The very first challah from Olya Shtalberg
It was Olya’s very first challah, and since then, this recipe has never failed her.
The recipe I use to make challah — I took a photo of my classmate's recipe at Masa. And she brought it from a Rebbetzin from the St. Petersburg synagogue. The first time we made challah together was in the dorm (it was my first challah); since then, I have been making it using this recipe, and I send this photo to everyone who asks for the recipe.
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Coffee is the smell of childhood. And, in a way, envy. Parents brewing coffee on weekend mornings (and on weekdays too, but everyone had breakfast at different times). And a burning desire to try it, despite being told that it was too early for kids, bad for the heart, and so on.
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Kartoshka (“Potato” chocolate sponge cake)
I can't call myself a fan of Soviet cuisine, nor do I feel any nostalgia for it—there's no Olivier salad, meat jello (kholodets), or herring "shuba" in our home. But some Soviet pastries?
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Deep-fried doughnuts
The recipe seems to be from my great-grandmother. But I’m not entirely sure!
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Moldovan pies vărzăre (from Sonya Kopylova)
My grandparents lived in Tbilisi (my grandfather was a Tbilisi Armenian, and my grandmother, a Jew on her mother’s side, evacuated to Georgia from Kharkiv as a teenager and stayed there). When I was little, in the 1980s, every winter, they would send us a package from sunny Georgia to our home in the Moscow suburbs.
View the recipeGefilte fish (Eli Schneider’s family recipe)
On the eve of Rosh ha-Shanah, I want to share with you a recipe for gefilte fish. A plain, brown Ashkenazi dish? Yes, but not quite.
View the recipeHedva’s honey cake
Once upon a time, there was a wonderful cantor in the Jewish community of Cologne, Shimon Ben Zeev. And he had an equally remarkable wife, Hedva. She was the embodiment of what one might imagine an English lady to be—always impeccably groomed, with an ideally kept home, beautiful napkins, delicious tea, and mouthwatering cakes.
View the recipeOnion pie from Zhenya Fogelson
Zhenya Fogelson’s mom worked as a tour guide in the 1970s, collecting recipes from all over the Soviet Union. One special recipe she brought home was a French onion pie, passed on by a fellow traveler. Now, Zhenya makes it for family celebrations.
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Cheese pie from Julia Gadas
A story from Yulia about how a cheese pie can bring comfort during major life changes, helping you feel at home and grounded once again.
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Yozhiki with the story from Dasha Tsivina
Dasha’s magical yozhiki that mend quarrels - her grandmother’s meatballs in tomato sauce. When Dasha was little and upset, her grandmother would say that the yozhiki would take all her troubles away. Now, Dasha makes them for her grown-up children, and they still work wonders, especially when served with mashed potatoes!
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Experimental mango salsa (a la chutney)
This is a story about Sonya’s close friend, a director of photography. One evening, long before all the wars and disasters, they were sitting in the kitchen, arguing the way only a director and a cinematographer can. The fridge had a strange assortment of ingredients, including an overripe mango, so Sonya improvised and made a mango sauce out of it.
View the recipeMedieval flatbread from wholegrain flour
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View the recipeSweet dough hamantaschen (family recipe from Vera Yakubson)
For Vera, her Jewish identity was built primarily around food (editor’s note: we weren’t surprised at all!). The family’s traditional table included Hamantaschen made from soft, rich dough, which turned out to be quite unusual after moving to Israel, where they are almost always made with shortcrust pastry.
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