by Gil Marks
Sephardim, Italians, and other Mediterranean Jews have long enjoyed both fresh and hard cheeses variously made from cow's, sheep's, and goat's milk. For millennia, many Mediterranean and Asian housewives weekly made their own soft, white, fresh cheese, called keso blanco by Sephardim and jiben beida in Arabic, the most common type used in cooking. In the Roman manner, the curds were frequently placed in a breadbasket to drain. Typically, cheese was made once or twice a week; it was a part of most meals and, when lightly salted, it lasted for a few days.
The variety of cheeses in the generally mountainous Balkans of the Ottoman Empire—Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia—was more expansive than in eastern Europe. These cheeses were made mostly from goat's milk and sometimes from sheep's milk. The intense flavor of goat cheese marries well with many other Middle Eastern favorites, especially eggplant, olives, tomatoes, and bell peppers, and makes it a perfect complement to bread, as well as an important ingredient in vegetable dishes and pastry fillings.
Jiben halloum in Arabic, or halloumi in Greek, is a white, mild, semihard sheep's milk cheese (or a mixture of sheep's and goat's milk), made by boiling the pressed curd and then brining it, resulting in a layered and somewhat rubbery, chewy texture; it is firmer and milder than feta. Halloumi has a high melting point and, therefore, is frequently used for frying and grilling.
The Romanian kashkaval, based on the Italian caciocavallo, a Provolone type cheese is made from sheep's milk or a combination of sheep and cow's milk. When aged for two to three months, kashkaval is mild with a slightly nutty flavor and used for the table; more mature cheeses, with the color of straw, are stronger and used for grating and may be substituted for Parmesan. It is known as kasseri in Greece and kaser in Turkey.
In 1840, Meir Arzoni, a jeweler from Persia, moved to the city of Safed (north of the Sea of Galilee), Israel, three years after a major earthquake devastated the town and its Jewish population. Unable to practice his trade in his new location, Arzoni turned to producing kosher cheese made from sheep's and goat's milk from local shepherds. His venture was successful and Arzoni established Israel's first commercial dairy, Hameiri. More than a century and a half and six generations later, the original four-story factory shop and former family home are still operating, and still family owned. The signature cheese of the Hameiri Dairy is Safed cheese (gevinat Tzfatit). Among the few native Israeli cheeses, it is a white semisoft cheese formed in a round block with distinctive ridges derived from encasing in salt aging in large wicker breadbaskets. Young Safed cheese is soft, smooth, and lightly flavored, but as it ages, the texture hardens to that of a grating cheese.
In the 1930s, nearly a century after Meir Arzoni opened his cheese factory, the Israeli agricultural cooperative Tnuva (Hebrew for "produce"), which had been founded in 1929 to represent kibbutzim and moshavim, expanded to include dairy products. It became and it remains the country's largest producer of dairy products and cheese. Most Israeli cheeses were divided into three basic types: gevina levana (white cheese), gevina tzehuba ("yellow cheese," including various mild-flavored hard and semisoft cheeses), and gevina melucha ("salty cheese," meaning feta types). Today Israel has more than seventy large and boutique dairies producing an increasing variety of cheeses.
Historically, all the Jewish cheeses in northeastern Europe were the curd type, almost always made from cow's milk. On the other hand, Ashkenazim in Romania and parts of Ukraine also had various soft and hard goat's and sheep's cheeses; these were frequently brined and the most notable were brinza/bryndza (a creamy, less salty type of feta) and kashkaval.
For centuries, many eastern European meals consisted solely of potatoes or black bread and curd cheese. Ashkenazim, many of whom owned their own cow or goat for homemade cheese and sour cream, ate curd cheese on a regular basis. It was commonly mixed with chopped cucumbers and radishes, mixed into noodles, and used as a filling for various pastries, including kreplach, blintzes, knishes, and strudels. The original Hanukkah latke was made from curd cheese. In a more elaborate dish, curd cheese was sweetened, fruit was sometimes added, and then the mixture was baked. In Romania, Galicia, and the Ukraine, curd cheese was frequently added to or layered with mamaliga (cornmeal mush) for dairy meals.
A grainy European version of dry curd made from cow's milk is variously called pot cheese (from the Dutch pot kees), baker's cheese, and hoop cheese; it is similar to dry-curd cottage cheese, except that not all the whey is pressed out. Farmer cheese can be a synonym of pot cheese or, typical of the Jewish style, refer to pot cheese with a little cream added. The American cottage cheese, first recorded in 1848, is usually made by adding a bacterial culture to cow's milk to produce lactic acid, which coagulates the protein, separating the curds and whey.
Ricotta (Italian for "cooked again") is a creamy, fine-grained curd cheese produced from the whey that results as a by-product of making cheese, especially mozzarella. The whey is heated, then mixed with acid to curdle the remaining protein. Ricotta is sweeter, grainer, and has a finer curd than cottage cheese. The ricotta is also pressed, salted, and dried, resulting in a hard white cheese called ricotta salata. Some authorities believe that ricotta originated among the Jews of Rome or Sicily, but in any case, Sicilian Jews were long prominent in ricotta production; much of it was exported to mainland Italy, until they were expelled by the Spanish in 1493.
(See also Brinza, Feta, Gevina Levana, Labaneh, and Panir)
Cheese, Cream
In 1872, William A. Lawrence, a dairyman from Chester, New York (in Monroe County), attempted to make a batch of Neufchâtel, a soft, fresh cow's milk cheese from France. Instead, by adding too much heavy cream, he accidentally created an even richer, silkier cheese, which he called "cream cheese." Any citations of "cream cheese" in books before that time referred to heavy cream strained through muslin, then left to dry for several days. Today's cream cheese is a fresh cheese with a mild flavor and a slight tang. Most brands, and those best for cheesecakes, contain emulsifiers to enhance the firmness and lengthen shelf life.
Other dairies in Upstate New York soon began manufacturing their own cream cheese. In 1880, C. D. Reynolds purchased the Empire Cheese Company in South Edmeston, New York, a new village near Chester, and launched production of cream cheese under the brand name Philadelphia. Some say the name came from Philadelphia, New York, a tiny town near the St. Lawrence River, while others contend the name came from the Pennsylvanian city, known for the high-quality of its produce. To protect the fresh cheese, Reynolds began to package his cream cheese in tin foil wrappers. In 1902, Philadelphia was acquired by the Phoenix Cheese Company, which in turn merged with the Kraft Cheese Company in 1928.
Meanwhile in 1907, the Breakstone Brothers (originally Isaac and Joseph Bregstein of Panemune, Lithuania) began manufacturing cream cheese in a small plant in Brooklyn. Then in 1920, they opened a larger facility in Downsville, New York, and began mass marketing cream cheese. Breakstone was purchased by National Dairy Products in 1928, which in turn merged with Kraft in 1930.
Cream cheese, known as schmear kaez in Yiddish, early on became popular among New York's Jews, who began schmearing it on bagels and, since it was kosher for Passover, matza. The combo of bagels and cream cheese would eventually conquer mainstream America as well. In the 1930s, central and eastern European Jews in New York City substituted cream cheese and sour cream for curd cheese, creating the Jewish cheesecake, also called New York cheesecake. Cream cheese was also incorporated into central European Jewish pastries, such as rugelach, in place of quark and topfen. In the early 1960s, cream cheese emerged as the preferred frosting for carrot cake, transforming this dessert's status from practically unknown to an American favorite.
Cheesecake
Cheesecake is a thick, baked custard made with soft cheese, usually with a bottom crust.
Origin: Ancient Greece, New York City
Other names: Austria: topfenkuchen; German: kaesekuchen; Hebrew: oogat gevina; Hungarian: túrós pile; Italian: torta al formaggi
o; Latin: placenta; Romanian: placinta; Russian and Ukranian: Yatrushka; Yiddish: gomolkhes kaesekuchen.
Cheesecake is basically a thick, baked (and sometimes unbaked) cheese custard, usually with a bottom crust, and sometimes with a crust that comes partway or all the way up the sides.
By the fourth century BCE, Greeks were preparing several types of griddle cakes incorporating curd cheese, flour, and sometimes honey. Subsequently, Romans made cheesecakes that were cooked on a griddle and some types that were baked in a crust.
In late medieval Italy, cakes were made from curd cheese, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and ginger. From the onset, medieval cheesecakes were actually more of a cheese tart, with a crust providing a sturdy base and baking container for the soft custardy filling. Cheese-filled pastry, called fluden, was widespread among Franco-German Jews by at least 1000 CE, and eventually it became popular in Germany and eastern Europe, with the filling becoming deeper and the top crust omitted. Cheesecake, made from curd cheese, became a popular Ashkenazic dessert, leading to the Yiddish expression, "Mit shney ken men nit makhn gomolkes" (From snow you can't make cheesecakes).
Lindy's helped make New York cheesecake famous.
In the mid-nineteenth century, immigrants brought the German kaesekuchen (cheese cake) to America. Reflecting the nineteenth century German and Jewish styles of cheesecake, the original edition of The Settlement Cook Book (1901) contained four versions of cheese kuchen, all made from cottage cheese, calling for pastry or kuchen pastry as the crust.
Until the early twentieth century, cheesecakes had a somewhat coarse, heavy texture. This would change due to a new product, cream cheese, created in 1872. In the 1930s, Jews in New York City substituted cream cheese and sour cream for the curd cheese, creating the Jewish or New York cheesecake, which soon became ubiquitous in New York delis and America's favorite type of cheesecake. Originally, New York cheesecake was made with a pastry crust, akin to that of the medieval versions. Soon a simpler crust made from crushed zwieback became popular. By the late 1930s, crushed zwieback was supplanted by another American innovation, graham cracker crumbs.
In the 1943 revision of The Settlement Cook Book, one of the cheese pies included a "Graham Cracker Shell," although all the fillings still called for cottage cheese. In the 1965 revision, three of the cheese cakes used cottage cheese and one was "Cream Cheese Cake."
Among those claiming credit for the creation of New York cheesecake was Arnold Reuben (1883—1970), a German Jewish immigrant who became the owner of a succession of Manhattan restaurants. In 1928, he opened Reuben's Restaurant and Delicatessen on East 58th Street. In 1942, he launched the Turf restaurant in the Brill Building (a longtime center of American songwriting) at Broadway and 49th Street. Reuben recounted how, after sampling a cheese pie at a dinner party in 1929, he asked the hostess for the recipe and proceeded to play with the ingredients, substituting cream cheese for the cottage cheese. If this story is true, Reuben is truly a major contributor to gastronomy, as he is also credited with creating the famous Reuben sandwich, consisting of sour rye bread (or pumpernickel) spread with Russian dressing and topped with sauerkraut and slices of corned beef and Swiss cheese, then grilled on both sides.
When Reuben's cheesecake was served in the 1940s to a high-profile clientele at the Turf restaurant, it earned such high praise it was copied by other restaurants. New York bakers began experimenting with cream cheese in their cheesecakes and found that it produced the creamiest texture and a slightly piquant flavor.
If Reuben created the New York cheesecake, Lindy's Restaurant put it in the limelight. In August 1921, eight years after Leo "Lindy" Lindemann arrived in Manhattan from Berlin, Germany, he and his wife, Clara, opened a deli on Broadway near 50th Street in Manhattan, the heart of the Theater District. Lindy's featured standard, kosher-style Ashkenazic fare, including super-sized sandwiches, blintzes, gefilte fish, and especially their creamy cheesecake, topped with strawberries in a gel. Rumor claims that Lindy hired Reuben's baker, thereby, procuring the famous recipe, although the two cakes were not identical. Damon Runyon frequented Lindy's and incorporated it into some of his stories, renaming Lindy's "Mindy's." In 1950, when Runyon's short story "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" was transformed by Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows, and Jo Swerling into the musical Guys and Dolls, Lindy's cheesecake was immortalized in the scene where Nathan Detroit attempts to entice Sky Masterson to wager on whether Mindy's sold more cheesecake or apple strudel on a single day.
In 1949, Charles W. Lubin (1903—1988), a Jewish baker from Chicago, left a small baking business owned with his brother-in-law and founded his own company, named after his then eight-year-old daughter, Sara Lee. His first product was a Jewish-style cheesecake, sold fresh to local supermarkets. Five years later, after discovering a way to quick-freeze his product, the company went national, as did the concept of New York cheesecake.
A genuine New York cheesecake is firm, yet so sensually creamy that it melts in the mouth; it has a slightly tangy flavor derived from cream cheese, lemon juice, sour cream, and vanilla. The basis of a classic creamy cheesecake is cream cheese. Cheesecake is a traditional Ashkenazic dessert for Shavuot and Hanukkah and a favorite comfort food.
(See also Pite)
New York Cheesecake
one 9-inch cake
[DAIRY]
Crust:
1½ cups (ounces) graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoons granulated or packed brown sugar
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter, melted
Cake:
24 ounces (3 cups) cream cheese, softened
1½ cups sugar
2 cups sour cream
About 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
1. To make the crust: In a medium bowl, combine the crumbs and sugar. Stir in the butter. Press onto the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Chill while preparing the filling.
2. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Wrap the outside of the springform pan with heavy-duty foil. Place a large pan of water on the bottom shelf of the oven and pour in 1 inch boiling water.
3. To make the cake: In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Gradually beat in the sugar. Blend in the sour cream, lemon juice, vanilla, and salt. Beat in the eggs.
4. Pour into the prepared pan. Set in the water bath. Bake until the cake is firm around the edges (2 inches in the center will jiggle slightly, but will firm during cooling) and lightly browned, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center registers about 150°F, about 1½ hours. Run a sharp, thin knife around the outside of the cake to loosen from the pan.
5. Turn off the oven, open the door, and let cool in the oven for 30 minutes. Immediately move to the refrigerator and let cool uncovered. Cover with plastic wrap or an inverted bowl and chill overnight or for up to 4 days. Or freeze for up to 2 months. Let stand at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before serving.
Cheilev (Forbidden Fat)
1. The blood and certain fats of kosher animals are forbidden for consumption by Jews.
2. Their function and what they represent are significant.
3. Blood is the immediate and constant provider of nutrients, while fat is stored energy.
4. Blood represents life and fat represents luxury.
5. Blood is the present and fat is potential for the future. Blood is movement and action, while fat is indolence and complacency. Blood (red) is associated with sin and cheilev (white) with purity and forgiveness. These two extremes of an animal's body were both given as an offering on the great altar in the outer courtyard of the Temple, and they still play a major role today in the Jewish dietary laws. All kosher meat must be soaked and salted in order to extract the forbidden blood and all cheilev must be removed.
The Bible directs, "It is an eternal statute for your generations in all your dwelling places; you may not consume any cheilev [forbidden fat/suet] or any b
lood." Later the text adds, "All cheilev of ox and sheep and goat [although the front and the rest of the rear of the animal is kosher] you shall not eat. And the cheilev of neveilah [a carcass not properly slaughtered] and cheilev of treifa [torn/mangled] may be used for any other purpose; but you must surely not eat it. For anyone who eats cheilev from the beast [cows, sheep, and goats] that is offered from it as a fire-offering to the Lord, the soul that eats it shall be cut off from his people. And all blood you shall not eat, in all your dwellings, of fowl or beast. Anyone who eats any blood, that soul shall be cut off from his people."
The upshot is that cheilev of any cow, sheep, or goat is prohibited from consumption. The word cheilev does not mean fat in the generic sense, because that would effectively forbid the eating of nearly every part of a cow, sheep, or goat, as the meat is marbled with fat and impossible to disentangle. In addition, the Bible neither forbade all fat nor all the animal parts offered on the altar, but specifically proscribed only cheilev. Permitted fat is called shuman. (A major issue between the rabbis and Karaites was whether the tail fat of sheep, an important culinary element in the Middle East, was included in the category of cheilev—rabbinic authorities permitted its consumption.)
Cheilev, suet in English, refers to certain adipose tissue. The Talmud defined the biblical references as cheilev ha-mecasheh et ha-kerev (the layer of fat that stretches over the abdomen), cheilev asher al ha-kerev (fat draped over compartments of the stomach and part of the intestines), shtei ha-calayot v'et hacheilev asher allayhem asher al ha-kesaleem (fat connected to the kidneys and over the loins), and yoteret al ha-kavaid (fat adjoining the liver and diaphragm, and fat separating the heart and lungs from the rear digestive system).
