Best Jewish food.
OUR culinary DNA is enlivened by the food we eat at our parent’s table. Sucking the meat (such as it was) from the chicken feet or eating the giblets was even more delicious than eating the chicken soup for me but for many eating feet or entrails of any sort is anathema. When I think of the food that informed my tastes, my happiest memories were of large family gatherings to mark Jewish festivals. While the religious meaning is lost on me, a connection to the food isn’t.
Ashkenazi Jews come mainly from Eastern Europe while Sephardics, from areas like Rhodes Island in Greece. Although I was a sent a selection of both cuisines, this piece, to coincide with the Yiddish festival, is about Ashkenazi food.
I asked four Jewish delis and caterers to prepare their selection of traditional dishes. All prepared gefilte fish, three chicken soup and kneidelach, two herring and kichel, two perrogan, three potato latkes and one chopped liver while another offered blintzes.
New York Bagel, Regent Road, Sea Point’s liver was outstanding and although not kosher (they trade on Saturday’s) it was better than most of the liver I’ve tasted in homes other than my aunt Babs’.
The best gefilte fish was from Goldie’s in Main Road, Sea Point. I especially liked its sweetness. While my sister agreed it was the best of what we had tasted, she thought the minced fish ball cooked in a fish stock and usually served cold in a gelatinous sauce crowned with a sliced carrot should not be sweet.
Annette Kesler, arguably the matriarch of Cape cookery writers and now the editor of www.Showcook.co.za says the secret ingredient, aside from love, passion and endless time, is the trace of sugar in gefilte fish and beating the eggs mixed with a little water into the fish (with lots of energy) that helps to produce a light and delicious result. Annette also likes to add two minced parsnips to provide that subtle, sweetish flavour. A red fish like Red Roman should almost always be used with two others for a complex flavour.
Gefilte fish also comes as a delicious oven-baked option which the Kosher deli at Checkers Sea Point provided.
Chopped herring, often decorated with patterns created with grated egg white and grated yolk, is traditionally served with kichel - a thin, crisp, sweet baked pastry that is cut into diamond or squares and dusted with sugar before serving. I preferred New York Bagels’ herring but Goldie’s was also outstanding. The secret ingredient to perfect chopped herring according to Annette is using Granny Smith apples, a few good Marie biscuits and a dash of lemon juice to taste.
While the chicken soup from Norrie Caterers (who also own Café Riteve at the Jewish Museum precinct in Gardens) was delicious and full of meat, I think Jewish Penicillin as my mother calls it, should be clear with just with a few noodles and perhaps slices of carrot to garnish.
I thought the best came from Goldie’s. When making it yourself, Annette Kesler insists on boiling whole, free range chickens and frequently skimming the foam.
Best perogan (mince pie with a flaky pastry served with soup) was Checker’s meat (they also do a chicken one). Mazzo balls or kneidelach (served in soup) should be light and tasty – some had heavy cinnamon tones and others had ground nuts at their centre. Best was from New York Bagel. In the potato latke stakes Checker’s came tops, and while Norrie’s were the only ones to send blintzes (crepes filled with savoury cheese and fried) they were utterly divine.
[30-Aug-08]
Brian Berkman
To deal casually or cavalierly with the life of an animal is antithetical to Jewish values.
Foie Gras is available at many local delicatessens and restaurants in South Africa, Foie Gras is singled out world wide due to it defining the worst excesses of human greed and self indulgence of the few for fleeting taste, regardless of the cruel and painful process involved. The Israeli Supreme Court on August 11th, 2003, ruled in a detailed decision, that force-feeding of geese and ducks, as practiced in Israel, is in violation of the law, and that regulations that allowed this practice are not valid. The decision is one of very few decisions of national courts worldwide on the welfare of animals used in the food industry
"Harachamon" (the compassionate One) is a Creator whose compassion is over all of His creatures (as recited 3 times daily at synagogue services). Jews, are to be "rachmanim b'nei rachmanim" (compassionate children of compassionate ancestors). One of the distinguishing characteristics by which a Jew can be identified is compassion. Can this be consistent with selling, purchasing, supplying or eating of Foie Gras?
2. Proverbs 12:10 states, "The righteous person regards the life of his or her animal." In Judaism, one who is unnecessarily cruel to animals cannot be regarded as a righteous individual. In view of these powerful teachings can one justify the force-feeding of ducks and geese to create pate de foie gras? Jews can only kill animals to meet an essential human need. For example, hunting for sport is not considered legitimate, and is not only discouraged in the Talmud, but is also prohibited in Jewish law.
Some examples of Jewish legislation regarding the ethical treatment of animals:
a. It is prohibited to cause pain to animals - tzaar ba'alei chaim. (Talmud - Baba Metzia 32b, based on Exodus 23:5)
b. One is obligated to relieve an animal's suffering (i.e. unburden it), even if it belongs to your enemy. (Exodus 23:5)
c. If an animal depends on you for sustenance, it is forbidden to eat anything until feeding the animal first. (Talmud - Brachot 40a, based on Deut. 11:15)
d. There is a commandment to grant animals a day of rest on Shabbat. (Exodus 20:10)
e. It is forbidden to use two different species to pull the same plow, since this is unfair to the weaker animal. (Deut. 22:10)
f. It is a mitzvah to send away a mother bird before taking her young. (Deut. 22:7)
g. It is forbidden to kill a cow and her calf on the same day. (Leviticus 22:28)
h. It is prohibited to sever and eat a limb off a live animal. (Genesis 9:4; this is one of the "Noachide" laws that apply to Jews and non-Jews alike.)
i. Shechita (ritual slaughter) must be done with a minimum of pain to the animal. The blade must be meticulously examined to assure the most painless form of death possible. ("Chinuch" 451; "Pri Megadim" - Introduction to Shechita Laws).
j. Hunting animals for sport is viewed with serious disapproval by the Sages. (Talmud - Avoda Zara 18b; "Noda BeYehuda" 2-YD 10)
Foie Gras is ‘produced’ by intense, prolonged suffering – birds are force fed huge amounts, through a hard non-lubricated pipe inserted into the throat, of a cheap, stodgy mass of nutrient-deprived corn pulp for a period of up to 28 days, during which time their liver will increase in size by a magnitude of 8 to 10 times the normal. Force feeding is a fact. Migratory geese never gorge themselves up until the point of death before migration. Such extreme behaviors would be physically incapacitating and would be contrary to their survival. The livers of wild ducks and geese may expand up to twice their normal size, prior to migration, not a ten-fold expansion as found in forced-feeding production. It is not possible to produce cruelty free Foie Gras.
Any human being suffering the same condition would be hospitalised immediately in an intensive care unit. Many birds die painful deaths before slaughter due to damage done by laceration of the throat by the hard tubing, suffocation due to over force-feeding and more.
“It would indeed be the correct action to remove this item from the menu. It has been decided that it will be removed from all menus at the Table Bay going forward - this will include the Atlantic Grill. The Table Bay agrees entirely with the sentiments of your organization.”
The Table Bay Hotel Sep 2007.
Desmond Tutu, Helen Zille, Patricia Glynn, JM Coetzee are among those who support the campaign. In this regard, Conrad Gallagher has recently joined the likes Achim von Arnem of Cabriere, by also removing Foie Gras from the menu of his latest venture, Geisha and local Master Chef Ralph von Pletzen has condemned Foie Gras as a plate of disease served at an exorbitant price.
Foie Gras continues to be banned around the world due to the inherently cruel nature of ‘production’. With so many cruelty free, wonderfully exotic, gourmet foods available there is no need for Foie Gras. The No Foie Gras SA campaign is by no means to the exclusion of other abhorrent practices such as factory farming, animals in entertainment or fighting and the abuse heaped upon domestic animals. Indeed this is a small section of the work done on behalf of the silent majority of lives in this country.
The 160kgs to 210kgs of corn mush force-fed to a single bird during ‘processing’ over three weeks would keep a starving family somewhere very well for months. 40 million birds die annually and 840 million kgs of grain is used for a ‘luxury’ item for the few, at the expense of the many, both animal and human.
While in the grand scheme of things this campaign may seem insignificant, every cruel action towards those who are defenseless is one step closer to abuse of humankind. Selling it, serving it or eating it makes one equally guilty of the suffering of the birds as well as contributing to the hunger of the starving.
Philosopher Theodor Adorno said ‘’Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouses and thinks ‘they’re only animals’.”
[12-Sep-08]
Toni Brockhoven
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