Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Hamantaschen

I was in New York for Purim which is my poor excuse for not writing this sooner. I attended a most unusual Purim Party, a formal masked Bat Mitzvah high atop New York City. The mother of the Bat Mitzvah did an amazing job of producing the event. The Bat Mitzvah girl was equally amazing as she chanted the whole megillah in a tasteful yet elegant pink tulle BCBG gown with the New Yorker sign in red letters above her in the sky. Whenever she mentioned Haman's name we all booed and shook black hamantaschen rattles my friend had made for the occasion. Later that evening, the caterer served the real thing, although his hamantaschen did not compare to Nana's Lena's. I only remember her baking hamantaschen when we were little. After that she bought them at a bakery.

When I returned from my trip, there were a bevy of emails including one from my college suitemate Carol who enjoys using my book as a basis for her own culinary creations. She wrote:

“Nana Lena really knew her hamentaschen crust! WOW! I made some filling from cherry/prune/stuff I mixed up and used Nana Lena's crust with a stick of butter and equal amount of butter flavored shortening "NO TRANS FAT". Joel took one bite and he really said, Oh My GODDDDdddddd. Thank you for a perfect tea time snack." --Carol Breitner--

Hamantaschen

Hamantaschen are small triangular pastries with a sweet filling, a Purim treat. Also known as Haman’s hats, after Haman, the evil prime minister of Persia, who plotted to exterminate all the Jews. The plot was foiled, so when we symbolically eat his hat, it has a “happy ending”-- a sweet filling, often poppy seed, prune, or apricot. Nana Lena made hers with prunes.

Dough
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup vegetable shortening (*or 1/2 pound butter or margarine)
1 beaten egg
2 Tbsp orange juice

Sift dry ingredients. Work in shortening. Put orange juice into beaten egg. Add to dry ingredients. The dough will be very sticky. Cover. Chill 4 hours.

Roll out dough on well-floured board. Cut into rounds using the plastic top of a coffee tin. Let rounds sit for 15 minutes before forming into cookies.

Prune Filling
1 pound sweet prunes (no pits)
3 slices of orange
1/2 lemon
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp oil
dash of nutmeg

Cook prunes with 3 thin slices of orange, half a lemon (use both rind and juice), sugar, oil, and nutmeg, over a low heat until jam-like. Or skip all that and buy puréed prune filling.

Forming the Cookies
Spoon a teaspoon of filling into each cookie. Fold up three sides to form a triangle, pinching the corners, like a three-cornered hat. The filling peeks through only the center of the cookie. Bake at 400º for 10-15 minutes.

Add your comments below. I always love to hear how it turns out. --Amy

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Poor Fish (Part 3)


(For those of you who are just joining this
story in progress,page down to read Parts 1 & 2
before continuing with Part 3.)

"Ever since then, I’ve made gefilte fish for Passover,” Nana Lena stood at the counter, up to her elbows in fish mush, as she formed the balls and dropped them into the bubbling liquid. “Not so big. Like this.” She showed me her fish balls, smooth and uniform, about the size of a golf ball. I make them round, you see. But sometimes people make them like this.” She reshaped the ball in a few strokes into a more oval shape. “Boat shaped.”

“I’m not very good at this, Nana.”

“You just need practice. Yes, that’s much better. See.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

Nana Lena smiled and wisely did not answer.

“It seems like an awful lot of trouble to me.”

“It’s a lot easier now. You can buy fresh fish without having to kill it yourself. Sometimes you can even get the butcher to grind it up for you. If you do it yourself, you know what you’ve got. Remember that, write that down. I am telling you important things.”

“Yes, Nana.”

“I love you, my Amele.”

“I love you too, Nana. But the jarred fish is good enough, and it’s a lot less work.”

“Good enough? Yes, I suppose it is good enough…for a stranger, perhaps. Good enough, when there is no time for anything else. But the way I look at it…is it good enough for my family? Is it the healthiest, freshest gefilte fish I can make? Is it as filled with love? Then…it’s good enough, farshtéyst?”

I looked at my Nana, who, at seventy-five, had to be the wisest person on earth, dropping her little balls of love into the bubbling waters of life, and I nodded.

“Yes, Nana, I understand.”

* * * * * * * * * *
Gefilte Fish

This is a loose translation of Nana’s fish recipe. It’s a lot of work, and requires a fish grinder, a tool not found in every modern kitchen. You can use a food processor with a chopping blade if you don’t have a fish gringer. Nana didn’t measure; she did everything by touch and taste. All I can say is that if you are brave enough to make this recipe, “Ess gezundhayt”: “Eat it in good health!” And invite a lot of people. This recipe feeds 20–30 people.

Fish
Ask the nice man at the fish counter to filet 20 lbs of Rockfish, Trout and Pike. This yields about 9–10 pounds of fish meat. Keep the heads and bones, and scrape the remaining meat from the bones. (Don’t be wasteful! This can yield up to another pound.) The fish heads will be used to prepare the stock and give it a strong flavor. If you aren’t making the fish the same day, you can buy it in advance and freeze it, separating the fish filets between pieces of waxed paper. Make sure the fish is completely defrosted before grinding.

Stock
Fill a large 5-gallon pot about 2/3 full with water. While you are waiting for it to boil, add the following ingredients and let them simmer for about 1/2 hour.

2 onions, cut up, including skins
3 fish heads
3 stalks celery
4–5 carrots, peeled and cut into thick chunks
salt and white pepper to taste

Skim off the brown foam that accumulates on the top of the water. After broth has achieved golden brown color, remove the carrots and set aside for later. Carefully remove the fish heads, and strain all remaining items from the broth, twice. Return the clear broth to the large pot and bring to a boil.

Fish Mixture
3–4 onions (no skins!) a dozen eggs
2–3 stalks celery (peeled) 2 cups water
fish filets from above, and bits salt and white pepper
of fish culled from the bones. matzo meal

Before you begin to grind the fish, check one more time for bones and bits of skin. Rinse each piece and squeeze off the excess water with your hands. Set up your grinder. Nana Lena had the oldfashioned kind you clamped onto the kitchen counter, the kind you could take apart and clean thoroughly before and after making the fish. You’ll need a large mixing bowl positioned under the grinder, and a small pushing tool. Alternate inserting the three types of fish with pieces of onions and celery until all the fish has been ground. Mix it well so that there are no dark areas or white areas, just a uniform mixture of fish, onions, and celery. Beat up a dozen eggs in the blender. It makes them fluffier this way. Alternate adding the eggs and the water to the fish mixture.

Mix thoroughly. Salt and pepper to taste.

Now add 1/2 cup of matzo meal and mix well. Keep adding a little at a time until you feel that the fish is firm enough to shape into balls. Nana would pick up a handful, shape it into a ball, and, if it were too runny, she’d add a little more matzo meal until it was right. Somewhere between 1 and 2 cups, you will find the right texture.

Shape a golf-ball-sized “tester” and drop it into the boiling stock. If you see a flake or two rise to the top, that’s okay, but if you see the ball break up into several parts, then you don’t have enough matzo meal. Keep a dish of water handy to dip your hands in between balls. Drop the balls in one at a time. At first they will fall to the bottom, but eventually they will rise to the surface. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 2 1/2–3 hours. Shake the pot from time to time so that the balls don’t stick.

Carefully remove the gefilte fish from the broth with a slotted spoon. Store in airtight containers in the refrigerator. Serve chilled with a slice of carrot and a sprig of parsley on top, and a dollop of horseradish on the side.
* * * * * *
Happy Passover ya'll. Post a comment to let me know how it turns out.

For more info about Nana Lena's Kitchen, go to http://www.nanalenaskitchen.com/

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Poor Fish (Part 2)

(For those who are just joining this story in progress, page down to read Part 1 before continuing with Part 2.)

The next morning, I joined my mother and my father’s mother, Bubbie Sareva, and my Tante Fannie, my father’s sister, in my grandmother’s kitchen, in the making of gefilte fish, a family recipe handed down from generation to generation. This time it was my turn to learn.

Bubbie Sareva inspected my hands and nails. She sat me down in front of a mound of onions and barked orders at me. “Peel them, and then cut them in quarters. Save the skins for the broth.”

I began peeling onions while she and Tante Fannie went out back and separated Poor Fish from his head. As I chopped and peeled the onions, tears pouring down my face, I decided that if Poor Fish had to die for our meal, then I was determined that the least I could do was to make this the best gefilte fish ever. I would make Poor Fish proud. So I continued chopping the onions and crying my eyes out. Some of my tears must have ended up in the recipe.

At the other end of the kitchen, Bubbie and Tante Fannie skinned and de-boned the fish, while Mama prepared a pot of boiling water, to which she added one stalk of celery, three onions with their skins separated, parsnips, carrots, and the fish head.

While this broth simmered on the stove, the women cleaned the rest of the fish and set up the grinder, inserting alternating pieces of fish, celery, and onions.

“In Galicia they use the sugar in the broth.” Bubbie Sareva bent over the pot and skimmed off some foam.

“Tante Gussie sometimes used the beets, remember, Mama?” Tante Fannie said.

“Not in my kitchen.” Bubbie Sareva nodded her approval of the broth to Minnie. “So tell me, what happened to our Goldele? Is it a bad cut?”

Minnie shook her head. “I think she did it on purpose.”

“No.”

“She wouldn’t.”

“She hates the smell.”

“Can you blame her?”

All three women made a face.

“We may not like how it smells, but we like how it tastes.” Bubbie Sareva looked over at Lena, who beamed happily even though her face was streaked with tears. “What’s done is done, and why Goldele chose not to join us is Goldele’s problem. But this little one….”

“My Lena.” Minnie beamed proudly.

Bubbie Sareva nodded her head, “She likes the kitchen. She is at home here.” She waved to her granddaughter, “Come, Lena, let me show you how we make the fish.”

Mama removed the fish head and strained the broth, which had now reached a beautiful golden-brown color. Lena watched intently as Tante Fannie handed her mother each of the items she mentioned.

“Now we add the eggs, a half an eggshell of salt, a bisele, just a little white pepper, not the brown, and a yahrzeit glass of matzo meal. Mix it together good, like this. Use a little more matzo meal if it’s too runny. Let me see the hands. Are they clean?”

I nodded eagerly, waving them in front of her.

“Now wet your hands and take a handful of this and rub it into a ball, and then we drop it into the boiling broth like this!”

“Be careful when you drop it, so you don’t splash and burn yourself.” Tante Fannie warned me, as she gently tied my hair back, out of my face: Tante Fannie, whose hands always smelled like vanilla.

I pushed my sleeves up and dipped my hands into the mixture. It’s cold and slimy, like a mud pie. I made a ball and dropped it gently into the water.

“Perfect. Her hands are just the right size.”

I made another and dropped it in a little less gently. I made dozens of balls, dropping them in one after the other, until all of the mixture was gone, and dozens of little balls, about two inches in diameter, started bubbling to the surface of our witches’ brew.

“Like I said, she’s a natural.” Bubbie Sareva patted her granddaughter’s head. “In the old days, after the fish cooked, we used to wrap the balls in the fish skin and that’s why we called it gefilte fish, because we filled the fish.” She flashed her daughter and daughter-in-law a look. “Now we are in America. We don’t need such a thick skin.”

“Mama, if you want to keep the skin, we can keep it….”

“Your Tante Fannie wants to be a modern woman.”

“Mother, if it really bothers you….”

Mama led me to the sink so that I could wash my hands. Then she squeezed lemon over them.

“Come, Lena, now is the best part.“

“What, Bubbie?”

“Now we sit and drink a glassl tea with a touch of schnaps.”

“But, Mama, she’s only a child.”

“She can make the fish, she can have the tea. She earned it.”
They all nodded and patted me on the back. I earned it. And you know what was the best part? It was the best gefilte fish ever. I made Poor Fish proud.

Stay tuned for Part 3 tomorrow...

Poor Fish (Part 1)

Every year at Passover, Nana Lena used to tell us the story of Poor Fish.

"I remember coming home from school. I was six, maybe seven years old. I was chasing my sister Goldie up the stairs when I heard the sound of laughter coming from the bathroom. I thought my brothers were taking their bath; so I was surprised, when I burst into the bathroom, to find Mike and Pete fully clothed, leaning over the edge of the tub poking at a very large fish, which was swimming nervously back and forth in Mama’s new porcelain pedestal bathtub.

I knew how much Mama treasured her bathtub. Indoor plumbing had only recently been introduced into the neighborhood and Mama was proud to have one of the first houses in Berkley with an indoor bath. Mama regularly led tours of her new bathroom, for our less fortunate neighbors, so I was having a hard time imagining her approval of this situation. “Irving Goodman, you tell Papa to get that poor fish out of there before Mama finds out.”

“Poor Fish,” two-year-old Mike mimicked.

Four-year-old Pete turned to me and in the sweetest little voice said, “Mama says we’re gonna eat him for Pesach.”

“We are most certainly not.”

“Yes, we aaaa-rre. Momma’s gonna make Gefillupte-fish.”

“Gefilte fish.” I corrected him.

“That’s what I said… you fill it up with…something.”

“But Mama said….”

“I don’t care what Mama said,” I told my brothers. “We can’t
eat him; we know him. He’s practically family. For gosh sakes, he’s swimming around in our bathtub.”

Goldie poked her head in the bathroom. “I see Mama got the
fish.”

“You knew about this?”

“Of course I did.”

“She never brought a live one home before.”

“We never had an indoor bathtub before.” Goldie flicked a towel at me and darted out of the room, cackling. I turned back to my brothers, “We’ve got to think of something, or tomorrow he’s gonna be…“

“Dead,” Pete nodded sadly.

“Poor fish.”

I joined Mama and Goldie in the kitchen. They were in the process of making horseradish. Goldie was seventeen months older than me, so Mama let her handle the more dangerous tools.

Goldie grated the radish while I was assigned to baby duty, like crushing walnuts or sorting rice. This time it was raisins, good from the bad, dark from light. Mama preferred yellow raisins, so any raisin bold enough to turn dark or shrivel up had to be eliminated. I obliged by eating the dark ones and pushing the shriveled ones aside. I had completed my task and was presenting my handiwork to Mama when Goldie screamed, “Darn it!”

“Goldie! Such language!”

“What’s the matter? “

“I cut myself.”

“Run it under the water, quick.” Mama dragged Goldie’s thumb over to the sink and then squeezed it hard until it bled.

“Owwwwh. What you do that for?”

“To make sure the wound is clean.” She looked at Goldie’s thumb, which had two deep cuts from the grater, and shook her head. “This is not good. Lena, get me the iodine and a bandage.”

She turned her attention back to Goldie. “Now you won’t be able to make the gefilte fish.”

I ran to the pantry to fetch the iodine and then stood and listened to their conversation, breathless.

Goldie said, “It’s just a little cut, Mama. I’ll be fine…”

“You can’t put your hands in the fish with a cut on your finger. Not in my kitchen and definitely not in your Bubbie Sareva’s kitchen.”

“But, Mama…”

“Lena will make the fish.”

“Lena’s still a baby.”

“Not so much anymore. She will take your place.”

“But, Mama…

“Lena will help this year. And next year, you will both help.”

I stood there trembling, knowing how furious Goldie would be with me if I helped make the fish, and knowing what an honor it was to be invited to my grandmother’s kitchen. Then again, there was Poor Fish.

(To be continued...)

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Food and Family

When I was a child, one of my favorite places to be was in my Nana's kitchen. It was warm, there was always some scent wafting from the oven, and it was filled with family and friends. Sometimes it was just the two of us, or sometimes my Bubbie and great aunts joined in. Later it was my mother, my sisters, a neighbor or friend. For as long as I could remember, Nana's Lena's kitchen was always filled with love.

Nana would give each of us something to do, each according to our ability-- shelling nuts, sorting raisins, making matzah balls-- and as we worked, she would tell us stories. Her stories of Berkley Virginia sounded like fairy tales of a long ago far away place. Although I passed through the tip of Berkley every time I took the downtown tunnel into Norfolk, it bore no resemblance to this mythical land where no one locked their doors at night and where everyone was related to practically everyone else. Berkley was a Jewish shtetl, a transplanted bit of the old world, settled by a handful of Lithuanian Jewish men who came to America in the late 1800s and brought their families after them. My great grandfather was an ice man in the summer and in the winter he bought and sold fur pelts. My Bubbie Minnie's family was from Kiev. She was born on the ship coming to America, arriving in the New World only hours old. The Gustomilsky's settled in Baltimore, which had a thriving Jewish community and plenty of work.

So back to food. I always like to tell people my great grandparents fell in love because of a piece of fruit. A pear to be exact. Here is the story Nana Lena used to tell:

"In 1904, Mama went to a dance hall in Baltimore. She was eighteen years old. Morris Goodman also attended the dance that night. Now, Morris couldn't move his feet, but Mama, she was some kind of pretty, so he walked up to her and told her she was pretty, and he asked her if he could walk her home. On the way they stopped at a fruit stand, and he bought her a pear. We always laughed at that. He bought her a pear, and he walked her home. And the next day, when she came home from work, he was sitting there waiting for her with another pear. Now they had two. That was when Mama decided that this was the man she would marry."

So today, in honor of my great-grandparents Minnie and Morris, I am making a pear crisp based on the apple crisp recipe in the book.

Pear Crisp
4 cups peeled, sliced pears
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup white or brown sugar
Butter a deep baking dish and put the pear slices and water into it. Mix together remaining ingredients and spread over pears. Bake at 350° about 30 minutes, or until pears are tender and crust is brown. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.
***

That's all for today. Let me know how it turns out. You may need to adjust it according to your own oven and baking dish.

For more info about Nana Lena's Kitchen, go to www.nanalenaskitchen.com