As many of you know, my father’s family was Volga German. This ethnic group has also been known as Germans from Russian and their dialect called vulgar or low German. (Neither of these descriptions of the language are accurate. Volga German was simply a spoken and written dialect that separated from the mainstream German language in the mid-eighteen century) My family, farmers, left what would become modern Germany (Bavaria) in the mid 18th century at the invitation of Catherine the Great. They settled in a colony called Frank, midway along the Volga River. Our family names were Koch (much later anglicized to Cook, my maiden name) and Lebsack. More than one hundred years after arriving and settling in Russia, Volga Germans either immigrated out of Russia when their villages faced severe economic or military pressure, or were wiped out by a series of genocidal campaigns, the most final and deadly being the Bolshevik revolution and the early pogroms of Stalin. (By 1925, Volga Germans remaining in Russia had either been sent to work camps in Siberia or slaughtered - brothers of my great grandmother who failed to emigrate were never heard from again after 1922-23).
My family settled in south central Nebraska along the Republican River in a little town called Culbertson. They were farmers like most everyone else in the area. My great-great grandfather (Peter Koch) immigrated from Russia in the 1870’s and became quite a successful farmer in Hitchcock, County, NE. One of his middle sons, born here in the states, was my great grandfather Phillip. He married Elizabeth Lebsack, who immigrated from their Volga German village called Frank, Russia in 1903. Together, they raised seven children. My grandfather Joseph, was the fifth child and second born son. The family and most of the community spoke Volga German at home and English in town.
The family just barely survived the drought and depression of the 1930’s. My great grandfather made the difficult decision to sell the family farm in 1940, and he along with his wife and four grown sons all moved to Southern California. They settled in Inglewood and Hawthorne near what is now LAX. All of the boys either enlisted or worked in war related jobs. After WWII, two of the brothers went on to long careers in aerospace, while my grandfather and his next younger brother went into the earthmoving and construction business. Their company is responsible for building much of the highway that now connects Yerington with Silver Springs at hwy 50. That is how our family first became acquainted with Northern Nevada. From there, both my dad and uncle attended UNR on full athletic scholarships, winning All-American honors in football.
After college, my dad returned to Southern California and partnered up with my grandfather in a scaled down earthmoving company. We were very lucky to live only a couple miles from my grandparents growing up. We were at their house everyday. After both my great grandfathers passed, my great grandmothers lived with my grandparents at different times.
I especially loved the years we had “Banner” with us. Banner was my great grandmother who was Volga German. I have no idea how my dad came up with that name for her, but it stuck. She taught me to cook old Volga German dishes, to stitch and crochet. When I was very little, I loved taking naps with my head in her lap.
The other night, I got to thinking about a strudel dish she made and how different it is from what most people think of as strudel today. Ours was a savory strudel and pan fried. We’d often have it on Friday or Saturday nights. What a treat!
(Savory) Strudels
4 cups flour
1tsp salt
1tsp baking powder
1 large egg
Warm water to soften dough
Oil or lard
Sour Kraut or chopped cabbage with onion
Wishek Sausage (German) or hamburger seasoned and mixed with minced onion and caraway seeds. (We often used ground game meat like deer or elk mixed with a little ground pork growing up).
Mix flour, salt and baking powder in large bowl . Make well at top and add beaten egg. Slowly stir in warm water and make a soft dough. Knead dough until smooth. Place in warm spot, cover with towel and let rest 1-2 hours. Knead again, divide into four portions. Roll each out to about pie crust size, cover and let rest again one hour. Now on floured board or table, start stretching the dough out using your hands. Ive always stretched it out over an old pillow in a cotton pillow case until it is so thin you can read the newspaper through it.
Now starting at one side, put a line of cabbage, roll a couple times, now dab in raw meat mixture and keep rolling to the end. Slice off pieces about 3-4 inches long, bend in two and pan fry in med temp electric skillet with 1/2 inch hot oil. I cover with lid and generally let cook 20-25 minutes, turning once, waiting till a nice crust forms on bottom. Scoop out of frying pan and serve hot.
When we were kids, we’d eat these with jam or cranberry sauce. My Banner would take any leftovers and add them to a simple cream soup the next day (roux of butter and flour to thicken milk and either chicken or beef stock). Absolutely delicious.
Now, if you are stuck on sweet strudels, feel free to use my dough recipe, and add sweet meats (nuts) and fruit.
Banner made delicious cherry and plum strudels. She’d pit and mix halved pie cherries or ripe plumbs (diced) with sugar and cinnamon (sometimes cloves or allspice) and roll them in the same way as the savory recipe.
Then, instead of frying them, she would pop them into a simple sweetened milk soup (milk and sugar). The strudels would float when done. We’d eat them right in the hot sweetened milk, usually with a pat of butter on top. Seeing the smile on my granddad’s face when she’d set a bowl in front of him was one of my sweetest memories of childhood. I think sweet cherry strudels was one of his best memories as a child. After Banner passed when I was almost 14, Papa often asked his sisters to make this for him when they visited.
Distinct ethnic groups like Volga Germans have kept our cultural identity alive through our food traditions as well as genealogy and historical living-history projects. While much of our language dialect no longer survives in full time speakers, most of us retain at least a few words to remind us of the stories our grandparents and great grandparents told of a land and life that they could never return to, but that held both wonderful and tragic memories.
Kris Stewart is a rancher in Paradise Valley, Nevada.