Read an Excerpt
Introduction
My Story
I learned to cook under very real circumstances. My parents were from Ukraine, where they made a living growing and selling chrysanthemums. In 1988, they arrived home to find the little white envelope that would change their lives and mine. You see, at the time, Christians in Communist U.S.S.R. faced religious persecution, and it was difficult to make a good life there. The U.S.S.R. wasn’t releasing refugees to the U.S., but thanks to a backdoor visa agreement between Israel and America, one unassuming slip of paper meant that we would be able to leave for the Land of the Free.
But the early days of our new lives were not easy. My parents had to pack all the worldly possessions of five tiny girls ranging in age from two to seven (I was four) into two suitcases each, schlep through airports across the world (Austria, Italy, New York), and find a safe place to sleep. At one point, we were among fifteen people crammed into one hotel room in a refugee shelter in Austria. Once we were in the U.S., my parents had to navigate a new country and a completely new culture, learn a second language, and figure out how to support our seven-person family with jobs that paid very little.
My father chose to forgo being on welfare so he could work eighty hours a week as a toolmaker, earning just seven dollars an hour with the hope that he would eventually climb the corporate ladder (and he did—I’m so proud of you, Dad!). Mom, on the other hand, dreamed of becoming a restaurant chef and went to culinary school to learn the ins and outs of working in a commercial kitchen. One month before she was set to graduate, she had to undergo emergency back surgery, and although she never returned to a professional kitchen, she raised us girls in our very own “restaurant” at home. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of watching her create—stirring seemingly random ingredients into delicious and fragrant soups, whipping up the fluffiest Oladi Pancakes (page 45), and, of course, making her now-famous Potato Pierogi (page 145). (You should have seen her face when I told her that, between my Facebook and YouTube followers, almost eleven million people have watched that video!) As a child, I remember loving those little potato parcels so much that I would bite off the corner of each one on my plate just in case my dad—who loved them as much as I did—was tempted to nab one when I wasn’t looking. You can imagine how hard I laughed when my six-year-old daughter did the same thing at dinner one night!
For my mom, cooking was a magical combination of necessity and pleasure, something I’ve carried with me since starting my own family and the Natasha’s Kitchen platforms. She never measured anything; she just cooked from the heart. And somehow, she managed to keep us girls from getting underfoot—we were more taste testers than sous chefs. In fact, she never wanted to let us cook because she saw it as a way to spoil us in one of the small ways that she could—though, it’s also why I eventually had to teach myself how to cook, but more on that in a bit. What was most impactful for me, though, was watching how she turned the humblest of ingredients into purposeful, inventive, and incredibly delicious dishes. It wasn’t because she prided herself on being frugal—although she did—it was because she had to, or else we wouldn’t have anything to eat.
You see, when we first came to the United States as refugees, we started with nothing. There were nights when we were cold and days when there wasn’t enough food. It wasn’t easy for my parents who had left everything they had and everyone they’d known to come to a new world where their five children would cry at bedtime because they were so hungry. The breakthrough came when they discovered that in America there were food banks that could provide families like ours with the groceries we would never be able to buy ourselves. Since I was too young to start kindergarten, I would tag along with my mom. I remember standing in line in the freezing-cold Seattle mornings, waiting to go in, as volunteers handed us steaming-hot cups of hot chocolate. Then we’d come home and triumphantly stack our haul on the dining room table, always grateful for the abundance.
My mom would combine the skills and confidence she had gained in culinary school with her experience cooking traditional Ukrainian food to transform staple ingredients like rice, cabbage, and potatoes. She always made sure we ate well, and as a result we felt nourished in body and soul. Because of that food, we never felt poor. We were grateful that God had provided and carried us through. And now I run one of the top online cooking platforms in the world—if that’s not the American Dream, I don’t know what is!
Welcome to My Kitchen
I think what has made my website, Natasha’s Kitchen, so successful is that I’ve taken my story, less happy bits and all, and used it as inspiration. My food isn’t complicated because that’s not what food needs to be in order to taste good. Because I was never formally taught to cook (unless you count my first job “cooking” at McDonald’s, which only lasted three months because I was fourteen and my coworker sister suddenly quit, so I lost my ride), I remember what it feels like to twist into a pretzel trying to make a recipe, wishing I had four more hands. I know what it’s like to learn from scratch. When I first started Natasha’s Kitchen in 2009, my newlywed husband, Vadim, and I couldn’t do much more in the kitchen than add toppings to a frozen pizza. So, we set out to share with our readers—the very, very few we had at the time—our experiences and discoveries as we taught ourselves how to cook.
After two years of running the blog as a hobby, we had a steady following and decided to place a Google ad on our home page. In one month, we made enough money for . . . um . . . one cup of coffee? Woohoo! But over time, as I curated recipes that I was learning from cookbooks at the library as well as from my Ukrainian mother and mother-in-law, our following grew. My readers loved that I had exactly what they needed to feel confident in the kitchen because I, too, had once needed those same tools and tricks. They felt comforted by classic, recognizable dishes. Plus, they trusted that if I was sharing a recipe, whether it was classic Cheeseburger Sliders (page 178), Famous Fish Tacos (page 263), or Loaded Corn Chowder (page 116), or my mother’s rugelach cookies (page 245), it was going to deliver because I myself was bringing those dishes to my family’s Sunday after-church lunches and church potlucks or special occasions like birthday parties, baby showers, and holidays.
The recipes in this book—like those on my site—will rarely take more than thirty minutes to make because most busy families don’t have more time than that unless it’s a special occasion. By giving you lots of my “Pro Tips & Tricks,” I’ll make sure you feel like you can tackle any recipe in this book.
The dishes I remember so fondly from childhood are also why my recipes only call for ingredients that you already have in your fridge or pantry or that you can easily find at your local grocery store. You might need to travel to a different aisle than you’re used to, but your groceries are always going to be a one-stop shop. And I guarantee that they’re not going to cost you more than your normal trips—even if you’re feeding an entire family, including a ravenous fourteen-year-old boy!—because you won’t be buying any more pre-prepared or frozen meals. That also makes these recipes more nutritious than anything you could order in or pop into the microwave. (When Vadim and I started cooking more at home, we each lost five pounds during the first six months!) Not to mention the fact that when you’re “shopping” out of your well-stocked pantry—something I’ll help you get started with—you’re going to see the savings in your grocery bill.
