Around the Shabbat Table (9 page)
Read Around the Shabbat Table Online
Authors: Jayne Cohen
TO
serve, arrange the chicken on a platter. Surround with the dumplings and nap everything with the pan sauce.
COOK'S NOTE:
Much of the success of this dish rides on fresh, aromatic paprikas, a combination of sweet and hot spices. If your paprikas no longer have real fragrance, invest in new ones. Find a brand you like: good paprika should add more than orange color to foods. I often prepare this dish with smoked paprikas.
During my father's last summer, I took the Long Island Railroad to his apartment, spending days with him while Alex was in day camp.
He had always been a master storyteller who “owned” every story he ever told, from folktales like “Why the Sea is Salty” to sagas of the Lower East Side peopled with petty thieves named Cheesecake and Second Story. It wasn't until months after I had discovered Charles Lamb that I conceded to my friends my dad hadn't made up “A Dissertation on Roast Pig”âthough he certainly told it better.
In the beginning, when he could still sit upright, cradled in pillows, he told me stories again, new ones I had never heard before, and “Matzoh Ball” stories, those I knew well and was always hungry for: how his family of nine had just one electric light bulb, hung over the kitchen table where everyone ate, talked, and did their homework; how he met my mother.
But as the days passed and his appetite diminished, we knew the chemotherapy wasn't working. So I took over. Yet since he now, as the Psalmist says, “walked through the valley of the Shadow . . . .” I found that everything I spoke of from our world rang hollow and trivial.
Except one: recipes. The less he was able to eat, the more he wanted me to tell him recipes: how my mother used to prepare canned salmon, including the exact amount of white vinegar and onions she added, mush (pronounced “moosh”) steak from the old French Roumanian restaurant, fried with gobs of onions in chicken schmaltz. He listened, rapt, correcting me every time I omitted some petty ingredient, forgot the garlic, or a squeeze of lemon. It was as if I were telling spellbinding family stories, and he wanted to make sure I had every detail right.
And then I realized that our recipes
were
our family stories; they nourished us with all that is delicious in life.
I didn't just feed him with recipes: the recipes stimulated his appetite, at least for a while. I would prepare the foods we talked about, and he would
eat as much as his shrinking body permitted. We spent a lot of time on his mother's tongue with raisin sauce, and we distilled a recipe for sweet-and-sour stuffed cabbage that reflected both my grandmothers' kitchens, sans the gingersnapsâ”excessive,” we both agreed.
The tongue was first, so I overcame my longstanding disgust at handling the organ, bought the ingredients for preparing the dish, and went to his apartment to cook it. He wasn't there.
My brother called from the hospital where he was waiting with my father's nurse. “Dad's in the ER, but we're bringing him home. Make the tongue,” he urged, “maybe he'll eat it.”
He did come home, not that day, but the next. By then, he wasn't eating anything but sips of water.
My brother ate the tongue. And I never made the sweet-and-sour stuffed cabbage.
One day, when I told my daughter the story of the stuffed cabbage, she asked me to tell her the recipe. Then I made it for her.
CLASSIC SWEET-AND-SOUR STUFFED CABBAGE
yield:
ABOUT 8 SERVINGS
My father and I decided to add a little tomato puree to the meat and bit of rice, ensuring that the filling would remain tender and succulent in these subtly sweet-and-sour cabbage rolls.
FOR THE CABBAGE ROLLS
1
â
4
cup long-grain rice
1 large head green cabbage or 2 smaller heads
2 pounds lean ground beef (ground turkeyâdark meat from the thigh, especiallyâworks well here, too)
2 large eggs, beaten
1
â
2
cup canned tomato puree
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons light olive or other mild oil
4 cups finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
2 tablespoons brown sugar
FOR THE SAUCE
One 28-ounce can Italian plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped, with their juice
1 cup canned tomato puree
1 cup chicken broth, preferably
homemade
or good-quality low-sodium
purchased
1 cup chopped onion
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons minced candied ginger
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 Turkish bay leaf
1
â
2
cup golden raisins
START
the cabbage rolls: in a small bowl, soak the rice with a little warm water to cover. Using a sharp knife, carefully cut away the large outer leaves of the cabbage from the core end. Rinse, then blanch them in a large pot of boiling salted water, 4 or 5 at a time, until just soft enough to bend and fold without breaking. Drain and pat dry as they are done, and set them aside to cool. Coarsely chop the inner leaves too small to roll, and set aside; use no more than 2 cups of them for the sauce (any remainder can be discarded or saved for another purpose).
IN
a large bowl, combine the meat, eggs, tomato puree, salt (figure about 2 teaspoons kosher salt), and pepper to taste. Add the rice, drained, and mix well. Set the filling aside while you sauté onions and garlic.
IN
a very large (7- to 8-quart) Dutch oven or heavy ovenproof casserole, warm the oil over medium heat until it shimmers. Add the onions, salt and pepper them lightly, and sauté, lifting and turning occasionally, until softened and pale gold. Add the garlic and continue cooking for 5 more minutes. Scoop out about half of this mixture, put it in a small bowl to cool slightly, then add it to the filling and mix well.
ADD
the reserved chopped cabbage to the onion-garlic mixture remaining in the pot, sprinkle with salt, and stir well. Cover the pot and cook over medium heat until the cabbage is lightly steamed and greatly reduced in volume. Uncover the pot, strew with the brown sugar, and sauté over moderately high heat, lifting and turning the vegetables so they don't scorch, until the cabbage is softened and very lightly bronzed in parts. Turn off the heat.
PREHEAT
the oven to 325°F.
STUFF
the cabbage leaves: place them on a work surface, curled edges up, like an open palm. Cut out the hard little triangle at the base of each stem. Put about
1
â
3
cup of filling (depending on the size of the leaf) in the center. Fold the stem end of the leaf over the filling, then tuck in the two sides. Pull the top over these folds to enclose the roll. They should be compact and rounded, but remember, the rice will drink in the puree and the meat juices and expand somewhat, so leave a little extra room. Place the finished rolls seam side down as you work.
PREPARE
the sauce: in a food processor fitted with the steel blade, combine all the sauce ingredients except the bay leaf and process until smooth.
PLACE
the cabbage rolls seam side down on top of the sautéed vegetables. Pack them together closely, making multiple layers as necessary. Pour the sauce evenly over them, bury the bay leaf deep amidst the rolls, cover the pot tightly and bring to a boil. Transfer to the oven and bake for 2 hours, stirring in the raisins after the first hour. If necessary, bake an additional 30 minutes to 1 hour, uncovered, until the cabbage is very tender.
SERVE
the cabbage rolls with lots of challah or other good bread or mashed potatoes because you'll want to sop up all of the wonderful sauce. Excellent reheated and even better the second day.
EASY ONION-BRAISED BRISKET
yield:
ABOUT 8 SERVINGS
A featured player in countless holiday productions throughout the Diaspora, sautéed onion takes on multiple roles here, providing not only the wonderfully savory flavor but also all the aromatic moisture in which the brisket gently braises, and even the body for the simple, flour-free gravy.
5 tablespoons mild olive oil
A first- or second-cut beef brisket (about 5 pounds), trimmed of excess fat, wiped with a damp paper towel, and patted dry
6 large garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds onions, thinly sliced (about 8 cups)
1
â
4
cup mild vinegar (moderately priced sherry or balsamic are good choices)
HEAT
3 tablespoons of the oil over medium-high heat in a large Dutch oven or heavy flameproof casserole large enough to accommodate the meat in one layer (see Cook's Note). Add the brisket, and brown it well to caramelize the meat on all sides, about 10 minutes in all. Don't allow it to develop a hard, dark crust, which would make the meat tough or bitter. Transfer the brisket to a platter, fat-side down.
SPRINKLE
the garlic cloves with enough salt and pepper to season the brisket, then mash the seasoned garlic to a paste. Spread half of the garlic paste over the top (nonfat side) of the brisket, and set the meat aside.