Carol Goodman Kaufman

Bread

A Feast for the Eyes, the Stomach, and the Soul

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book coverThis past Saturday evening, we hosted the first of two groups of people that won a Middle Eastern feast at a charity auction. To prepare for this event, I scoured my collection of recipes gathered and adapted over the years. Wild rice stuffed grape leaves. Labneh with za’atar and olive oil. Soft, fluffy pita bread.

But I also used this homework phase to explore the contents of Jerusalem, the groundbreaking cookbook by Israeli Yotam Ottolenghi and Palestinian Sami Tamimi.

I liked the idea of two men who could be enemies but who instead cook together and feed others. Breaking bread instead of heads, as it were. But I also loved the look and feel of the cookbook. Resplendent with gorgeous color photos and filled with personal stories, the book is a masterpiece.

Menu planning presented a challenge. I needed to make this vegetarian, but wanted something that wasn’t hummus or falafel or baba ganoush. I wanted new, bold, innovative. I craved uncharted territory. And, to be honest, I wanted to make a splash.

And, boy did I ever get that. My worries that I would grow weary of Middle Eastern food were groundless. The flavors in Jerusalem’s pages were so varied that there was no way we could tire (except for the sheer exhaustion I felt by midnight Saturday, when I collapsed into my warm, cozy bed).

Jerusalem offered pureed beets with goat cheese and hazelnuts; watercress and chickpea soup with rose water and ras el hanout; roasted butternut squash with onions and tahihi; baby spinach salad with dates and almonds; burnt eggplant soup with mograbieh; roasted sweet potatoes with fresh figs; semolina, coconut and marmalade cake. And, for a dinner prepared for just the two of us: an absolutely divine chicken with caramelized onions and cardamom rice.

The recipes called for ingredients that brought to mind caravans of colorfully clad camels bearing goods across vast deserts. Orange blossom water, za’atar, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon. Pine nuts, hazelnuts, goat cheese, tahini, dates, figs. The aromas wafting from my kitchen made me feel as if I were strolling through the narrow, vaulted alleyways of the shuk.

But, enough day dreaming; I’m bound to let something boil over or burn. And anyway, it’s time to plan menu #2.

The Cheese State of Bliss

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My wonderful literary agent, Kimiko, and I were enjoying lunch while discussing our respective menu choices as well as food in general. She began to tell me about her Brazilian sister-in-law’s delicious cheese bread recipe. I like the sound of anything with cheese in the name, and Kimiko likes it because it is gluten free.

Suddenly, a man at the next table turned to us. He apologized for eavesdropping on our conversation, but felt that as a native Brazilian, he must tell us some important things about pao de queijo. Among the facts about this very popular Brazilian snack food was his warning NEVER to make it in a blender, as some recipes direct, or we would end up with a block of concrete.

Intrigued by the thought of a chewy, cheesy bread roll, I searched the Internet for recipes the minute I got home. Of course, the ones at the top of the list instructed the home cook to put ingredients into  – you got it — a blender. Adequately forewarned, I found another recipe further down the list.

The only ingredient I didn’t have in the house was the base ingredient in the recipe, tapioca flour. It is this flour which makes pao de queijo the quintessential food of Brazil, as the starch is Pao de queijoextracted from the cassava root, native to the northern region of the country.

As is my wont, I tempted fate by preparing the pao de queijo for the first time for a company lunch, making a batch to go along with tomato soup and a salad.

The positive: the pao de queijo was cheesy, chewy, and absolutely yummy.

The negatives: 1) I should have made a triple batch because 2) these treats are potentially addictive.

Gathering the stories

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Every Saturday of my childhood, I went to Bubby’s house for lunch after services. Since Bubby was strictly Orthodox, she would not cook on Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, so everything had to be prepared in advance of sundown on Friday. Foods simmered on top of the stove or in the oven overnight. Consequently, the heavenly aroma of chicken soup, brisket, and stuffed cabbage permeated the house and filtered all the way out the front door, beckoning visitors and tempting passersby.

By my late teens I became interested in cooking myself, but realized that I had no idea how to make her standards. The summer of 1971, Bubby fell gravely ill with shingles. Every day I would go to St. Luke’s Hospital to spoon-feed her, as she didn’t want to eat. Perhaps she feared that the food would not be kosher, or maybe she just didn’t feel well enough. Or maybe, she was just used to her own cooking, which was fabulous. (Bubby was such a good cook that the visiting cantor who stayed with her during the High Holidays told me years later that he blamed her specifically for his huge weight gain. He couldn’t resist her challah, strudel, mandel breit, lockshen, etc. I understood; nobody could.)

Somehow I must have known that I might never get the chance to ask her questions again, so one day as I was helping her with her lunch I asked, “Bubby, will you give me your recipes?”

“I don’t have them written down.”

“You can dictate them to me. I’ll write everything down. ”

“Only if you write in Yiddish.”

“But I don’t know Yiddish.”

“You have to do it in Yiddish.”

“Bubby, if you were so interested in having me learn Yiddish, why didn’t you teach me?  Why did you only speak it when you didn’t want me to understand? Bubby, I’m going to live in Israel. I speak, read, and write Hebrew!” (The “speak” may have been a bit of an exaggeration at the time, but, hey, we were talking about food here.)

“Yiddish or nothing.”

Needless to say, I got the “nothing.”

I have now spent virtually every Friday of my adult life attempting to replicate her challah. Several years ago, when my dad was still alive, he was with us for dinner. Whether a Shabbat or holiday I can’t remember, but the meal did feature challah. After we had completed the blessings over the wine and the bread, my father startled me by saying, “This challah is better than Bubby’s.”

I doubt that was true, but will take that compliment with me to the grave.

As for all her other scrumptious dishes, I have never attempted to make egg noodles (hers were like silk), and I can’t stuff a cabbage leaf to save my life. My brisket with tzimmes, however, is identical to hers. When it comes to the desserts, I have never tried to duplicate the strudel since, in the attempt, I would end up the size of a house (remember Cantor Albert). Mandel breit is a once-a-year experiment and, while not bad, it’s just not Bubby’s.

In large part due to my failure to ask questions when I had the chance, today I ask lots of them. Slowly, I am gathering stories and recipes from my own relatives to publish a family memoir.

The moral of this story is to ask questions while your elders are alive and healthy. Get as many stories from them as you can. Write down the recipes and try them out, preferably with their source. And remember to share both.

And, if they expect you to learn the language of your ancestors, find out sooner rather than later.

Baking is Chemistry

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“Baking is chemistry” is the message I have been trying to convey to my three children for years. Whenever they would come home from school with an assignment for a science project, I would suggest that they try baking a cake with varying amounts of baking soda, baking powder, or some other ingredient, the theory being that they would see chemistry in action and I would get to eat cake. Not one ever took my idea seriously. Granted, they had excellent science projects, but I really wanted them to learn their way around a kitchen, especially since their father is hopeless in that part of the house. (Joel says that we split the kitchen duties 50/50 – I cook and he eats.)

Anyway, I have been baking challah every week since my marriage in 1977, in an attempt to duplicate the delicious loaves my own grandmother made during her lifetime. A few years ago, I decided to start doing the same in our cottage in the Berkshires. After all, I figured, why bring day-old or frozen bread with me when I could have freshly baked loaves, warm and fragrant right out of the oven?

Well, my challah came out weird. The dough was gooey and sticky, and full of odd-looking bubbles. The final baked product was flat and dense. Now, having been trained in research, I looked at my ingredients to make sure that each item was the same brand as the others. Where they were not, I purchased new – down to the brand of raisins. The challah still came out weird. So, next I looked at my measuring cups and spoons; even they were the same brand. Still weird – and ugly.

It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I finally connected the dots (okay, I admit it, I’m slow). My neighbor, Sheila, and I were discussing how bad our hair looks when we shampoo in the Berkshires. We attributed it to the greasy-feeling water that results from the water softeners we need to counteract the hard town water. And, what are water softeners?  Sodium chloride (i.e., salt).

Suddenly, it dawned on me: Awful looking hair and weird looking challah. Duh! Maybe it was the water! I immediately went to the computer to Google “the effects of hard water and soft water on bread baking,” and learned that, yes, this could be my problem. So, this past Friday, I tried baking with bottled water and, voila! My challah came out the way it is supposed to come out – soft and delicious.

By the way, my kids are all excellent cooks now, no thanks to the chemistry lessons I failed to impart.