My Favorite Meal

Do you have a favorite meal? Mine is, hands down, breakfast.

Breakfast means, literally, break the fast. You’ve not eaten since maybe eight the night before.*
*(Unless you are the midnight by-the-fridge sort, which is an image I’ve only experienced watching movies/sitcoms. In real life, middle of the night is a time when the last thing I want to do is stand by an open refrigerator or even think about food.)

So now it’s eight in the morning. You’ve “fasted” for twelve hours, and you should be ravenous.

For me, this is the mystery of breakfast: I’m not hungry in the least. I don’t know why, I just don’t get that peckish sensation that precedes lunch or dinner. This makes breakfast a meal of complete non-urgent food choice.  
A long time ago I vowed to never eat something I don’t enjoy, (with the exception of social circumstances when someone else is in charge and I want to be polite) so breakfast is pure pleasure food.

It so happens that American food conventions also include my favorites as breakfast food. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, hot cereal, and...
coffee, blessed coffee.

I liken it to reading for pleasure. Not assigned books (whether for school, work, or a book club) or books that are “good for you,” as in must-read-because-it-won-the-Pulitzer-prize. But pure pleasure reading.
At the same time I abandoned “good for you” breakfasts, (bye-bye bran flakes and cold milk) I also vowed to never finish a book that didn’t resonate.

Life is too short.

            

So eat when you don’t have to, and read when you don’t have to. Life will be good.

A Passover Confession

Passover, the holiday of eating Matzos and telling of the Jewish people's exodus from ancient Egypt and from slavery to being a free if roaming tribes, is in full swing. It began this year on April 19 and will culminate on the 26th.

We're supposed to eat only unleavened bread, the famous (some may say infamous) matzos, because our ancestors had to leave in a hurry and couldn't wait for the dough to rise. I somehow doubt that in their hurrying to bake unrisen dough they got such wonderful crispy results as the modern Matzo. But that's not the point. It serves us as a reminder. A visceral note for the body to acknowledge that this period of time is different.

But I eat matzo every single day of the year. It's part of my breakfast, (with cheese) and lunch, (with hummus or peanut butter) and just about anytime. I do this because I really (really, REALLY) like it. Just ask DH, who lives here. Mirka's matzo is a staple, always on the counter.


So sue me. I'm cheating Passover. I would probably note the difference more if I eat bread on passover, perish the thought.

Pass Me the Passover, Please

Another Passover holiday almost over, and I already miss the food.

Growing up in Jerusalem, all non-kosher for Passover food disappeared from store shelves. We loved some of what replaced it, but by the time the holiday was over we couldn’t wait to resume eating bread, ice cream sandwiches and cookies, and for Ashkenazi Jews— rice, beans or corn.

There were the foods that only appeared on Passover. Truthfully, Matzo and Gefilte fish were available year round. Even beet horseradish might appear on the table at other times. Some mothers went as far as to make matzo balls for soup year round, when they didn’t have to avoid all other noodle/dumpling soup swimmers.

But one food I never saw except at the Seder table was Charoset. It so happens that it is, by far, my favorite of all Passover foods. This homely mush tastes divine, and I cannot imagine it came down to our ancestors from any other source but the creator.

There are many versions of Charoset. Some are made with dates, and some have exotic spices. But I’ll share the one I grew up with because it is simple, wholesome, and too good to keep to myself.

3 large tart firm apples, peeled

I cup chopped walnuts

½-cup honey

½-cup sweet red wine

1 T. cinnamon

Grate the apples and add the rest. If the oxidized browning of the apples in a turn off, add the juice of one lemon right after grating. But, really, Charoset is supposed to resemble the mortar that built the pyramids, (long story, this Passover tale) and the browning is part of the deal. Another thing is to not use fancy good wine, such as sweet aged port of sherry. Manischewitz or Kedem wine from Israel are preferable, because they are super cheap, sweet, lower in alcohol and because they have no oaky residues.

This Charoset will last for a few days in the refrigerator. It’s good on Matzo, with yogurt, mixed with granola or cold breakfast cereal, and just as a perfect pick-me-up when life doesn’t.

SHHH... Sweet Spice Surprise

DS just had a birthday. As he’s about to embark on the rest of his life away from here, I relished the opportunity to make him an honest to goodness non-virtual birthday cake. Who knows when I’ll get to do it again on his actual birthday?
 

 

In years past, it was easy. The choice was always chocolate. Sometimes it was chocolate with chocolate chips and dark chocolate frosting.
 

 

“Chocolate, right? “ I said.

“No,” he said. “Not chocolate this time, and please surprise me.”

They do grow up, don’t they.

But then he added, “Make it something weird. And don’t tell me.”

A weird surprise. Okay, maybe he’s still a kid at heart.
 

 

But what should I make?
 

I did not want to make something weird for weird’s sake, as a sort of joke that after a brief chuckle will not be edible. Weird is one thing, but if I make a cake I want it to be good.
 

 

I remembered that years ago I made just such a cake. It was popular briefly across the land. It was good, surprisingly so. It was a spice cake made with a full can of condensed tomato soup.

It seemed a bit weird even then. But to the millennials it qualifies as uncanny, pun intended.
 

 

And so I made a Tomato Soup Spice Cake, with cream cheese frosting, and added candied angelica and cherries glace on top.

 

 

 

Result?

 

One good cake—

 

And one happy son—

 

 

 Recipe:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 ½ teaspoons ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) Condensed Tomato Soup
• ½ cup butter
• 2 egg
• ¼ cup water

 

Step 1

Heat the oven to 350°F. Grease two 9” inch baking pans.

Step 2

Stir the flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, allspice, baking soda, cinnamon and cloves in a large bowl. Add the soup, butter, eggs and water. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed just until blended. Increase the speed to high and beat for 2 minutes. Pour the batter into the pans.

Step 3

Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack to room temperature before frosting.

 

 

My Life as a Torte*

*Inspired by Nora Ephron’s

MY Life as a Meatloaf

Re-reading Nora Ephron is a treat, no matter how many times I’ve read her before. She didn’t blog, per se, but she is called “the original Blogger” by some.

Turns out that a friend who opened a restaurant named a meatloaf dish after her. It bore no resemblance to any meatloaf she had made or eaten before, but it was fantalicious, and people complemented her on this gourmet version of a down-home lowly staple.

Then the chef changed, the dish changed, was moved to Tuesday nights only, and eventually disappeared from the menu. Ephron saw an analogy to her life, and life in general. You have your day, your heyday, your recognition, the fade out, and then you’re gone.

Four years after her death, Ephron still lives, and some meatloaf recipes carry her name and are still googled daily. But what didn’t quite apply to her life, turns out, does apply to mine.

I, too, had a dish named after me.

Long ago I managed the storefront of a gourmet pastry shop. The owner-chef was a genius, and while she insisted on never making a down-home cookie (no chocolate-chip) and never calling a cake a cake (she only made tortes, please!)  the cakes, ahmm, tortes, were as incredible tasting as they were gorgeous. Tasteful in and out.

She made some classics, but also came up with original concoctions. One of those she named the Mirka Torte.

It was not my favorite, but it was up there. Layers of Cake (torte!) speckled with shavings of dark chocolate and orange rind hugged an orange sabayon cream, a sort of fluffy custard, and a thin strip of cark chocolate ran in between. It was light, beautiful, and as it turned out, quite popular.

When I married she made our wedding cake, and of course it was The Mirka Torte. When my step-mother asked her why she named this composition after me, the answer was that it is both a simple and straight-forward, as well as a subtle and complicated composition. Just like its namesake.

“You really know Mirka well,” my step-mother said.

Two years after its debut, and long after we had worked together, I ran into this cake on a dessert menu at a fancy restaurant. It was still named Mirka Torte. No one knew why, but that was just fine.

And then it was gone. Like all ephemeral things, it had its day, and then it slipped into the night.

Which is as it should be, to make room for others.

But for a moment there I had a whiff of the Nora Ephron thing. It was nice.

SEASONS and SEASONINGS

Where I live, the seasons are barely delineated. Call it year-round spring, and you wouldn’t be far off. But we do our best to pretend to have, at least, two seasons.

Winter is ushered with a change of bed quilts, from the light colored and thinly stuffed to the heavier, darkly rich hued kind. 

When my kids were little, the content of their dresser drawers would change— with lighter clothes placed at the bottom and sweaters floating to the top. New pairs of socks would replace the odd unmatched singles of last year, and sandals got pushed to the back of the shoe drawer.

In truth, we can just about wear any of the clothes any time, and the bedding would not make a real difference either way. But we pretend we can’t, really, in order to have the illusion of change. Unlike folks who have what we here call “real weather,” we don’t change our tires to snow tires, and we don’t use antifreeze. We don’t need to get the snow shovels from the back of the garage, and we have no use for thermal underwear. For those who go on ski weekends— their gear is specialized, but this was never part of my life in California.

But one seasonal thing is not a pretense for me. One word sums it up: SPICES. Specifically— Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and that thing we call allspice, which isn’t all the spices mixed together but a kind of pepper from a West Indian tree.

Sure, you can use these in summer, and people of “real weather” think of these seasoning as ushering Fall. But in some mysterious way I find a strong urge overtakes me to start spicing and baking and stewing and sprinkling with the above as soon as November comes.

That’s today. Can you smell it all the way from my kitchen?

As the gingerbread is baking and the pumpkin soup is simmering, I reflect on how this relates to writing stories. I don’t want to write the same story over and over. I mark a new story with new and distinct words and expressions. In this way I know I am entering a different territory. Words, used like seasoning, tell me I am here and not there, and should address perception differently.

 Just as I will now dress differently.

If this sounds like a stretch, just come over and get a whiff. I’m not kidding.

Favorite Old Rosh Hashanah Posts, Again

My favorite Jewish New Year story is one I already posted two years ago on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. I suppose that just as we repeat the ritual of dipping apples in honey, saying the same annual blessings and making the same honey cake in more or less the same way, I feel it is not wholly inappropriate to post part of it here, again. (The complete version is in the link under the first sentence^.)

My mother was a permanent guest at our home every Friday and holiday.

In 2001, friends of my father and stepmother were visiting the bay area from Israel.

I didn’t know them well, and when they called, I asked them to come for Rosh Hashanah dinner. I figured that they could use a taste of home.

My mother was a Kugel fan. If you haven’t heard of kugel, let’s just say that it is a casserole of cooked-anything-at-all mixed with beaten eggs and seasonings. I had promised her a round kugel for Rosh Hashanah. Round, like all New Year dishes that symbolize the closing of circles.

I didn't make kugel often, so I set out to make the best. I had a mother to honor, Israeli guests, and an urgent need to respond to the disaster that had just struck our nation-- with the perennial Jewish celebration motto: They tried to kill us, we survived, LET’S EAT!

My mother dreamed of potato-kugel. So I grated and seasoned and mixed and mashed, pouring the mixture into a greased round dish and into a 375 degree oven. 
Then it occurred to me- the last time I made carrot-kugel, DH mentioned not once, but twice, how much he liked it. So I grated and mixed and added the cinnamon and brown sugar and to another round dish it went, also into the same oven.

DD came in and asked what I was making.

 “Kugel, for the New Year,” I said.

“Yum. I love noodle-kugel,” she said. Oops. I wasn’t thinking of her favorite. So I boiled egg noodles and mixed in the eggs, apple sauce and the raisins, and into the oven in yet another round baking dish went kugel number three.

It crossed my mind that having something green for the New Year was sort of mandatory. Think harvest, re-growth, life. Zucchini-kugel would have to serve that role. More grating, beating, mixing, pouring. The oven was almost at full capacity.

DS came in. With the resolute expression six-year-olds are so good at, he informed me that he doesn’t eat any of these kugels. In desperation I made the only kind I knew he would: chocolate-kugel. Not very traditional, but it was round and it was going to be irresistible. Think dark-chocolate not too sweet soufflé, only this one stabilized with matzo meal so it doesn’t collapse.

 By then I was ready to collapse. 

Our guests arrived right after my mother. Introductions were made, and they complimented our table. I lit the holiday candles, and DD blessed the round challah. DS said the blessing over the fruit of the vine, (ours-wine, his and DD’s grape juice) and we said SHE-HEH-CHEH-YANU, the prayer of gratefulness for having arrived to this day. It had never meant more.

I opened the oven door and brought out the first. 
“Wow, kugel!” our guests exclaimed.

I went back and brought the second. 
“How nice, a kugel!” the wife said.

I was feeling positively giddy when I brought the third. 
“Ah, kugel,” I heard. It sounded a bit like a sigh.

Not done, I came in with the fourth. 
“Another kugel?” said the husband.

I felt positively sheepish bringing in kugel number five. But it was chocolate; the only one DS would eat.

I suspect our guests from Israel thought they really had landed in Oz.

All right, folks— Let’s eat!