I am currently adding recipes to my Patreon page, and thought that this little piece might be of interest to everyone here.
Growing up as an Orthodox Jew (Modern Orthodox, Australian Orthodox – more interested in learning, community and food than in matters religious, unless we could argue about them – my favourite argument will always be how kangaroo can be seen as potentially kosher) in Australia is a most extraordinary thing. For one thing, it doesn’t matter how many generations your family has been in the country, too many people assume that you are a recent arrival, simply because you are Jewish. Some even try to spot an Israeli accent. In my case, this is very imaginative of them.
The classic case of this was at a New Year’s Eve party in Canberra. I was in a group of people, one of whom had recently taken out citizenship. We were talking about where our folks came from, and when, as one so often does. We were all very open about our origins, religions and background. We also had a lengthy discussion about date of arrival. Of the group, my family was the earliest arrival by at least one generation, and the new citizen’s was the most recent. My family started coming here about 150 years earlier than hers. After a bit (conversations can be very long on New Year’s Eve) we turned to weddings. The new citizen turned to me and asked intently, “What would your parents do if you married an Australian?”
A nasty reminder (well before the present thrum of hate) that Jews are somehow considered different, even in a very tolerant country was when I was nine years old, and was personally accused of killing Christ. At the time I was very bewildered, because I knew who he was and when he lived, and I also knew that I was nine years old. I could not reconcile the contradictions, so I nursed the puzzle until I had antisemitism sorted out sufficiently that I could deal with it. What I asked at the time was “Does this mean I invent time travel?”
What has this to do with cooking? Well, one thing that regular hints of prejudice does is to drive one to reconsider. I have friends who, when discriminated against, or subtly insulted, reject their past and tried to “fit in”. That is a legitimate decision, but has never been a road I have followed. Nor has it been a road my parents followed. What we do when faced with “not belonging” is to strongly reassert our complex cultural identity. That is to say we share it. And the easiest way to convince someone that to be Jewish is still to be human is to feed everyone in sight. After all, everyone eats, even if our religions are a bit different.
If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then a way to a person’s cultural appreciation follows the same route. People around me are forcibly introduced to Judaism. You know the method. It is stark and awful. Eat this chicken soup! Have a kosher chocolate! Try one of my Mum’s famous biscuits, after all, it is Passover next week!
That is the skeleton in the closet, the dread reason for me handing out food to everyone in my vicinity. It’s sort of nice to be thought a human being, and food definitely helps smooth the way. Mind you, the food can end up taking over your life. I no longer feed people to convince them I’m human. I feed people because I’ve fallen in love with feeding people. And the great thing is that many friends return the favour.
That’s the skeleton in the closet and explains why one whole tier of my Patreon contains recipes and food stories. It also explains why I was once a pro blogger. The skeleton under the bed is a different matter. As well as studying history at university, I studied some archaeology, so Mum let me have her old skeleton (not the one inside her, but the one she used before she dropped out of medicine). I called it George and I called it Yorick, depending on which head I was using. A skeleton with two skulls is very useful for understanding mandibular articulation. And, since my bedroom at this time was 5’3” by 7’, the only storage place was under the bed.
To get back to food (which neither George nor Yorick was/were, not having been kosher at any stage in his/their spotted past – the spots were some sort of mould, Mum suggested, but dissuaded me from running tests) my family demonstrates that minor prejudice can lead to the most wonderful, food-based friendships. That’s a good reason for a whole chapter on it in this book. This is the food that led to the friendships which make up the rest of the book. Isn’t there a children’s rhyme that goes something like that?
My father’s mother’s cooking was very Anglo-Australian. Mum says that her favourite desserts were blancmange, jelly, icecream or stewed fruit. Her standard Sunday dinner was soup (mostly “Jewish penicillin” ie chicken soup), a roast of lamb plus three vegetables, salad, with fruit and icecream for dessert. As you can see by the dairy product at the end, she did not keep kosher. She also followed the Anglo at the expense of the Jewish – I was brought up with Friday night dinners of the same menu (sometimes the lamb was replaced by chicken or beef, and the icecream was always replaced by a non-dairy dessert) with the leftovers for Saturday lunch. This was the natural compromise between Dad’s Anglo upbringing and Mum’s strong Continental Jewish tradition.
Mum was in tears when Dad proposed to her and said, magnanimously, that he was prepared to tolerate a kosher kitchen, as long as it was “done properly”. He was very good at keeping the rules once he started, even though he wickedly told people about an atheist friend who “knew he was Jewish because he could not bear to drink a glass of milk after his ham sandwich”.
This post would be lost without recipes. Let me share my family gelfilte fish recipe, and its very important alternate.
GEFILTE FISH
I have, alas, been unable to try out or even taste test this recipe. I am also told I’d be a lot nicer as a person if only I had been able to eat gefilte fish when I was young. How I obtained it was by asking my grandmother. She explained it in detail, went away, made gefilte fish, then updated her explanation.
Ingredients
minced fish (use three different types of white fish – Grandma’s standard varieties are Murray Perch, garfish and mullet – she says to avoid anything pink. My suggestion is that if you get tuna or something then just put frills around the plate holding the pale rose gefilte fish and serve it as the Barbara Cartland variation)
eggs
fine matzah meal (made of ground-up matzo – unleavened bread – a yeast free bread that tastes like very bland dried biscuits, but is brilliant to cook with.)
Method
Mix minced fish with eggs and matzah meal and knead until firm. For proportions, what you want is a firm-ish mixture that holds its shape when you knead it. Start with the fish, then add eggs and matzah meal until it is a smooth, heavy paste (a damp, dumpling like consistency). Let stand a while.
Mince again, and mould into balls. Flour hands with fine matzah meal between each shaping.
In a big saucepan, place fish bones, topped by sliced onions and carrots. Add water. Bring to the boil. Add the fish balls, one at a time (use a spoon and be very gentle). Keep the broth on a slow boil until the fish is cooked through. Season to taste.
What does a good Aussie Jewish family do at Passover when several loud-voiced members have nasty fish allergies? Grandma makes them gefilte chicken, and everyone prods me under the table and asks “Where do you think Grandma got her three types of chicken from, eh?” My ribs were fragile the first night she served this delicacy, as almost every family member had the same idea and dug me in the ribs to emphasise their pungent wit. Gefilte chicken goes excellently with pickles and a bit of salad.
GEFILTE CHICKEN
Ingredients
take 2 chicken breasts and mince (if you don’t want this to look traditional and white, you can just use chicken mince – but the fat content may make them shrink; if you are using mince, I suggest 400 g and medium sized egg)
2 large eggs
salt
pepper
chicken stock
Method
Mix all dry ingredients and let stand a while. If the mixture is at all liquid add fine matzo meal to stiffen it. Make into balls using at least a tbs of mixture at a time (coat your hands with matzo meal to stop the mixture sticking).
Bring chicken stock to the boil, then lower the heat and place balls gently in the broth. Let cook gently, with the saucepan covered. Test to see when cooked (should take around 45 minutes).
I watched a lot of cartoons as a young person. Like, a lot. In New York City, where I grew up, we rejoiced in the–at the time–enormous selection of 7 TV channels (including the educational channel), and by 5 o’clock every evening at least two of them were showing cartoons: Warner Bros., primarily, but Woody Woodpecker and the Hanna Barbera slate, and Tom and Jerry… and those frankly kind of awful limited-animation series like Jonny Quest and Clutch Cargo. I imbibed them with a growing critical sense (if you can say such a thing of an 8-year-old), coming to the conclusion that Warner Bros., and later, the work of Jay Ward, were the clear winners.
I learned a lot about the 1930s and 1940s from Warner Bros. At the time, of course, I didn’t understand how much I was taking on board about, for example, life on the Home Front during WWII (blackout curtains, gas rationing, “Is this trip really necessary?” and the Little Man from the Draft Board), who the Hollywood hot tickets were (all Warners stars, of course). Some of the references were direct: Lauren Bacall wants rabbit pie, ordered by Humphrey Bogart, and Bugs Bunny happily complies, because, well, Lauren Bacall. Others were… well, let’s just say that when I first saw Katharine Hepburn in A Bill of Divorcement, I understood what Bugs Bunny had been going on about with the calla lillies.
