European

Maurice and Anne-Juliette Belicha, together with their two young daughters, lead a Jewish life, bringing their kosher meat from Paris and only using bio (organic) products, in the Dordogne. While Maurice is producing kosher foie gras (see page 47), Anne-Juliette is trying to realize her dream of opening a kosher bed-and-breakfast in the Dordogne. She makes this delicious mango chutney, which marries well with both her husband’s foie gras and with chopped liver.

The elegant Gilbert Simon invited me for tea in her beautiful apartment in Nîmes, a city in the south of France dating back to the Roman Empire. Born in Lyon, Madame Simon, who is in her late eighties, married a Jewish “Nîmois” whom she met at a dance. But then the Nazis came in 1942 and started taking Jewish families away. “We left before they could find us,” she told me. “They were searching for my husband because he was a doctor here, working in the Resistance.” When they left Nîmes, the Simons hid in the mountains. “We found a house to live in with our two little girls. The peasants sold us vegetables; sometimes they killed a lamb; they brought us cheese and butter. When we returned to Nîmes, it was very difficult. There were not very many Jews left.” Today the majority of Jews are Sephardic, having immigrated to Nîmes in the 1960s from North Africa. Thinking back to happier and more prosperous times, this is the pâté she made through the years for her own family on Friday nights and the holidays, as well as for Jewish students who stayed with her while studying in Nîmes or nearby Aix-en-Provence.

Michel and Françoise Kalifa met over a slab of meat. “When I looked at Françoise, I saw only goodness in her eyes,” said Michel, a butcher who has a flowing black mustache. “She had a generosity of heart.” The two met in Michel’s butcher shop on Rue des Écouffes, in the Marais. Françoise’s parents came to the Marais after the Second World War, looking for other Jews from Poland who had survived the Nazi occupation. “They all said they would meet in the Pletzl, as the quarter was called,” Françoise, a caterer, told me. Now she and Michel, who is from Morocco, live in an apartment above their store with their baby. When we arrived at their renovated apartment, located in an old courtyard, a large platter of the charcuterie that Michel had prepared for us was on the table in the living room. “You should eat with your eyes first,” Michel told us. I picked up a thin slice of turkey smoked with beech wood: moist, mellow, and subtle in flavor. As I tasted my way through the platter, I learned to recognize the various flavors that regional differences make in charcuterie. And now that so many butchers, like Michel, are coming from North Africa, regional products like merguez lamb or beef sausage with its harissa-infused flavor are becoming butcher-shop staples. One of Françoise’s amazing specialties is this chopped liver from her Polish family. “On my mother’s side, we add onions to almost everything we eat,” Françoise told me. Not as finely chopped as most American versions, her liver was laced with finely sautéed sweet onions browned in duck fat and cooked until a caramel color. “The onions are the real secret,” Michel added. “They give it the sweet taste.” Although the Kalifas wouldn’t reveal the recipe, food historians Philip and Mary Hyman, who accompanied me, helped me get close, we believe.

Sometimes in the ninth century, or perhaps earlier, Baltic fishermen figured out that curing herring in salt would preserve it. Caught and immediately salted to prevent spoilage, the fish was then brought back to French ports to be sold, often by Jewish purveyors who transported it up the Rhône. Salting fish was so important in the medieval period that salt-fish mongers, like fresh-fish mongers, had their own stores for salted, dried, and brined fish such as herring and cod. Because the fish had not in fact been cooked, rabbis considered salted fish to be kosher even if it had been salted by gentiles. For centuries Jews in northern France, who couldn’t eat pork, ate herring as their daily protein. It was prepared in a variety of ways, most often first soaked in milk to remove the excess saltiness, then dressed with vinegar and oil, and served with lots of sliced raw onion and hot boiled potatoes. Jews in France have put a French touch on their herring dishes, serving them as an appetizer rather than as a main course. They usually prepare the herring with either a horseradish sauce with apples, hard-boiled eggs, and beets, or a mustard-dill sauce with sugar, cream, and vinegar. To break the fast of Yom Kippur, Alsatian Jews use a sweet-and-sour cream sauce with their herring.

This haroset recipe originated in Toledo, Spain, before the Inquisition, and found its way to Tétouan, near Tangier, in northern Morocco, and then to Paris, where it is served today. Dates, the predominant fruit in most Moroccan haroset, are mixed with apples before being rolled into little balls. Sylviane Lévy (see page 65), whose mother gave her the recipe, says to roll them in cinnamon, then serve them in little paper cups. These balls look like chocolate truffles and taste like Passover petits fours!

Hélène Sancy’s Haroset recipe goes back to her family’s residence in Portugal before the Inquisition. It is probably one of the oldest existing haroset recipes in France today, if not the oldest. Her husband’s job is to grind the fruits and nuts with the brass mortar and pestle, which they inherited, handed down through the generations. Although the Sancys do not roll their haroset into balls as is called for in other old recipes from Spain and Portugal (recipe follows), they have another fascinating Passover custom. First they say a blessing over the bitter herbs (maror)—in their case, romaine lettuce—as a reminder of slavery in Egypt. Then they wrap the romaine around parsley that has been dipped in salt water, a little chopped celery, and about a teaspoon of haroset. The Ashkenazi way, in contrast, is to sandwich bitter herbs and haroset between two pieces of matzo. Curiously, the Sancys’ recipe for haroset, in this land of vineyards in the southwest of France, includes no raisins.

Yves Alexander, who was born and raised in Paris, now lives in Strasbourg, where his family’s roots go back to 1760. When he is not on the road for his job as a traveling salesman, he does most of the cooking at home. A virtual oral dictionary of gastronomy and French Jewish history, Yves kindly shepherded me around Alsace, where he showed me extraordinary vestiges of a very long past, which went back in some instances to the Roman legions’ trip over the Alps and through Lugano, perhaps during the Battle of Bibracte, in the winter of 59–58 B.C.E. It was here that Caesar’s army defeated the Helvetii, who were trying to migrate from Switzerland to Aquitaine, in the southwest of France. Like every Frenchman, Yves cooks by the seasons. This autumn dish, which he prepares when cèpes (generally known in the United States by their Italian name, porcini) are in season, can be made any time of the year using whatever mushrooms are available. Serve it as an appetizer, or as a main course over pasta with a salad. You can also use dried morels or dried porcini, soaking them first in warm water for about 30 minutes. Yves warns not to throw away the liquid. “Just filter the liquid, and reduce it to enhance the taste,” he told me. When fresh porcini are hard to find, Yves likes using a mix of St. George’s mushrooms (fairy-ring mushrooms) and young pied-de-mouton mushrooms, a native species that he buys at farmers’ markets or gathers in the forests.

"There is no such thing as Jewish Alsatian cooking. It is Alsatian cooking,” Chef Gilbert Brenner told me over lunch at his restaurant, Wistub Brenner, with a view over the Lauch River in Colmar, a charming city in southern Alsace that has had a Jewish presence since at least the eleventh century. “Jewish cooks adapted the dietary laws to what was available here,” Monsieur Brenner told me. “France didn’t create dishes. Families created the dishes. It is the cooking of their grandparents and reatgrandparents.” Looking over the menu at Brenner’s popular restaurant, I was taken by this extraordinary leek terrine, which I later learned was put on the menu for Gilbert’s Jewish customers and friends who keep kosher or are vegetarians. During the short asparagus season in the spring, Gilbert substitutes asparagus for the leeks. The recipe is a modern version of very old savory bread puddings, like schaleths (see page 251).

Once, while visiting Le Monde des Épices (see page 26), I asked the owner which Jewish cookbook in his large selection he especially liked. His favorite one at the time was 150 Recettes et Mille et Un Souvenirs d’une Juive d’Algérie (150 Recipes and 1,001 Memories of an Algerian Jewish Woman) by Léone Jaffin, one of the steady stream of North African Jewish cookbooks since the 1970s. This book includes such unusual recipes as these Swiss-chard bestels, traditionally eaten on Rosh Hashanah. North African Jews frequently use the bright-green leaves of beets or Swiss chard, called blette. A prayer is recited over the vegetable, called salek in Hebrew, meaning to remove or throw out, with the hope that in the coming year enemies will be removed from the community’s midst. I have added curry powder, pine nuts, and currants to this tasty turnover, which I sometimes serve with salad as a first course.

The French call this appetizer caviar d’aubergine because the feel of the eggplant seeds on your tongue is similar in texture to that of fish eggs. A delicious and easy-to-prepare dish, it has been in the French Jewish repertoire since at least the turn of the last century, when Romanian immigrants introduced the French to their ways of grilling the eggplant with its dark skin intact, a technique learned in the Middle East via the Caucasus. At about the same time, Russian and Romanian immigrants also brought this so-called poor man’s caviar with them to France. Whereas earlier generations used a hand chopper to make this dish, often blending in either lemon juice and olive oil or tomatoes and green peppers, today most cooks pulse it in a food processor. Although it is easier to roast the eggplants in the oven, oven- roasting will not give you the smoky flavor that comes from grilling over an open flame. This is a recipe to play with. Add diced onion, cilantro, or paprika, if you wish, or a few tablespoons of grapefruit juice or even mayonnaise. I have tasted all kinds of eggplant caviar. The last was at a very upscale French Bat Mitzvah, where the eggplant, laced with pesto, spiced with cumin, and decorated with tiny pansies, was served in an eggshell at the Kiddush after the service.

A Greek Eastertime specialty, especially renowned on the island of Siphnos. Mizithra, a soft, fresh, unsalted cheese made from sheep’s milk, is used there, but a bland, unsalted curd or cream cheese may be substituted.

There are many feast days in the Greek Orthodox calendar which are marked in the kitchen. Easter is the most important. The date is movable, fixed on the first Sunday following the full moon of the spring equinox, but generally falling within the first half of April. Houses are whitewashed and decorated with lilac, clothes are made, and new shoes are bought. There is much activity in the kitchen, for the feast also marks the breaking of forty days’ Lenten fast and a complete fast on Good Friday. Solemn candlelit processions are followed by national rejoicing to celebrate the Resurrection. Paschal Lambs are roasted on spits in gardens and open spaces, and the innards are used for mayeritsa soup, which is finished with the favorite egg-and-lemon mixture. Hard-boiled eggs are dyed red, a color supposed to have protective powers, and polished with olive oil, and a sweet braided bread is adorned with them.

Stifatho is a Greek dish also made with beef. Serve it with rice or potatoes.

From the Greek word for “doll,” these Greek meatballs make lovely finger food, as good cold as they are hot.

This famously Greek dish is to be found throughout the Arab world without the creamy topping. Broiling or grilling instead of frying the eggplants makes for a lighter and lovelier moussaka. This one is made upof a layer of eggplants, a layer of meat and tomatoes, and a layer of cheesy white (béchamel-type) sauce. Serve with salad and yogurt.

This is a version, using fillo pastry, of a Greek dish of lamb baked in parchment packets.

A Turkish dish of Georgian origin. Georgia borders on northwestern Turkey and is famous for plum trees and plum sauces. The traditional way to make this dish is to cut the chicken all the way down the back with kitchen shears or a bread knife, open it out, and cut away the bones. You season the flesh inside with crushed garlic, salt, and pepper, then close the chicken up, flatten it with a weight, and cook it in a pan gently in some butter for about 40 minutes, turning it over once. But I find it is easier and equally good to use chicken fillets.

This is served as an appetizer in Greece. The wine gives it a special flavor.

This Greek dish takes time and effort but is something special to offer at a dinner party. Serve with rice or with mashed potatoes (see page 297).