From Russia with love: Cookbook features food with a story

View larger image Tanya Sieber-Gonzalez holds no-bake Kartoshka cookies. The Russian tradition is that the cookies are supposed to look as if they are potatoes with eyes. Potatoes are not used in the recipe. Below, Nina Vassallo drizzles honey on a carrot salad recipe also featured in the book. Dennis Grundman/Daily View larger image View larger image A traditional Russian teapot is used at Irina’s Gift Shop. Dennis Grundman/Daily

By Josette Keelor -- jkeelor@nvdaily.com
WINCHESTER -- It's no secret that the recipes that survive for generations are the good ones, but it's the stories surviving along with the food that bring traditions to life.

Tales like these line the pages of a cookbook that The Russian Club, of Winchester, recently published, including recipes that club members contributed from their own storied pasts.

At a recent gathering at Irina's Gift Shop in Winchester, members of the club met to enjoy traditional Russian recipes, many of which are included in "Irina's Friends Cookbook: Russian and East European Cooking from the Heart Stories and Recipes."

"This is a friends recipe book. ... It was and it is really a pleasure to work on this book," said Irina Galounina, one of the book's founders, who began envisioning the book five years ago.

"Food is such a universal subject ... and food is something that we all like."

Setting up a traditional teapot called a samovar, Irina Bosworth, owner of the gift shop, explains that tea is important to Russian culture.

"You see it's pretty; it's always the center of a tea party in Russia," she said.

The samovar she uses is electric, and because it's originally from Russia, she has to use an adapter, she said. Traditionally, though, the pot would be surrounded by hot coals to heat the water inside. On top is a warmer upon which a smaller teapot steeps loose tea.
"We use loose tea and brew the tea in the teapot, [a] special teapot, because it's strong. ... It's very concentrated," Bosworth said.

Then she fills plastic cups mostly with hot water and tops them off with tea from the smaller pot.

"Tea is very popular, hot tea, and all year round," she said.

One of the dishes the group enjoyed during the gathering was Apple Charlotka, which Maria Perkins, of Frederick County, included in the book.

"Russians, they like tea, and it goes really well with a cup of tea," said Perkins, who moved to the United States from Russia in 1998.

The recipe is great with whatever leftover apples you have in your kitchen, she said.
"Basically it's a simple biscuit dough with apples ... and sugar," she said.

Other fruit could work as well, she said, like pears, apricots, cherries or maybe even canned peaches.

"I never tried it with any other fruit besides maybe pears," she said.

The key is not to let the cake get too wet, she said.

"I don't have any Russian roots," said Tanya Seiber-Gonzalez, "I just love the culture," she said.

Indicating a platter of Kartoshka -- no-bake cookies with sweet tea biscuits, cocoa powder and walnuts -- she said, "They're supposed to look like a potato with eyes."

Bosworth, a Russian teacher, who moved to Front Royal from Moscow 15 years ago after participating in an exchange program with her students, hosted a tasting much like this one about a month ago, when members gathered to try the recipes they would include in the book.

"My first year, when I opened my shop, [I started] a Russian club," she said.

She said members joined not only because they missed the food they grew up enjoying, but also because they missed the Russian culture.

Bosworth contributed Olivier Salad, which she said is part of every one of her family's holidays.

It was invented by Lucien Olivier, a famous Russian chef of French origin, the cookbook says, and, according to club members, Russian and French cooking have many similarities.

Lydia Vergamini and her daughter Marie, both of France, are prime examples.
"I grew up near Versailles," Lydia Vergamini said, though she and her daughter now live in Herndon.

Their ancestors were Polish and emigrated to France, she said.

"I was born in France," Marie Vergamini said. "I was 5 years old when we moved to the United States."

"And we joined this club and we enjoy it because we love food," her mother said.
Cornmeal, Lavender and Rosemary Cake is Lydia Vergamini's contribution to the cookbook, and her daughter included Salmon Fillet on a bed of Julienne-cut Fennel.

The cookbook includes information about each of the members who contributed recipes as well as the history of Russian food.

Chef, food and beverage consultant Jim Swenson, of Clarksville, Md., wrote the forward.
"There's a potato and mushroom dish that's just incredible," Swenson said by phone, later adding it was "what struck me as being really flavorful."

The dish, Fried Potatoes with Mushrooms Finished in Sour Cream, by Nina Vassallo, is marked in the book as "Friends' favorite."

Swenson, formerly a chef at the National Press Club for 20 years, tasted all of the recipes at the tasting last month.

"I've learned a lot about my own past here. ... My father's mother came from Russia," said Kristin Zimet, of Frederick County, who was born in Brooklyn, N.Y.

"We were not told about our history, our heritage," she said. "I'm rediscovering foods that I know by different names. ... We were more Russian than I knew."

In being a member of The Russian Club, she was encouraged to make contact with members of her family that she never knew before.

"I find that I'm at the stage of life that I'm looking for homecoming in many ways," she said. "It's especially important to me because it's a homecoming to a piece of my past that was invisible to me."

Many of the dishes that members brought to Irina's Gift Shop last week are staples in their family's celebrations of Russian Orthodox Christmas, which will be on Jan. 7.
"Tradition is to roast either a chicken or a turkey or pork," said Galounina. "It's also a tradition to serve fish."

Also expected is headcheese, a meat jelly made from a calf or pig, sometimes a sheep or cow.

"The climate is so cold," Perkins said. "Whatever we had on our tables was what was available in the midst of winter."

The food isn't only for Christmas, though.

"We're Jewish," Zimet said, "but Jewish food and Russian food had enormous similarities. They're very similar cooking culture."

Galounina said of Zimet, "She really impressed us with her cold beet soup."

Of Dianne "Dee Dee" Richie, she said, "She's probably the first American lady who's made farmers cheese," before turning to Richie to say, "and you also made farmers cheese cake."

Putting together the book, which they started in July, was such a success that the group is planning its next book -- "About cooking, food, holidays and poems," Galounina said.

"Every season we noticed more and more people would come," said Bosworth, who moved her shop to Winchester almost three years ago.

"It shows that interest in Russian cuisine," she said.

"There are some people who aren't here who speak only Russian, so this has been a way of branching out," Zimet said.

"There are people like me who have Russian ancestry, and there are some for whom this is just an amazing experience."

For information about "Irina's Friends Cookbook: Russian and East European Cooking from the Heart Stories and Recipes," call Irina's Gift Shop at 450-8600.