Andy Warhol was a mama’s boy. His Factory parties were big and loud and lasted deep into the night, but when it came to his daily bread, he sought sustenance—often in solitude—at his mother’s table. “Mother liked her privacy, so Andy didn’t invite people over to eat,” says Warhol’s big brother Paul, now 85, who lives about an hour south of where the three Warhola boys grew up in Pittsburgh. Andy dropped the A from his last name and brought his mother along when he moved to New York City, in 1952. There, as in Pittsburgh, Julia Warhola cooked her baby son hearty delicacies from the Slovakian old country, from where she and Andy’s father hailed. Camin soup (pronounced CAH-min) was a favorite of the Warhola boys, especially the pop artist himself. “It was a big request of his,” says Paul, who, after their mother died, would often visit Andy in New York and make the soup with caraway he had bought in Pittsburgh. “It reminded us of Mother’s house.” Another favorite of Andy’s: Campbell’s tomato soup. “Campbell’s never paid him for that painting. They just left two cases of soup for him at his door,” says Paul. “But he really loved that stuff, and often when I visited him, that’s what he was eating for lunch.”
Andy Warhol's Camin Soup
5 cups water
3 ounces caraway seeds
cheesecloth
string
2 Tbsp. butter
3 Tbsp. + 1 cup flour
6 eggs
salt
1 Boil water in a pot on the stove. 2 Place caraway seeds in cheesecloth; wrap and tie. 3 Drop seed pouch into boiling water. Simmer for 2 hours, then remove seed pouch and discard. 4 In a pan, combine melted butter with 3 Tbsp. flour. Stir and brown for 10 to 15 minutes to create a prudska. Add a bit of water to thin it. 5 Dump prudska into the pot of water. 6 Beat 5 eggs well, then slowly pour them through a fork into the pot in a circular motion, creating noodlelike strings in the pot. 7 For dumplings, mix 1 cup flour with 1 egg and a pinch of salt; form into a ball of dough. Add water if too dry. 8 Break dough into ½ tsp. pieces, drop them into soup, and stir. 9 Salt (but don’t pepper) to taste. Serves 4.
