What is it that I am doing wrong?
You are creating a column family using CQL and then trying to access it from the CLI. This doesn't work by design and cannot be done, if you however tried accessing the column family from a java driver that supports CQL, you wouldn't have a problem.
If you want support with thrift for a cql created table try adding the WITH COMPACT STORAGE
statement to your column family declaration:
CREATE TABLE "userRecommendations" (
uid text PRIMARY KEY,
app set<text>
) WITH COMPACT STORAGE;