In 1989, three years before Jane Katz was born, her maternal great grandmother, grandparents and their children set out from Kyiv, Ukraine in what was then the USSR for New York City. On their way, like many Soviet Jews coming to the United States, they spent a few months in Italy as arrangements and papers were organized. At the same time, Jane’s father was emigrating from Cherkassy, a city three hours from Kyiv, and also stopped in Italy. 

It was here that Jane’s parents met and fell in love. Their papers came through at different times, but they reconnected when they were both in the U.S. and married quickly at a Russian restaurant in Brooklyn. 

Over several years, the family members all moved to Manhattan Beach, not far from Coney Island. “Now, it’s like a little shtetl,” Jane says laughing. Here, in a Russian enclave, the family continues to speak Russian, but feels strongly about assimilating into American society, in part, as a way of rejecting the discrimination they felt as Jews in Kyiv, Jane explains. Still, her maternal grandmother Rose, continues to cook the foods she was raised on in Eastern Europe. There’s beef stew with caramelized onions, borscht, latkes, vegetable soup with chicken meatballs, aspic with eggs, and other Ukrainian and Russian classics. “In a small way, I believe that she held onto her kitchen and her recipes (and continues to cook only in this way) because it was one small thing that she could control as an immigrant,” Jane explains. 

“She couldn't find herself here in those early days,” she adds. “But... she could make a mean nalesniki and bring together her family (time and time again) around her table.” Nalesniki, or thin pancakes that are rolled around fillings like chicken with caramelized onions, cherries, or cheese, are Rose’s signature. They grace the family table at holidays, but they are also a favorite snack year round. When family members visit, Rose sends them home with Tupperware containers full of them. She also asks her husband to deliver nalesniki to family members in the neighborhood. “I’m pretty sure she’s low-key running a factory,” Jane jokes. “It’s clearly something made with a lot of love, and time, and attention.” 

The recipe Rose makes is from her late mother Riva and no one else in the family makes it. When Jane originally asked her grandmother for the recipe, Rose told her: “All you have to do is make sure the crepe batter is really thin because if it’s too thick you’re going to end up with the soles of a shoe.’ I was like great, ‘Could you be a little more specific?’” During the Coronavirus lockdown, Jane learned her grandmother’s recipe over Facetime. Her grandfather set up an iPad on the kitchen counter, so Jane could see Rose’s hands moving. 

Jane, who is a food blogger is usually in the kitchen making up her own recipes. “To be honest, I have never learned a family recipe before...It felt very memorable and special because realistically it might be the only time in my life I ever do something like that,” Jane explains, adding that after COVID, “my cousins and I will be making it together and I will teach the recipe to my daughter too when she is old enough.”