Cross-posted at davka.org
Tiny Vial of Pharisäer
What do you put in your coffee?
Pharisees of course
Ever-sensitive to appearances of Jewish references in popular culture, I was a bit surprised to read Maureen Dowd’s headline in the New York Times on Sunday, July 19, 2009: “Pharisees on the Potomac”
I did not see any mention of late antiquity in her column and it was not until a number of hours later that I realized she had used the Christian allusion to Pharisees as hypocrites! Shame on her and shame on her editors (I wonder if William Safire saw the column). As the Wikipedia makes quite clear:
Exhibit on the History and Evolution of Wheat at growseed.org
The Heritage Wheat Conservancy is restoring the almost lost heritage wheats of the Old World and colonial New England. After years of collecting rare wheats with traditional farmers in remote European and Middle Eastern villages, Eli Rogosa hosted a field day for researchers, flour companies and organic farmers last Thursday in Massachusetts. 96 varieties of delicious rare world wheat on the verge of extinction are thriving at theUniversity of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Organic Research Farm. World heritage wheats, once the staple food of the western world, are on the verge of extinction. Modern wheats are bred for uniformity, and dwarfed so they don’t fall over under the intensive agrochemicals of industrial farms and for convenient harvest height. However, modern wheats are lower in nutrition and flavor, and are not well suited to organic soils due to their stubby roots and short stalks.
According to Eli Rogosa, Founder of the Conservancy, “The best way to preserve the delicious ancient wheats are to market them to today’s discerning artisan bakers and gourmet chefs who seek the highest quality, nutrient-rich foods.”
(Originally published at My Jewish Learning)
Russians had been drinking tea for fewer than 175 years when Klonimos Wolf Wissotzky founded the Wissotzky Tea Company in 1849 at the age of 25. His timing could not have been better. According to The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide by Mary Lou and Robert J. Heiss, it was not until 1689 that a “measurable exchange of goods and materials, including Chinese tea, began to flow between China and Russia.”
Prior to that Russians drank sbiten–a concoction of herbs and honey steeped in hot water. But by the late 19th century, tea was “hot” in Russia and Wissotzky–a young Russian Jew living in Moscow–quickly emerged as one of the country’s most prosperous tea distributors. Wissotzky’s was even named the exclusive tea supplier for the Emperor’s Court.
Sometime during all of the Agriprocessors brouhaha I heard that there had been a kosher meat boycott in 1902. I didn’t know anything about it until I just stumbled upon this article from the Jewish Historical Society: Bravo, Bravo, Bravo, Jewish Women! The Kosher Meat Boycott Of 1902.
The boycott was because the price of kosher meat had gotten too high, so Jewish women banded together, influenced by the labor and union strikes of their time, and organized to boycott kosher meat. Here’s how it went down:
A few years ago I came across a book called In Memory’s Kitchen, edited by Cara De Silva. The book collects recipes and food memories written by women imprisoned at the Czechoslovakian concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Though they were starving and undernourished, a group gathered to write a book of recipes and food memories to pass down to another generation. The recipes they included were for rich national foods of Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Austria, like fried noodles topped with raisins, cinnamon and vanilla cream, and traditional caramels from Baden Baden.
Food was constantly a topic of discussion, though there was little to go around, and certainly none of the luxurious ingredients a person would need to make many of the cakes and treats included in the book. Discussing and sometimes arguing about the best recipes and methods of preparation for various delicacies was comforting to the women who were starving, and they called this “mouth cooking.”
Black dots of strongly-flavoured vanilla
scraped straight from the bean, used for making jemma
Ashkenazim might associate Pesach with brisket, kneidlach, or matzah brei. Thanks to the Ashkenazi side of my family (my father’s parents and my paternal grandfather) we did grow up eating matzah balls of two sorts: kneidlach, and matzah kleis made with chopped parsley. But by far the most special thing about Passover for me has always been a Sephardic family recipe we’ve inherited from our grandmother, Tess Blackburn, who was born in Lisbon.
Jemma (pronounced ‘yemma’) is a thick, bright yellow, non-dairy custard flavoured with vanilla that we’ve always eaten on buttered matzah on Pesach or as a cake filling. It needs only a few ingredients, takes little time to make, and (at least in my family) disappears surprisingly quickly once served. Before giving you the recipe below, I thought I’d write a short digression exploring its possible culinary history.
Growing up, dried fruits were always a background food, something on the table that was never really meant to be eaten, unless you were a senior citizen. Their untouchable status might have had something to do with their reputation as an antidote for the withering effects of all that matzo on one’s gastrointestinal system. No matter how graciously they were laid out on how elegant a platter, they were often still there, all alone on a plate, long, long after the afikomen had been found. Sometimes when cleaning out the pantry we would discover something resembling a deceased mutant rodent, last year’s leftover dried fruits. Then, the California Dancing Raisins arrived, and dried fruit burst into my lifestyle as a hip purveyor of my emergent adult identity – an organic vegetarian who eschewed cultural materialism.
“SALT. No more than 5 kg of salt per pair of hands!!!!”
In early March, the supply of salt in Ukraine decreased slightly. There was still plenty of salt ready to be mined in the east. There was no government coup or nutritional crisis. There was just some hiccup in the mining process, and for a few days the supermarkets had slightly less salt than usual. No big deal, right?
post dedicated to Ezra Marbach
When I think of March 17th I think of green. Not olive green, celadon, pine or lime — I’m talking clover. On St. Patrick’s Day in the US you can find things such as bagels, pastries, beer, and flowers dyed clover green in celebration of this day. It’s meant as a shout out to Irish American solidarity and pride much like the blue coloring used on cupcakes is for the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day. (I just had to bring up those blue cupcakes, regrettably they hold a special place in my culinary heart.) With all of these thoughts on green and blue I thought I’d explore the connection between food and color.
In Oliver Sacks’s novel An Anthropologist on Mars he includes a chapter called The Case of the Colorblind Painter. This chapter tells the story of an adult artist who became color blind as a result of an auto accident. One of the ailments that the man suffers from, as a result of the accident, is a repulsion toward many foods and eating. The book states, “He founds foods disgusting due to their grayish, dead appearance and had to close his eyes to eat.” The book goes on to say that closing his eyes and imagining the food’s proper color didn’t help enough and he began eating foods like rice and black olives that appeared more normal with his impaired color palette.
“We don’t need that!”
My Zaidie glares at my mother and puts the second of two (yes, two) containers of homemade cookies back in the cardboard box from whence they came.
This ritual is repeated over and over with a multitude of food products—salad dressings loaded with fat and sugar, packages of crackers and other highly processed foods that have no chance of finding a home here. Friends have always looked at me in shock when I explain that we have never kept junk food in the house. My mother is a former Weight Watchers group leader, my father is an endocrinologist, my siblings both need to watch their weight for health reasons, and I, the vegetarian of the family, prefer to eat healthy. So we felt no guilt in rejecting the high-caloric food products that were trespassing our threshold of health.
Ah, hamantaschen: nectar of the kind of deities ancient Romans and/or Greeks parlayed beliefs into.
Ah, Purim: a delightful and whimsical holiday, the centerpieces of which are merriment, games, and, as with most any Jewish holiday, special foods!
The edible star of Purim is the hamentaschen. (Here is one yummy recipe.) Typically a sweet dessert, made out of of pastry dough cooked around a jelly or fruit center, the hamentaschen is a sweet reminder of the triumph, yet again, of the Jews over those who wished them ill.
I baked bread for the first time a few weeks ago, and it was a life-changing moment. Not just because it was some of the best bread I had ever tasted, but because it also made me think seriously about what bread means. In an age when we have all kinds of grain products at our disposal (rice, noodles, couscous), many a meal can pass without bread. And yet bread is one of the most basic foods.
In Judaism, a meal is often defined as one in which you eat bread. There are many brachot (blessings), each one for specific food, but if you recite the motzi, the blessing for bread, it covers the entire meal. This brings up some interesting questions, such as whether pizza counts as bread (thus requiring motzi and birkat mazon, the Grace After Meals.) Bread is life-sustaining, and deeply embedded in our culture. It links us to our times of celebration. On Passover, it is through bread–matzah, the bread of affliction–that we invite the poor to partake of our freedom. On Shabbat, bread is a reminder of God’s gift of manna, which fed the Jewish people in the dessert, and on Rosh Hashanah, we eat round, sweet bread. Challah itself solves an interesting Jewish dilemma: it is an enriched bread, meant to be celebratory, and most enriched breads (like brioche) are made with milk. Since Shabbat meals often include meat, Jews needed to create a parve loaf.
It’s like a religious ritual: before each meal at my mother in law’s house, we act out the same scene. We all stand around the table, goggle eyed and groaning at the sight, and Laura worriedly hunches her shoulders and states, “I don’t think there will be enough food.” She’s right: the four different kinds of potato salad, chicken salad, breads and cheeses, stuffed peppers, roasted eggplant, smoked fishes and crisp greens (all of which is merely the first of several courses) might not actually feed a whole army. (I mean, that’s who she’s cooking for, right? No one has ever made this clear.) But close enough. And certainly, it will feed the variable number of people who routinely gather at her table.
As context: I come from a genteel middle class WASP family, where a full meal is composed of a protein, a starch, some veggies and possibly some bread. Dessert if you finish your salad without too much protest (but let’s be honest, WASPs really prefer a helping of self restraint with their coffee). So the overabundance of a Russian Jewish table has taken some adjustment. And it has led me to wonder: is this the whiplash effect of living under communism? And for a people so ardently, nationalistically Jewish, (my brother in law specifies that he is “traditional, not religious”) where on the table is the line between these two cultures? What made a table “Jewish” in Soviet Russia?
(x-posted from the Forward)
The first time I came face to face — or rather, spoon to mouth — with a bowl of cholent, at the age of 24, I had no idea what it was. While I was growing up in a nonobservant home, my family had no need for such a meal, a hearty stew that simmers overnight in a pre-lit oven or slow cooker without transgressing the prohibition against cooking on the Sabbath. But as I learned (and tasted) more, I discovered a dish that can wrap even the coldest late-winter afternoon in warmth and comfort, and one that makes a valuable addition to any Jewish cook’s repertoire.
The custom of honoring the Sabbath with a hot meal is revered in Jewish tradition, but the Torah complicates things by stating, “You shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day” (Exodus 35:3). As early as the fourth century, Jewish cooks began to perform culinary acrobatics to circumvent this halachic conundrum — finding ways to get hot food on the table without lighting a new fire. Renowned cookbook author Joan Nathan wrote in her book “Jewish Cooking in America”:
“For centuries, on Friday mornings [Jews] would assemble [their stews]. The dish was covered with a cloth or mixture of flour and water to form a crust. It started cooking on Friday before sunset and [was] left to warm all night over coals in a hot oven….”
