessly framed by brief personal stories and aptly reflected in the many pen-and-ink illustrations by Bonnie Stone.

"The idea was of preserving these wonderful old recipes," Sogolow says. "We're much more health-conscious now than were my grandmother's foods. But I resisted substituting more contemporary ingredients. The recipes are here, just as remembered--preserved. People can adapt them if they wish."

Or they might simply appreciate each slice of the past, as it has emerged from long memory, patiently sifted through another language. "It's essentially a treasury. Our emigrés' grandchildren can have their heritage, the readers get to have these recipes and the proceeds from book sales go back to the community, to the Jewish Family Service."

Memories from a Russian Kitchen (Sogolow, Rosalie; Fithian Press; $25) is currently available at South Bay area bookstores, or may be ordered directly from the Jewish Family Service of Santa Clara County by calling 408/356-7576.

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Memories From a Russian Kitchen: From Shtetl to Golden Lard
Editor: Rosalie Sogolow
Illustrator: Bonnie Stone
Publisher: Fithian Press
Price: $25 hardcover, 272 pages


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