Customer Reviews

Katish: Our Russian Cook (Modern Library Food)

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This is a lovely slice of Americana, in addition to a quirky story of a Russian immigrant and a collection of divine recipes. The flow is perfect, with the recipes jumping in right when a dish is described. It took me back to my summer in Russia and I can't wait to try more of the dishes.

Katish is the nickname of the young Russian widow who is taken in by Wanda Frolov's mother as a cook in 1920's Los Angeles. Wanda, the author, and her brother lived with their widowed mom. As a middle-class California family, hiring a cook was an extravagance for them, but Wanda's aunt talked them into doing it. In the 1940s, when she was grown, Wanda wrote the chapters of this book as a series of articles in _Gourmet_ magazine. They were later gathered together as a book in 1947. Now the Modern Library Food Series has reprinted this delightful literary cookbook for a new generation of reader-cooks. Like many things culinary, these memoirs have improved with age.

The story of the book revolves around the cultural differences created as Katish and her Russian immigrant friends interact with an American middle class family of the 1920s. It is a heart-warming story in which both sides profit from the relationship. _Katish_ is a delightfully amusing glimpse into the culture of the time and is populated with warmly portrayed friends, relatives and situations.

As each food is discussed in the narrative, the recipe is listed. They are easy to follow and delicious. The recipes are a wonderful introduction to Russian family cooking. Breads and rolls, soups, desserts, side dishes, and main dishes are all well represented. Sadly, there is only one salad and one beverage (a delightfully rich hot chocolate). Thirty of the recipes contain meat or meat products. Thirty five are ovo-lacto vegetarian (many with butter and sour cream). Only nine are animal-free vegan recipes and six of these contain alcoholic beverages. An interesting aside is that, for a Prohibition-era story, there are surprisingly many recipes with alcoholic beverages. Dieters should be warned that most of these recipes are rich in flavor, but also in calories. However, there is a delightful fruit juice pudding called Kissel that can be made fat-free.

Read it for the story or read it for the recipes. Either way you are in for a treat.

I grew up with this cookbook, although the original edition I have in my bookcase was passed from my Russian/Polish grandmother to my mother, and finally to me. It is a homey, comforting read, with the bonus of some wonderful recipes which I make for my family to this day. Do yourself a favor and snap it up!

This is an excellent book, telling a marvellous story with authentic Russian recipes liberally sprinkled throughout the text. Thank you.
Brian

Wanda L. Frolov wrote for Gourmet and Better Homes & Gardens during the 1940s & 1950s. This delightful novel/cookbook follows the adventures of Katish, a Russian refugee who settles in Los Angeles and becomes the cook for a middle-class household. Although some of the humor is a bit dated, it still is a very enjoyable read, and the recipes are great, too. (Katish's cheesecake still remains Gourmet's most requested recipe.)

In the original 1947 edition, Frolov noted that Katish was in fact, a fictional character, but said, "Strangely enough, most people seem to want to hear that it is all true exactly as set down. Well, perhaps I see their point: One doesn't look for fiction in a cookbook."

(...)
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This is an almost identical retread of "Clementine in the Kitchen", published 4 years earlier in 1943. Substitute a Russian cook for a French cook, and a well-to-do Los Angeles family for a well-to-do Boston family, change the menu ethnicity, and mix the characters around a little bit. The modern reader is left to wonder if the pinacle of food fantasy in the mid '40s was to have a foreign cook whip up daily fare of exotic cuisine. Where food magazines are concerned it's not enough to write up the food, it must be presented wrapped in a little story. If you take a cursory glance at the present day's glossy of Bon Appetit or Saveur, the recipes are usually tied up in some familial gathering and shot on location, with the photo editorial telling a story or admonishing you on how to serve your dish: clan gathering at Scottish retreat or mid-skiing al fresco picnic in the winter. In the 1940s the de rigeur back story appears to be exotic food presented to a an American family by the surrogate motherly hands of a live-in cook with bubbly personality and quirky ESL charm. Were Americans xenophobic eaters unless gently eased into strange food by the aspirational stories in wealthy trapping from Gourmet magazine?

The recipes are interwoven with the stories, usually given as "take a pound of mushroom and sautee until slightly browned, etc." Oh, and mushroom and sourcream abounds! Anyone with access to a repository of modern recipes will not need the recipes given in this book, although, once in a while, something will surprise you with its uncommon name and preparation: pelmeny (savory beef-filled half-moon raviolis), vareniki (like pelmeny but square and filled with sweet black cherries), tvoroshniki (cottage cheese enriched with egg and flour then deep fried.) The standard Russian and eastern European fare (blini, chicken a la Kiev, baba, pirogue), no doubt exotic and intriguing to the 1940s readers, are comparable to modern recipes.

The stories wrapped around the recipes are cute, but written with considerably less charm, verve and soul than "Clementine in the Kitchen". From a literary perspective, "Katish" is not the equal of "Clementine". One gets the feeling that the stories are a crutch written in service of the recipes, rather than an independent narrative of which recipes are a small part. I could do without the recipes, and on considerations, without the Russian emigre stories as well. That leaves me to wonder what part does this book have in the Modern Library Food series: other than a Russian lilt and dubious historial scenery, there's not much here.