San Francisco’s Presidio is the host location for 4 upcoming events in May, June, August, and October. Pioneer Naturalists and Russian Influences in Early California will be presented on May 17, General Vallejo’s Legacy on June 28, Between Heaven and Earth: History, Tradition of the Orthodox Church on August 9 and Settlement Ross and the Missions on October 18.
For details go to www.presidio.gov/calendar or www.fortrossinterpretive.org/events.
The last character to be revealed in my fairytale The Prince the Bear and the Golden Poppy (March 9, 2012 post) is the captain of the Rurik. Thinly disguised, Czar Kotzevon was inspired by Captain Otto von Kotzebue.
To his credit Von Kotzebue provided strong support for his ship’s mission to find new discoveries in natural history. Apparently, that was not the case with his predecessors who came to San Francisco like Vancouver and Rezanov who according to some accounts sabotaged the efforts of their naturalists on board.The Rurik was Von Kotzebue’s first command and provision it he did. Not unlike Czar Kotzevon, who in our story made sure his son was well-equipped to make his voyage to The New Enchanted World. It was due to this long and arduous journey of the Rurik that we have access to pictures and documentation of early California, its flora, fauna and inhabitants. We owe a debt of gratitude to these representatives of the Russian Imperial government for having the wisdom and interest in preserving what others did not value for generations to come.
Von Kotzebue was also quite the diplomat. Once cordial relations were established with Spanish authorities, the captain and his staff frequently entertained Commandant Arguello and his soldiers. The reason was pretty simple: the Russians had plenty of food and drink while the Spaniards were short on provisions, medical supplies and other necessities, though they were charged with protection of Spanish interests, including Mission Dolores. Given the Russians’ hospitality gene, this is not surprising.
To create your own version of Russian merriment including drink and appetizers, order a copy of Drinks and Zakuski.
This year Russian Easter falls on Sunday, April 15th. So, after the taxes are on their way to Uncle Sam , go celebrate! Saturday night Russian churches will hold traditional midnight services beginning at 11 p.m. and running into the wee hours of the morning. Depending on how long you can stand (no pews in eastern orthodox cathedrals) these services are the most beautiful and festive of the entire year.
Preparing for Easter used to be a major undertaking in most Russian households, starting early with spring cleaning, progressing to special food preparations, and ending with new Easter outfits for the entire family. As our daily lives have gotten busier, traditions such as these have been curtailed a bit. Two “must haves” remain : Kulich (Easter bread) and Paskha (sweet Easter cheese) whether homemade or purchased from the local Russian deli or bakery (Katia’s Tea Room, San Francisco). The following story, excerpted from my memoir-cookbook, The Lobanovsky Family Table, is a humorous account of how my family finally wrote down its own recipe for Kulich. The accompanying photo shows Kulich in preparation. Because the dough is so rich the last thing you want is for the dough not to rise. To that end, all kinds of measures are taken to keep it warm and happy.
Kulich Lobanovsky: Making Russian Kulich (Easter bread) was a holy occasion in our home. My mother put her whole concentration on this project each year: the house was to be quiet, all ingredients and the 6 recipes from which she drew upon were to be on the kitchen table. Forms were prepared only after the dough was mixed. No joking allowed, no fooling around. It was not about being serious necessarily, but more about totally focusing on this important mission.
Because Mama worked, we would set out on making the Kulich after dinner on a Friday evening. Since it took so long to make the dough and prepare the forms, it would be about 1 a.m. before we could go to bed while the dough rose. By the next morning, it was expected to be double or more in bulk and could be put in the forms.
The cost of making Kulich in today’s dollars would be equivalent to taking out a second mortgage on your house. Everything was done to insure that the dough would not get cold because it contained so much butter and other rare and expensive ingredients, like candied fruit and vanilla beans, lots of them. Heaven forbid that the dough should chill, which meant it would be as heavy as lead and would have to be thrown away. The antidote was to start the whole thing all over again. Thank goodness I don’t remember my mother ever having to do that with her Kulich, but some people did. It was nothing short of a tragedy.
Proofing of the yeast was another potential challenge because if one used the yeast without testing it, one could have a disaster of another kind.
Perhaps the no jokes approach stemmed from the Easter in Siberia where my mother’s side of the family came from. My great grandfather, Jacob Urusoff, was chief of police in his village and a dedicated churchgoer. He later served as inspector of Mines. When the Bolsheviks took over, Jacob was in and out of jail himself for refusing to join the communist party. His last incarceration was for attending services over the Easter holidays, the most sacred of all Eastern Orthodox celebrations. By that time services were held secretly, in clandestine makeshift churches, to avoid arrest. My great grandmother was baking her Kulichi. In those days the chore was even more daunting, as the wood stoked ovens made temperature control very difficult, though this was something every housewife had to contend with each time she baked.
The other tradition is that Kulich, even if it is baked a week or two ahead of the holiday, is never cut until Easter day and no earlier than after midnight services. Great grandmother Olga had a hard time baking the Kulichi that year and was concerned about how they had come out. To her dismay when the bread was finally cut, it had a huge hole in the middle. It wasn’t right. She took it as a bad omen. That Easter the Bolsheviks’ firing squad killed her husband.
All this history preceded a funny situation decades later when my girlfriend, Elaine, wanted to learn how to make Kulich before her family moved to Buffalo, New York. Mama agreed to have Elaine watch her prepare Easter bread. On the appointed evening, Elaine, baby Teddy, husband Ted, and Countess, the family dog, all marched through the front door of our 21st avenue San Francisco home, and that alone “changed the vibe” to something very different from the atmosphere Mama was used to. It was anything but quiet, controlled or serious. Elaine, a very energetic and interested student, followed my mother around like a shadow, taking copious notes and asking a million questions, all of which Mama answered with great patience.
To top it all off, the doorbell rang, and Alex Semintovsky, a family friend and another high-energy person, arrived from Los Angeles, unannounced, for a surprise visit. Alex often stayed at my parents’ home, but this was certainly not the time, nor the day my mother would ever have picked to make Kulich had she known she would have a houseful of people.
In spite of all the seeming distractions she had to proceed. Until that day, my mother had never written down her recipe. Like I said earlier, she would assemble her notes from last year, uncle Nick’s recipe, aunt Mary’s, notes from how my grandmother or Aunt Claudia made it “this year” and would pick and choose a step here, an ingredient there, and I was supposed to watch and learn. This was the approach year after year, until the night Elaine came over. Thank God. It’s due to this set of circumstances that Kulich Lobanovsky exists today.
Epilogue: Mama’s Kulich gained fame in Buffalo, New York. The first Easter that Elaine baked it, the local parish priest offered her fifteen dollars for the recipe. As Elaine put it, “He knew this was the real thing. In Buffalo, those of Russian descent had been there so long that their version of Kulich was more like coffee cake, but baked in tall, round tins. When the priest tasted mine he knew it was the real thing. Mine was authentic. He loved it!”
The Russian ship, the Rurik, introduced a few posts back, was well equipped and staffed for its 1815 voyage down from the Alaskan chain to California and then to the South Seas. Aboard was Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz, the ship’s doctor for whom the California poppy was named: Eschscholitzia californica, the first time the name “California” was used in scientific literature. Eschscholtz, ever the gentleman, in turn named a bee after the ship’s voyage naturalist, Chamisso.
Russians aid the Californios: The governor of Spanish California at Monterey made a diplomatic visit to the (San Francisco) Presidio in October of 1815 to meet Captain Kotezbue. In firing the cannons to salute the governor’s arrival, two Presidio artillerymen were injured. It was the Rurik’s Doctor Eschscholtz who provided the emergency care as the Spanish, though charged with guarding the bay and Mission Dolores had no medical personnel. Their “cure for all reasons” was blood-letting which the Russians thought did more harm than actual good.
The Choris Popcorn-flower was named after another of the explorer-voyagers, the ship’s artist, Louis Choris. More about the last of our notable Russian visitors, Captain Kotzebue, inspiration for Czar Kotzevon in the fairy tale, The Prince, the Bear and the Golden Poppy, to be posted this week.
It’s the season: Sturgeon, that fabulous fish famous for its caviar, is starting to show up at our local Sonoma Market. Wild and delicious, if you haven’t tried this fish , this is the time. Below is a family recipe for Sturgeon Salad. If it’s absolutely frrrrressshhhh, sturgeon tastes more like chicken than fish. It’s a firm yet light meat and goes well with vegetables like green beans.
1 lb. sturgeon, 2 stalks celery, 1 bay leaf, 5 peppercorns. Poach the sturgeon in 1 quart salted water, with the celery, bay leaf and peppercorns added. Bring all ingredients to a boil, turn down to low, and place your fish in the water. Cover and poach for 20 minutes of until the meat is opaque throughout. Remove from the water, let cool and flake the meat in to a medium mixing bowl. Add to the fish: 1 lb. cooked french cut green beans, 1/2 cup minced onion,, 1 tsp r garlic powder (or 2 cloves, pressed), the juice of half a lemon, 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh (or dry) dill, a few grinds of pepper, and bind with 3 oz. creme fraiche (or Knudsen sour cream) mixed with 3 oz. Best Foods mayonnaise. If desired,add sea salt to taste (about 1/4 tsp.).
The sturgeon is a prehistoric fish found in Eurasia and North America. In the United States it makes its home in the Mississippi and Columbia rivers as well as in California’s Sacramento delta.
(Image courtesy Google).
The following are more, little known facts about the Russian influence in California history which were used in the “…..Golden Poppy” fairy tale posted a couple of days ago. A third member of the the Russian ship, Rurik, barely 20 years old with no previous seagoing experience was Louis Choris, a Russian Ukrainian of German descent.
Fact: Today, we can thank Choris for being the first to capture the landscape and scenery of San 
Francisco bay and portraits of native Americans, their dance, dress and customs in his paintings and lithographs. The first published illustration of the California Grizzly Bear (1822) was Choris’. He painted the bear while the poor animal was tethered to fight a wild bull, “entertainment ” called “bear-baiting.” The fight was set up by the Presidio’s Spaniards for the visiting Russians who found the practice “shameful.”(Image courtesy the Bancroft Library)
Fact: Choris can be credited with the first printed record of music in early California – Indian chants in musical notation. His dedicated attempts to preserve native cultures was exhibited in the many “firsts” he left for posterity. Without the interest and work of these early Russian explorers we would be missing much information and visual documentation , as other early American, European, Mexican explorers of the time “seemed to have no concern for the Indians’ history, customs, beliefs or languages,” according to Choris. 
Fact: Choris painted the only existing portrait of King Kamehameha I shortly before his death.(Google Images).
More on the Russians in California, the Rurik’s captain and doctor, in the next post.
The source of my inspiration for yesterday’s fairytale (see post below) were the men on board the actual Imperial Russian ship, Rurik, which set off in 1815 to search in waters unknown for new scientific discoveries. Captain Otto von Kotzebue, himself an 
amateur naturalist, supported his staff’s endeavors in discovering, studying and documenting natural history.
Fact: Chamisso, shown here as a young man (courtesy Google images) was the inspiration for Princes Mstislav and Zebu. The ship’s naturalist and interpreter spoke 6 languages: Spanish,French, German, Greek, Latin and English. Chamisso discovered the California Poppy which he found on the grounds of the Presidio (now San Francisco) and named Eschscholtizia californica, honoring the ship’s doctor, J.E. Eschscholtz. The species designation of California Poppy was the first use of “California” in scientific nomenclature. All total Chamisso collected nearly 70 plants on this voyage including two new genera and 32 new species, among the our (now) state flower.
Fact: Chamisso‘s book about Pacific travel (1836) became a bestseller of its day. He also published the first grammar of the Hawaiian language, based on his studies when the Rurik spent time in the Sandwich Islands after leaving San Francisco bay.
Long ago in a faraway land lived Czar Kotzevon who had 4 daughters as beautiful as the morning sunrise, Olga, Maria, Tatiana and Anna. His only son, Mstislav, was a brave and handsome youth with hair as gold as the setting sun as long and flowing as the waves 
of the ocean.The czar’s kingdom was very cold , frozen under sheets of icy blue snow most of the year. So he decided to send Mstislav to the far corners of the earth through unknown waters to see what he could see and tell what he would know. Czar Kotzevon was aware of the dangers of such a mission. Therefore, he gave his son his finest ship, the Kirur, and sent him on his way, well provisioned and accompanied by his cousins, Siro and Zebu, able seamen in their own right. The young princes of the Kirur were well educated, talented and handsome. Ciro was an artist as well as a musician who painted pictures that took one’s breath away and wrote songs that even the birds of the kingdom sang each morning. Zebu was a scientist who spoke six languages some of which his own brother did not know or understand.
The journey of the Kirur took many moons. Poor Czar Kotzevon began to think he had lost his son to the appetite of the Giant Five Headed Seamonster who lived in the depths of the Oceans Unknown. A fourth spring rolled by and now summer was turning the corner in his kingdom. Each morning the czar walked along the shore hoping to catch sight of the Kirur. Each day he returned to the palace downhearted and disappointed, not having sighted any ships on the distant horizon. Until one morning. Great joy! The pages announced to Czar Kotzevon that his son and nephews had come home! The czar quickly dressed himself in his best caftan, bejewled with stones so beautiful one was blinded by their brilliance. When, in his finest of finery he was ready to greet the precious explorers, the czar, bursting with happiness, proceeded to the throne room to greet Mstislav, Siro and Zebu. He hugged and kissed them with tears in his eyes. At last they were all home, safe and sound after an absence longer than imagined.
The commotion in the palace sparked the curiosity of the four princesses. Soon Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anna were flying to the throne room faster than hummingbirds. The sisters threw themselves around Mstislav and gave him a great, big hug simultaneously, so happy were they to see their brother and cousins once again. “My dearest sisters, for my father I claimed lands and mountains where the sun shines warmly most of the year, for my mother I brought mountains of rare furs, but for you, dear ones, I brought surprises that no one on this earth has ever seen before from the New Enchanted World far, far away from our beloved land, !”Having spoken those words, Mstislav proceeded to pull out of his large and colorful embroidered Bag With No Bottom special gifts, one-by-one, for each princess. “For you Tatiana, I give this service of the finest silver; for you, Olga, this painting of a magical bear they call the Grizzly. For you, Maria, I painted this picture of a poppy so plentiful, gold and shiny that when it covers the endless hills in the Enchanted World they call it the “Land of Fire.” Lastly, Anna, for you I brought this endless rope which the natives of the Enchanted World use for many purposes. When you ride your beautiful steed along the sands near the ocean, we will raise a flag here at the castle so you will never lose your way and will always find a clearly marked direction home.” With those words, Mstislav, his cousins and sisters followed Czar Kotzevon and his czarina to the great dining hall where the kingdom celebrated and feasted to honor the return of the brave adventurers for forty days and forty nights. So ends the first of many stories about the voyage and travels of Prince Mstisalv.
Sound like a Russian fairy tale? Indeed, after reading the Winter 2011 issue of The Argonaut, the journal of the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, I was inspired to write the above, fictional story in the style of Russian fairy tales which are loved by children round the world. But let’s take a look a the facts behind the fiction:
Fact: The Russians were conducting a friendly, scientific exploration at the same time the British were burning the White House in Washington, D.C., Dolly Madison was bravely tearing down GeorgeWashington’s portrait from the White House walls, and the French (under Napoleon) were attacking Russia in Europe. The Rurik, the Russian ship which arrived in San Francisco bay in 1815 shortly after the establishment of Fort Ross in 1812, was a well equipped sailing vessel with young, talented and highly educated participants on board: Captain Otto von Kotzebue (28), naturalist, interpreter and scholar Adelbert von Chamisso (33), artist Ludovik Choris (barely 20), and the ship’s doctor, Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz.
Fact: Much of California and San Francisco’s early history and scenery would be missing today if it were not for these Russian explorers. More facts to come with tomorrow’s blog! (California Poppy illustration, courtesy of Google images.)
Tonight, Friday, March 2nd the Red Army Chorus and dance ensemble performs at Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium. If you haven’t heard them before, the are truly amazing. Tickets range in price, though the auditorium really has no bad seats. For last minute tix call the Box Office at 415.499.6800. You can charge by phone and be in for a fabulous evening of Russian singing and folk dancing.
With the spring Sonoma sun comes the desire to be out and about. Spring is Sonoma’s 
crowning glory, full of breathtaking scenes to experience driving through our glorious Bay Area countryside and less than an hour away from the big city. Try detouring through the Russian River countryside and visit Sebastopol via Hwy 116 or Hwy 12 and you’ll catch the first to show off- the white plum blossoms and yellow clouds of mimosas. While allergy sufferers may not be as thrilled with the pollen everyone may enjoy stopping in at the Antique Society. Not only is it a treasure box for great finds, it also houses the Snapdragon Bakery. Opened a little over a year ago corporate escapee, Tracy Walls, the cafe has already received the 2011 Best of Bohemian Writer’s Pick award. There you’ll find lunch specials and Tracy’s mouthwatering cupcakes. Her latest creation, available in vanilla or chocolate is the Toffee Coffee Cupcake, both regular and mini sizes. If you try the minis, have more than one, or buy a dozen to take home. They may not make it back to the house!
(Spapdragon Bakery located at 2661 Graventstein Hwy. So., 707.823.0144 is open Thurs/.Mon. from 10 a.m. The Russian River countryside offers much in the way of food and entertainment from canoeing to antique hunting and from cafes to gourmet restaurants. Check out the Sonoma Visitors Center for more details.)
