A Word About Readers’ Comments

I wanted to let everyone know that although I can’t post articles as often as I’d like to, I’m doing my best to attend to readers’ comments, which provide plenty of fodder for discussion (and ever more research).  There’s a lot of good information and commentary there that’s worth your taking a look at and I encourage people to participate.  Someone else’s comment may contain something very relevant to your own experience or curiosity, and that’s worth sharing!  You can subscribe to a comment feed by clicking on the  ”comments” button in the upper righ hand corner of the blog. — JA

About that rye bread… / Hablando de aquel pan de centeno…

To get a sense of how profoundly important Jewish rye bread is in New York culinary culture (and in Ashkenazi culture in general), I give you this clip from the Seinfeld episode I mentioned below.  Thanks to “unrayochacha1981″ for putting it on YouTube, and with Spanish subtitles.   However – and this is a big however – he misses the point.  The subtitles indicate a “marble bread” as the object of Jerry’s desperation, but it’s a “marble rye“.  The rye is everything.  Of course.

Para que se entienda cuanto profunda es la importancia del pan de centeno judío en la cultura culinaria de New York (y en la cultura ashkenazi en general), os doy este trozo del episodio de Seinfeld de que he hablado abajo.  Gracias a ”unrayochacha1981″ por ponerlo en YouTube, y además subtitulado en español.  Pero – y es un pero muy grande - pierde el punto!  Los subtitulos indican que un “pan marmolizado” es el objecto de la desesperación de Jerry, pero es un pan de centeno marmolizado.  El centeno es todo.  Por supuesto.

An afterthought and a happy coincidence

In the post below about ‘Ashkenazi mina‘ I referred to the adaptability of Jewish cooking (which really means Jewish cooks), but in that particular case it would be more appropriate to describe the chopped liver mina as an example of culinary crossover.   Seven years living in the Med has taken a toll on my English vocabulary.

A funny thing about that post.  All the while writing it I couldn’t stop thinking about really well made chopped liver, which put me onto Jewish deli food in general, and my own personal favorites growing up:  garlic pickles (at age 10 I could eat a whole jarful); German cole slaw; roast turkey with cole slaw & Russian dressing on rye;  rare roast beef with lettuce & mayo (I know, I know) on rye.  Always the rye bread, and if you don’t understand the importance of a good rye bread, watch the Seinfeld episode about the Schnitzer’s rye.  These are not only Jewish foods but Jewish American foods – New York Jewish American foods - that abounded when I was growing up.  In the context of regional culinary distinctions, that’s pretty specific. 

Roast beef here is a rarity (excuse the pun which, by the way, will be utterly lost in translation) and the American concept of a sandwich non-existent.  The Spanish idea of a sandwich is a single layer of something - some dried sausage slices, a couple of paper-thin slices of ham, two slices of cheese, a slice of tortilla - absolutely lost inside a long, thin, bland baguette rubbed with tomato & olive oil.  Dreary (or worse, soggy) and a far cry from a big, luscious, overstuffed pastrami sandwich with mustard.  Not that I’ve eaten a pastrami sandwich in eons, mind you.  But it was always a comfort to know it was there.

So there I was lamenting the dearth of deli food, let alone satisfying sandwiches, where I live and thinking about how many delis already had vanished when I left New York and how many more have probably gone the same way since, and that somebody should be preserving this major cultural culinary legacy.  And wouldn’t you know it, someone’s up to just that.  Here’s an article from yesterday’s NYTimes, by Joan Nathan.  If you ever loved Jewish deli food, take a look here.

Q & A: Ashkenazi Mina, Anyone?

Dear Janet,

My grandparents Nissim, and Virginia, originally came from Istanbul, and the area in Bulgaria just over the Turkish border. I grew up eating borekas, spinach pies, haviar (tarama), biscochos, et al. But there is one dish my grandmother made that although I’ve researched everywhere haven’t found anything remotely similar. Unfortunately no one’s left alive who can even remember what it was called. The ingredients were ground liver, raw eggs, chopped walnuts, rye bread, and possibly chopped onions/celery. The raw ingredients were combined making a paste, which was then spread into a greased baking pan about 1/2 an inch thick, the top glazed with beaten egg, and baked. When cut and served it was quite firm, and dark brown on top. Have you ever heard of anything similar? — Alan

Wow.  When we talk about Jewish cooking being adaptive, I suspect this may be a prime – and very personal – example.  Off the top of my head, this sounds like a Sephardic rendition of a classic Ashkenazi dish from Eastern Europe:  chopped chicken liver.  Neither rye bread nor chopped chicken liver are part of Sephardic gastronomy.   Ashkenazi chopped liver is sauteed in a pan with onions, mashed to a paste with hard boiled egg and typically eaten with rye bread (Delicious.  I’d make it here in Spain if I could find rye bread.  Or caraway seeds, for that matter).  On the other hand, walnuts are native to the Balkans and very much an element of Turkish and Bulgarian cooking, Sephardic orotherwise.  They would have been a food your grandparents grew up with.

The cooking method you detail is similar to Ottoman mina and Algerian meguena - Sephardic baked meat pies - though the resulting texture as you describe it didn’t have the delicacy of the Sephardic dish, which is made lighter by adding chicken broth and beaten eggs to the mixture. That difference is a reflection of either Bulgarian cooking or of your grandmother’s.

You don’t indicate whether she made this dish prior to emigrating; however, I suspect it might be something she invented afterwards, applying a classic Sephardic technique to this quintessential Ashkenazi dish she might have first tasted in America - in the Moskowitz household, perhaps?  Unless someone can tell me otherwise, maybe you’ll want to call the dish Virginia’s Ashkenazi Mina.

Conversion chart (weights & measures) / Conversiones (pesos y medidas)

Un lector me ha pedido explicar las medidas estadounidenses.  En los Estados Unidos, en la casa generalmente se usa medidas de volumen para cualquier cosa que se puede verter o poner facilmente dentro una ‘taza’, incluido solidos - por ejemplo: harina, azucar, arroz, frutos secos y datiles triturados.  Aquellos de volumen seco hay en medidas de 1 cup (tazo), 1/2 cup, 1/3 cup, 1/4 cup y 1/8 cup.  Para cantidades mas pequeñas usamos el Tablespoon (cucharada ‘de mesa’ o sopera), el teaspoon (cuchara de te), y fracciones del teaspoon.  Abajo os doy unas conversiones para las medidas culinarias tipicas.  Son aproximadas pero consistentes.

A reader asked me  to explain U.S. cooking measurements.  In the U.S., home cooks generally use volume measurements for anything, liquid or dry, that can be poured or put easily inside a measuring cup – for example flour, sugar, rice, nuts and chopped dates (European cooks rely on weight and a kitchen scale is considered basic home equipment). Dry measuring cups come in measures of 1 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/3 cup, 1/4 cup and 1/8 cup.  For smaller quantities of pourable dry or liquid ingredients we use Tablespoons, teaspoons and fractions of teaspoons.  Here’s a U.S./Metric conversion chart for the most common cooking measurements.   They are approximate, but consistent.

VOLUME MEASUREMENTS / VOLUMEN

• 1 tsp (teaspoon) = 5 ml
• 1 Tbs (Tablespoon) = 15 ml
• 1/8 c (cup) = 30 ml
• 1/4 c = 60 ml
• 1/3 c = 80 ml
• 1/2 c = 120 ml
• 1 cup = 240 ml
• 1 qt (quart) = 4 cups = 960 ml

WEIGHT / PESO

• 1 oz (ounce) = 28 gr
• 4 oz = 113 gr
• 8 oz = 226 gr
• 1/4 lb (pound) = 4 oz = 113 gr
• 1/2 lb = 8 oz = 226 gr
• 1 lb = 16 oz = 452 gr

glossary: PEPITADA

 

PEPITADA (“peh-pi-TAH-dtha”) is a Ladino word indicating a beverage ‘made from fruit pip (seeds)’.  The “-ada” suffix is the equivalant of “-ade” in English, as in lemonade.  Pepitada is a milky-looking drink made by steeping crushed melon seeds in cold water, straining them and adding a little sugar and perhaps a few drops of orange flower essence, rosewater or honey (the secondary flavorings vary regionally throughout the Mediterranean).  You think the makers of Gatorade were innovators? Pepitada is a straightforward health tonic: easy on the stomach, refreshing and loaded with potassium, it replenishes electrolytes.  Pepitada is mostly associated with breaking fasts (perhaps especially the fast of Tisha b’Av, which falls in summer smack in the the middle of melon season) but is also an excellent means of coping with the intense heat of deep summer.

a recipe: SPINACH CUAJADO / una receta: CUAJADO DE ESPINACA

We’re deep into summer now, and one of the nicest things to eat on a lazy summer day is room temperature cuajado and a fresh salad - no need for a big spread every time you make cuajado, as it’s quite filling on its own. 

Spinach was easily the variety we ate more often when Grandma and Aunt Reina were alive (as opposed to my favorite, zucchini cuajado), yet it was a dish whose aroma while baking was too intense for me.  Once out of the oven, though, the flavors mellowed and I couldn’t get enough.  Because spinach itself has a more intense flavor than zucchini,  this cuajado needs a stronger cheese, too: pecorino romano instead of parmiggiano, which works perfectly with zucchini but would be too delicate here.  So here’s my recipe for the spinach, also adapted from my Aunt Reina’s.  The sesame seeds aren’t traditional, but they are within the bounds of tradition and a nice touch you might want to try out.

A serving note before you begin:   

More than I can chew…

I’d be posting here more often if I weren’t so busy running the restaurant, but we’re a small, two-man operation, we’re busting our butts and, frankly, not getting any younger (sigh…).  But I’ll be back, I promise!  In the meantime, here’s where to find me in my “other” life:  www.pinedabar.com – if you plan on visiting Barcelona, by all means come on up to say hello and enjoy a fabulous meal (Catalan & Mediterranean cuisine) and a beautiful view.  All the best to all of you — Janet Amateau