A Demonstration Event with Chef Bonnie Morales of Kachka

Join us for this demonstration class.  Sit back and enjoy tastings while learning about the food.

Explore Russia's rich and colorful food culture with this vibrant, lively book and excellent chef! Join us for a demonstration with Bonnie Morales, a James Beard Award-nominated Chef and Co-Owner of Kachka, LLC, her acclaimed restaurant in Portland Oregon. Opened in 2014, Kachka features a menu and style of service firmly rooted in the Soviet era, with nods even further back to both czarist excess and traditional rustic foodways.

With her debut cookbook, KACHKA: A Return to Russian Cooking (Flatiron Books, 2017),* Bonnie brings her restaurant Kachka into your home kitchen, enlivening Russian cuisine with an emphasis on vibrant, locally sourced ingredients. 

Bonnie will demonstrate three recipes from her cookbook (pelmeni, a type of Russian dumpling; cabbage rolls; and Brindza Pashtet, the classic Russian cheese spread), as well as tell stories, answer questions, and sign our books!

*A copy of Bonnie's cookbook is included in the price of the class.

An excerpt from Bonnie's 2017 book:

Kachka’s menu is firmly rooted in the Soviet era, with nods even further back to both czarist excess and traditional rustic foodways. But my own family’s story—and the restaurant itself—owes its very existence to a singular moment seventy-five years ago. In October 1941, in a little town called Bobr in Belarus, the Jews were rounded up into the ghetto, and forced to dig a large hole. The next steps were pretty clear. So my grandmother Rakhil Altshuler layered on all of her warmest clothes. Bundled up her three-month-old baby, kissed her parents goodbye, and slipped out under the barbed wire fence. A day later, all of Bobr’s 961 Jews were killed.

Meet the Instructor

As the first-generation American daughter of Belarusian immigrants, chef Bonnie Morales has a unique view on the culture and food of the former Soviet Union. Bonnie honed her skills in several Michelin-starred restaurants in New York and Chicago. Bonnie and her husband, Israel, opened Kachka to much critical acclaim in 2014, receiving accolades from publications such as Bon Appétit, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, GQ, Elle, Zagat's, and Food & Wine. Bonnie lives in Portland, Oregon. Kachka: A Return to Russian Cooking is her first cookbook.