#“dough with the memory of matzo and soup”

[anachrosims]

Chanukah Sameach to the Jewish simmers on my dash <3 <3 <3

[mariacallous]

“As far as matzo-ball soup, my mother made the best,” Ronald Lauder said the other night on the Upper East Side, in the bookshop of the Neue Galerie, the art museum he founded. Lauder, seventy-eight, the younger son of Estée and Joseph Lauder, and a billionaire heir to their cosmetics fortune, was there to celebrate the publication of a cookbook. “Honey Cake and Latkes: Recipes from the Old World by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Survivors” was organized by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, of which he is the chairman.

In the shop, before the book’s launch, Lauder sat with a handful of its contributors. How did the idea originate? “When you’re dealing with survivors, when you’re dealing with Jews, everyone has a different version of events,” he said. “But there’s only one version that’s correct, and that’s mine.” In January of 2020, Lauder had invited a hundred and twenty survivors to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau on the seventy-fifth anniversary of its liberation. At dinner one night, talk turned to gefilte fish. The group stayed in touch. Maria Zalewska, the foundation’s Polish-born director, began to gather recipes.

More than one survivor remembers sustaining fellow-prisoners with vivid descriptions of the foods they’d eaten in their earlier lives. Tova Friedman (kasha varnishkes, carrot tzimmes), a sprightly eighty-four-year-old with a silvery-blond bob, was five and a half when she was sent to Auschwitz. “Food is home,” she said. “And if you talk about it the smell comes to you and home comes back.”

Eugene Ginter, eighty-three, who was liberated just before he turned six, had a more complicated relationship with smells. “When I came in Auschwitz,” he recalled, “I looked through the wooden slats of the cattle car, and I said, ‘It’s very pretty,’ because it had trees. But then the smell, it was a sweet smell. It was the human bodies being burned.” Ginter’s contributions to the book are the foods his mother made after the war, to fatten his emaciated frame: dark chocolate shaved over buttered black bread; a boiled potato mashed with buttermilk; kogel mogel, whipped egg whites beaten with yolks and sugar.

Across the hall, in Café Sabarsky, servers circulated with trays of champagne and bite-size versions of some of the book’s recipes: Elisabeth Citrom’s eggplant salad with crispy rye croutons; David Marks’s rakott krumpli, Hungarian layered potatoes with cheese; Goldie Finkelstein’s rugelach. Sitting on a banquette, Lois Flamholz, ninety-four, a survivor who was born in Czechoslovakia, looked at a photograph of herself in the book in which she presses circles of dough together for jelly cookies. “I miss those cookies!” she cried. “I can’t stand,” she explained. “I stopped cooking, I stopped baking.”

On another banquette, the actor and director Joel Grey recounted, to the producer Jeffrey Seller, his experience filming “Cabaret” in Germany, in 1971. “I was terrified on the flight,” he said. “I stepped off the airplane, stood on the ground, and wept.”

Lauder moved to a lectern. “The first title of the book was ‘Auschwitz Recipes,’ ” he said. “It didn’t go too far.” Midway through his thank-yous, he turned toward the door. “Before I say anything else, a very special woman is coming in now, Marion Wiesel.” He went on, “It was Marion who I called to get the recipe from her husband, Elie. And, today, the latkes that you ate were from Elie’s recipe.”

The latke recipe was, unusually, absent onions. Later, a pushy interlocutor asked Mrs. Wiesel, ninety-one, a survivor herself, and a gifted translator, if it was true that her late husband didn’t care for them. She said, “I can’t believe you’re interested in whether or not he liked onions.” Elisha, the Wiesels’ son, said, “My father preferred to focus on the positive. So rather than an onion-hater, I would think of him as a chocolate-lover.” According to family lore, Marion had ensnared Elie with her latkes, and also bribed him into quitting smoking by promising him a Jaguar. “There was no Jaguar,” Elisha said.

In the lobby, on the way out, Tova Friedman, whose TikTok account, TovaTok, has nearly half a million followers, held court. Thanks to her new memoir, “The Daughter of Auschwitz,” she’s been invited around the world to tell her story. “So they took us to this . . . high tea,” she said, describing a visit to London. “We got that thing, full of little sandwiches. So I said, ‘What happened to the crust? That’s the best part of the bread!’ ” She went on, “You eat your soggy white bread, I got an idea. I’m gonna invent chai tea,” as in the Hebrew word for life, pronounced gutturally. “It’s gonna be rye toast, with crusts, and it’s gonna be lox. It’s gonna be gefilte fish.” ♦

[sfarticles]

Taking a bite out of the Big Apple's Lower East Side

Check out my latest column in The Times Herald and other suburban Philadelphia newspapers. 

https://www.timesherald.com/2021/08/13/taking-a-bite-out-of-the-big-apples-lower-east-side/

New York City’s proximity to where I live enables me to check out all that is new, and in the case here old, in the Big Apple. It has easy access from Greater Philadelphia as well.

For each visit, I choose a different neighborhood to explore. Little did I know, a visit to Manhattan’s Lower East Side would take me back to some oldies, places this native New Yorker’s parents took him to as a child. Many been around for decades and in some cases over a century.

With Autumn weather around the corner, it is the perfect time to explore the food scene in New York City. Rich in history and culture, the Lower East Side welcomed immigrants from around the globe. In the 19th century it was a center for garment manufacturing. Today the gentrification of the area has caused rents to escalate and the influx of young and trendy residents — along with the accoutrements they expect such as boutiques, clubs and upscale restaurants.

It is, however, still the place many older folks enjoy. You can step back in time, visit historic sights and experience food establishments from another era. Your Lower East Side visit must include a visit to the https://www.tenement.org/plan-a-visit/ where you can get a glimpse of life in the past by touring apartments from the 19th and 20th centuries. Your guides are most knowledgeable about that era and share history that relates to current conversations about immigration. Inquire about building tours, neighborhood walking tours and virtual tenement tours.

Stepping into Katz’s Delicatessen (205 East Houston St., katzsdelicatessen.com 1-800-4HOTDOG) was like stepping back in time; the place hasn’t changed a bit. Founded in 1888, thousands of people from around the corner and around the globe dine weekly at this legendary deli, known for their piled-high pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, hot dogs and New York-style cheesecake.

The matzo ball soup was almost as good as grandma made. I knew I had to order kishka (stuffed derma), a side dish always served at the Bar Mitzvah affairs I attended as a teen. It was a favorite of mine and I haven’t seen it on a menu in decades. When I need my fix of this handmade stuffed sausage, an old Jewish favorite, it is good to know it’s one of the many items Katz’s ships.

The next stop on memory lane was Kossar’s Bagels and Bialys (367 Grand St., http://kossars.com/), founded in 1936 and the oldest operating bialy bakery in the United States. Bagels, which they bake as well, are familiar to all, but bialys, perhaps not. Often called the Jewish English muffin, a bialy is softer, chewier and lighter than a bagel, with no hole in the middle. The traditional bialy’s center is usually filled with roasted onions or garlic. If you don’t care about tradition, check out their sesame, sun-dried tomato, olive or whole wheat onion versions.

According to Kossar’s, thousands of Jewish immigrants arrived from Poland and settled on the Lower East Side. Like most ethnic groups, they brought with them their local traditions and foods from their homeland. Jews from Bialystok, Poland, brought their local bread, called a bialy. Unlike Katz’s they have modernized their store, but the bialys remain the same as I remember them; so good, I brought home a dozen.

A visit to Yonah Shimmel Knish Bakery (137 East Houston St., knishery.com) was next. Entering the store was another step back in time to a childhood favorite. The business began as a pushcart in 1890 and has been located in the same storefront since 1910. I wonder how many people don’t know what a knish is, yet alone a Yonah Shimmel knish. Many cultures have similar culinary creations that are dough-covered and either baked, fried or grilled and filled with various ingredients; think calzones, empanada, pirogi or kolache.

At this “knishery,” they are baked and filled with potato or kasha, the most popular, or mushroom, spinach, sweet potato and broccoli. For those with a sweet tooth, a cheese knish with either apple, cherry, blueberry or chocolate make for a heavenly dessert. And, don’t forget to wash it all down, try a real New York Egg Cream.

Since 1914, Russ & Daughters (179 East Houston St., russanddaughters.com) has been a top-notch appetizing store (according to Wikipedia, an appetizing store is in reference to Jewish cuisine and best understood as a store that sells “the foods one eats with bagels”). Russ & Daughters is a purveyor of smoked fish like lox and whitefish, herring, chopped liver, caviar, cream cheese spreads and, one of my favorites, chocolate babka, among many other traditional delicacies.

In 2014, Russ & Daughters Café (127 Orchard St., russanddaughterscafe.com) opened on the 100th birthday of the store and is operated by the fourth generation of the Russ family. The New York Times called it “one of the 10 best new restaurants in New York.” I had such fond memories of the visits to the store so many years ago, I now needed to experience the restaurant.

Open kitchens are my favorite, so I can peek in to see what goes on behind the scenes. The soda fountain bar prepares homemade sodas and the iconic New York egg cream which was a must for this native New Yorker. The theme of the original store, where you pull a ticket to get your number for service, is carried out on the custom wallpaper in the restaurant’s rest rooms. Wow…what attention to detail, I thought.

Dinner was nostalgic for me after growing up eating many of dishes on the menu, albeit some of them with modern twists — potato latkes with wild salmon roe and crème fraiche and apple sauce and sour cream, kasha varnishkas (buckwheat, caramelized onion, bow tie noodles) with a poached egg on top; Super Heebster (bagel toast, whitefish and baked salmon salad, wasabi-infused fish roe, horseradish dill cream cheese).

I couldn’t resist the babka French toast (Russ & Daughters chocolate babka, sour cream and berries) for dessert. Hopefully, during my next visit, the babka ice cream sandwich (babka ice cream between slices of Russ & Daughters babka) will be back on the menu. Can’t you tell I am a chocolate babka fan?

Here is a classic recipe I use to make kasha varnishkes, a dish Eastern European Jews brought to America. It is one of my favorite side dishes, although many times a big bowl is eaten as a main course.

KASHA VARNISHKES

1 cup minced onions

½ cup chicken fat (butter or olive oil can be substituted)

2 cups cooked kasha (buckwheat groats; I like the coarse one)

3 cups cooked farfalle

1½ teaspoons salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

Brown the onions in the fat. Combine with the cooked kasha, farfalle, salt and pepper. Toss well until mixed. Serve hot. Makes 6 side-dish servings.

If your visit to New York City takes you to Times Square, check out Le Marais, 150 West 49th St. https://www.lemarais.net/ I learned about this restaurant in a unique way. I was at a used bookstore perusing through, what of course, the cookbook section where I came across the restaurant’s cookbook. The title “Le Marais, A Rare Steakhouse…Well Done,” was so creative, I thought. So, I read the forward by Senator Joe Lieberman and his wife Hadassah. They wrote, “Where else would a non-Jewish Portuguese immigrant open a French bistro, hire an Irish Catholic as its executive chef, and create one of the finest and most successful kosher restaurants in the United States?”

It is interesting to go “behind the scenes” of a restaurant” and learn its background and history through their cookbooks. A visit was made, and LeMarais is on par with the more familiar upscale steakhouses I have dined at. The soup du jour was Roasted Jerusalem Artichoke, prepared with dry white wine, veal bacon, mushrooms, celery and spiced perfectly with white pepper and black peppercorns. The Steak au Poivre, black pepper-crusted tournedos was expertly cooked to my liking. The chocolholic I am, the Warm Chocolate Cake was a must for the sweet ending to this dining experience. If you are not into red meat, there are fish, chicken and salad options as well.

Please check each establishment’s hours and protocols prior to visiting.

Stephen Fries, is a professor and coordinator of the Hospitality Management Programs at Gateway Community College, in New Haven, CT. He has been a food and culinary travel columnist for the past 13 years and is co-founder of and host of “Worth Tasting,” a culinary walking tour of downtown New Haven, CT. email me at Stephen@stephenfries.com For more, go to stephenfries.com.

[onthemazewall]

Pesach

Passover is Friday and for the third time in my life I’m doing a seder. This is definitely the most challenging. There is no kosher aisle in the grocery stores, no convient pre-made matzah or gefilte fish, everything is from scratch. Well, except the chicken liver paste, which I’m relieved to find I can just buy since I have never liked making it myself. We’re having over the kids’ bonus bedestemor and one family of friends with children of the appropriate ages and who are quite religious, which is a rarity here. Specifically that the husband is very much enamored of Judaism and how it connects to his own faith, so perfect guests for pesach, which I don’t consider a religious ceremony per se, but part of celebrating Jewish culture is paying homage to our Jewish G-d. I have few memories of the seders of my childhood, because they were too late in the evening and I pretty much slept through them, since sunrise/sunset cultures were not designed for places like Scandinavia where the sun doesn’t set til the middle of the night in summer and is already at a shockingly late 8:30 PM, I decided to just go all in and make the seder start at 3PM, so that the kids are awake and chipper. I toyed with the idea of wearing a yarmulke, but it feels like such a symbol of masculinity, which quite frankly is a spiritual step down and I have no interest in adopting male Jewish power, so I’m going old school and covering my hair with a tichel. I’ve got matching shiny gold dresses for the kids and have told our guests to wear their Sunday best. I’ve stock piled lamb and have soup frozen in the basement waiting for matzo balls and that was my biggest challenge: making matzo.

Hot oven and pizza stone helped a lot, but I had to try two different recipes and have resolved next year to buy a tortilla press. I ended up adding a little olive oil to the dough to give it more elasticity. Keeping the whole process to under 18 minutes wasn’t that hard and pretty fun. We ended up having to put the oven on broil to get the tops right, but it came out quite well. A bit thicker and chewier than the grocery store variety, but probably more authentic too. My son’s børnehave wants him to share the tradition after Easter, having no idea that a somber freedom from bondage holy day is not as easier for a four year old to share as the easter eggs and chocolate bunnies of Denmark’s Påske celebration, but I figure if he makes some more matzo with me and brings it in with haroseth it should go over pretty well.

What strikes me about this is how almost 6,000 years later, we’re still moving from country to country looking for the best future for our children, how our recipes are still evolving or going back to our roots depending on what food stuffs are available and in a lot of ways, having to reinvent Passover in our new country is carrying on the very essence of Pesach and engaging in this tradition that has been passed down for so long by people doing exactly what I am this week.