Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

  Heart

  The first American Jewish cookbook, Jewish Cookery (Philadelphia, 1871), included a recipe "to cook the lights [soft parts, e.g., pancreas, head, and lungs] and heart of a calf," with these directions: "The heart must be made cosher, then well washed. Season it with some sage and onions, and make a stuffing in the following manner: chop some sage, well dried, and onion, bread crumbs, and suet, some salt and pepper, rub some flour and salt outside the heart, and roast with plenty of fat. When it is done, dip it in a pan of boiling water, or pour boiling water over it, to make the gravy. Be careful to have the dish and plates made very hot, as the fat is apt to stick to the roof of the mouth, but dipping it in water will prevent that."

  Today, in animal-rich America, most organs are ig- nored with the occasional exception of liver and sweetbreads. In previous times and poorer cultures, however, waste was considered a sin and people used every part of the animal, including every part of the innards.

  Since organs contain little or no fat, there is almost no trimming. Veal and lamb hearts are tender with a delicate flavor and can be grilled or braised. A beef heart, weighing about three pounds, requires simmering in water to tenderize.

  Helzel

  Helzel is poultry neck skin, often from a goose, that is stuffed with bread crumbs or flour, then cooked.

  Origin: Germany

  Other names: England: magel; Hungary: halsli; Yiddish: falsa kishke, gefillte helzel, gorgle.

  Before the development in 1925 of a casing made from cellulose, sausages required some animal part for stuffing, notably the intestines and stomach. Economical cooks could feed the family using these less desirable items by filling them with inexpensive starches. The skin from around a goose's neck also proved ideal for stuffing; much of a goose's fat is attached to the skin, so the fatty skin provided extra moisture and flavor for the stuffing. The Yiddish word for neck, helzel, from the German hals, gave rise to the name. Stuffed poultry neck certainly was not unique to Ashkenazim and may well have been introduced to Europe during the Ottoman control of the Balkans and Hungary. Turkish Jews enjoyed a version with a little chopped walnuts added to a flour mixture.

  Throughout most of history, particularly among the poor, sausages contained very little or no meat. Medieval Ashkenazim began filling the neck skin, as well as the intestines, with any combination of bread, flour, matza meal, or buckwheat groats enriched with schmaltz. Potato kugel batter was also substituted for the classic stuffing. Stuffed intestines are known as kishke.

  Until well into the twentieth century, Ashkenazic families for a special occasion or from time to time either brought one of their home-raised geese to a kosher butcher to be slaughtered or purchased a freshly killed bird, and used every part. The neck itself often went into a soup or fricassee. In Alsace and central Europe, where geese were the longstanding principal poultry and cattle and sheep intestines were scarcer, cooks used the skin surrounding the elongated goose neck and sometimes a duck neck as a casing. In eastern Europe, where geese were rarer, the smaller chicken neck skin from a mature bird was substituted and, later, with the introduction of the larger American turkey, its neck skin was also used. The filled neck was sewn up on both ends and typically roasted alongside the poultry or by itself with plenty of schmaltz, or simmered in a cholent (Sabbath stew). Goose, due to the extra fat, yields a more flavorful dish than chicken and turkey. To serve, the helzel is cut into thin slices.

  Among Ashkenazim, helzel was a comfort food reserved for the Sabbath or other special occasions, in many homes rivaling kishke (stuffed derma) as a favorite dish. However, after the popularity of geese declined among Ashkenazim and butchers started selling dressed and koshered chickens without the head and feet, the absence of neck skins as well as changing tastes in twentieth-century America, led to the decline of helzel.

  (See also Goose, Kishke, Liver, and Schmaltz)

  Ashkenazic Stuffed Poultry Neck (Helzel)

  6 to 8 servings

  [MEAT]

  Skin of 1 goose or turkey neck or 2 large chicken necks

  2 to 3 large yellow onions, sliced

  1½ cups (7.5 ounces) all-purpose flour, or ¾ cup flour and ¾ cup matza meal, bread crumbs, semolina, or mashed potatoes

  2 to 4 tablespoons schmaltz, vegetable oil, or shortening, melted

  1 small yellow onion, grated or minced

  1 clove garlic, crushed

  1 small carrot, grated (optional)

  ¾ teaspoon paprika

  About ½ teaspoon salt

  About ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

  About ¾ teaspoon ground ginger, ¼ teaspoon cayenne, or dash of ground nutmeg (optional)

  1. Using plain white cotton thread, sew up or tie the narrower end of the neck.

  2. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Scatter the sliced onions in a shallow roasting pan.

  3. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, schmaltz, grated onion, garlic, optional carrot, paprika, salt, pepper, and, if using, ginger. Loosely stuff the mixture into the poultry neck, filling it about three-fourths of the way. Sew up or tie the open end. Pour boiling water over the neck in a large pot or place in a pot of boiling water and let sit for 10 minutes.

  4. Place the helzel on the bed of onions in the roasting pan. Roast, basting occasionally with the cooking liquid, until golden brown, at least 1½ hours. Or roast the helzel in the same pan as the poultry from which it came or along with a pot roast (gedempte fleisch). Or cook overnight on top of a cholent (Sabbath stew).

  Herring

  Herring, a relative of shad and sardines, has long been the world's most important food fish. Herring travel in immense schools in cold waters and spawn near the surface around March, making these silvery fish easy to net, as they have been for millennia. Atlantic herring can grow up to eighteen inches and one and a half pounds, but they are usually captured small, at three to twelve ounces, and sometimes packaged as sardines.

  As one of the few fish capable of surviving in the brackish waters of the Baltic Sea, herring became the primary form of protein for many people in the bordering lands. Herring, however, is a very fatty fish and turns rancid relatively quickly. As a result, throughout much of history, herring was eaten soon after capture, primarily in the spring, and typically nearer the coast.

  There were many fishing boats trawling the Baltic. Always enterprising, the Dutch sailed far from home in search of the fish, discovering a location in the North Sea where herring (baring) swam in abundance. However, the sailors needed a means of preserving the fish on these lengthy voyages. In the fifteenth century, the Dutch devised a process called gibbling, whereby the herring, immediately upon being caught, were scaled and gutted, the gills were removed, and the herring were then butterflied and layered in airtight barrels with coarse salt. Subsequently, salted herring became the primary form in which herring was available, and cooks usually needed to soak it in water to remove the excess salt. (When this process later was applied to salmon, the result was lox.)

  Herring's importance to Dutch, German, and eastern European Jews after the fifteenth century, both financially and gastronomically, cannot be overemphasized. After barrels of salt herring arrived in ports in Holland, Britain, or Scandinavia, Jews were prominent in trading the fish through central and eastern Europe. The artist Marc Chagall occasionally depicted a flying fish in his pictures in memory of his father, a herring merchant in the Byelorussian village of Vitebsk. Even in early twentieth-century America, fish markets and general stores in large Jewish centers featured a large barrel of schmaltz herring for sale.

  In the sixteenth century, the European appetite for herring led to three major wars between the Dutch and the English, off whose coast the Dutch were fishing. The English also loved herring, and won out, resulting in a decline in Dutch sea power and trade and the supremacy of the British. The Dutch were forced to search elsewhere for their herring, but for the next three centuries, the schools of the North Sea continued to provide a livelihood to British fishermen and, along w
ith the Baltic, provide plenty of Europe's dry-salt herring. Today, herring is typically chilled on ice, then salted after reaching port.

  Salt herring is ready to eat once soaked, with a firmer texture and more intense flavor than fresh. Most cooks, however, further prepare it. The most popular way is in a marinade of vinegar, sugar, and frequently raw onions, known as pickled herring and marinated herring. Pickled unskinned fillets are known as Bismarck herring. After pickling, the fish pieces can be repackaged with fresh ingredients, sour cream, or a wine sauce.

  Schmaltz herring refers to a mature fresh herring, with at least 18 percent fat. It comes with the head off but the insides intact. Matjes herring, Dutch for "maiden," refers to a young herring from the first catch of the year, which has been mildly salted. Milch (milt or miltz) herring are adult male fish containing a long pinkish gray organ filled with sperm and seminal fluid. Many connoisseurs consider these best for pickling, as the milky sacs impart a creaminess to the brine. A male fish at breeding time is called a milter.

  Kipper, probably from the Dutch koper (copper), refers to a split, gutted, dry-salted, and cold-smoked herring. It is golden red in color, the intensity of the hue depending on the amount of curing. A bloater is similar to a kipper, except it is left whole with the insides intact. A buckling is also salted and left whole, but is hot-smoked, making it milder flavored and more perishable. In England, hunters would commonly lay a copper-colored bloater across a fox trail to throw the hounds off the animal's scent, thereby making the hunt more challenging and giving rise to the term "red herring" as a device used to divert attention.

  Herring was a mainstay of the diet of Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic States, where it was commonly eaten with black bread and/or boiled potatoes. Herring not only served as everyday fare, but was frequently present on the Sabbath and other special occasions. Some housewives even made gefilte fish from schmaltz herring. Pickled herring was traditionally served by Ashkenazim at a Sabbath kiddush, accompanied with kichel (egg cookies), and at a meal to break a fast. Among Chasidim, pickled herring became a traditional Hanukkah dish. A favorite Ashkenazic cold salad consisted of finely chopped herring mixed with onions, hard-boiled eggs, and sometimes apples—this dish was called gehakte herring (chopped herring) and, by Russians, forshmak (foretaste). When liver was unavailable, gehakte herring provided a substitute for chopped liver. Gehakte herring might be featured at a shalosh seudot (the third meal of Sabbath), the meal following the fast of Yom Kippur, and dairy brunches. Although herring grew less important as the twentieth century progressed, various forms of pickled herring as well as gehakte herring remain important in Jewish appetizing stores and delis.

  (See also Fish, Forshmak, and Kichel)

  Eastern European Chopped Herring (Gehakte Herring)

  6 to 8 servings

  [PAREVE]

  2 slices challah or white bread, trimmed of crusts, or 2 crumbled matzas

  ¼ cup cider vinegar or white vinegar

  2 cups (16-ounce jar) pickled herring; or 2 schmaltz herrings, soaked for 1 day, and 1 pickled herring

  2 to 3 hard-boiled eggs

  1 medium yellow onion, chopped

  1 to 3 teaspoons sugar or sweet red wine

  Soak the bread in the vinegar for 5 minutes. Drain the herring and discard the onions and liquid from the jar. In a chopping bowl, grinder, or food processor fitted with a metal blade, chop the herring, bread mixture, eggs, onion, and 1 teaspoon sugar until almost pureed. Check the seasoning and add more sugar to taste, if necessary.

  Hilbeh

  Hilbeh is a relish made from fenugreek seeds and chilies.

  Origin: Yemen

  Other names: India: halba.

  The fenugreek seed, called hilbeh in southern Yemen and hulbah in the northern part of the country, probably from the Semitic root hlb (milk), has long been a traditional lactation aide. Fenugreek also serves as the basis for a spicy Yemenite relish, functioning as an all-purpose spread and condiment, much in the manner that Americans use ketchup and salsa.

  In Yemen, Jews lived in extreme poverty and, consequently, hilbeh typically consisted of only the basic ingredients. To make hilbeh, the raw fenugreek is first soaked in water, giving it a gelatinous texture and spicy, balsamic vinegar-like bitter flavor. Then s'chug (chili paste) or chilies and sometimes tomatoes are added: chili for its bite and tomatoes to mellow the flavor. For a special occasion, various imported spices may also be added. Contact between the Jewish communities of Yemen and southern India introduced the latter to the beloved Yemenite condiment. Indian Jews augmented halba with their own special touches, such as fresh ginger.

  During the week, hilbeh is used as a dip for breads, a condiment for soups at lunch, and a seasoning for various dishes. Breakfast, even on the Sabbath, commonly consists of a hard-boiled egg with hilbeh. Bread with hilbeh is eaten at the end of the meal before the fast of Tisha b'Av, as the uncooked hilbeh is permitted at an occasion when only a single cooked food is allowed. In Israel, hilbeh, sold in containers in markets, also doubles as a spicy topping for falafel; this addition is beloved by many Mizrachim, but generally avoided by most Ashkenazim.

  (See also Fatoot/Ftut, Fenugreek, and Regel)

  Yemenite Fenugreek Relish (Hilbeh)

  about 2/3 cup

  [PAREVE]

  3 tablespoons fenugreek seeds or 2 tablespoons ground fenugreek

  2 cups cold water, plus more if needed

  1 to 2 teaspoons s'chug (Yemenite Chili Paste (S'Chug)), 1 to 3 small hot green chilies, or ½ teaspoon cayenne

  About ½ teaspoon table salt or 1 teaspoon kosher salt

  2 to 4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

  About ¼ cup water

  1. If using fenugreek seeds, grind them to a fine powder in a mortar. Put the ground fenugreek in a medium bowl, add the 2 cups water, stir well, and let soak for at least 4 or preferably 12 hours. Carefully pour off the water.

  2. With a mortar and pestle or in a blender or food processor fitted with a metal blade, process the fenugreek, s'chug, and salt into a paste. Transfer to a medium bowl and, using a wooden spoon, gradually beat in the lemon juice and enough water to produce a smooth mixture with the consistency of mayonnaise, 5 to 10 minutes. Or in the food processor with the machine running, gradually add the juice and water. Cover and store in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. If it becomes too firm, beat in a little more water.

  Variation

  Indian Fenugreek Relish (Halba):

  Add ¼ to ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro, 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger, and 2 to 3 minced garlic cloves.

  Hilu

  A vast array of candied fruits and vegetables—called hilu/hellou, from the Arabic word for sweet (helwa), and akin to the Sephardic dulce (fruit preserves)—are popular throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Syrians are arguably the most prolific hilu makers. The most prevalent of these treats, and perhaps the most popular Rosh Hashanah hilu, is made from quince (membrillo). Other common types are coconut (joz hindi hilu), citrus peel (brit'an hilu), baby eggplant (batijan hilu), and figs (teen hilu). Some variations, such as fresh green walnuts, are rather rare. The fruit and vegetables in hilu can be served in relatively large chunks or cut small like the fruit pieces in marmalade. Sweet-and-sour candies are known as hamud-u-hilu.

  Hilu of pumpkin (yatkeen fijil), spaghetti squash (cheveux d' ange), and trumpet squash (urigh) are traditional Rosh Hashanah fare in Turkey, Syria, and the Maghreb, the many seeds of these squash representing fruitfulness and the golden color symbolizing prosperity. In the Maghreb, hilu is sometimes served over couscous. Among Jews from the eastern Mediterranean, hilu is commonly offered to guests in glass or silver dishes arranged on a silver tray, and accompanied with sweetened Arabic coffee.

  Honey

  According to the Talmud, "Honey (devash) and sweet food enlighten the eyes of man."

  The world's first sweetener was honey, a supersaturated solution produced by certain types of bees from the nectar of blossoms. In ma
ny cultures, honey, which comes ready-made from nature and does not spoil, symbolizes immortality and truth. This was the reason many ancient people embalmed or buried their great leaders with honey. Honey was used to make mead (yayin devash in Hebrew), one of the earliest alcoholic beverages; it was probably created accidentally when some wild yeasts settled into a container of diluted honey and fermented. The Ethiopian form of mead (tej) remains important to Ethiopian culture. To this day, the quality of honey's sweetness stands it in high regard, and it is valued for its supposed therapeutic attributes as well as for its flavor.

  Honey is the only food widely used by humans that is manufactured by animals. It takes up to two million flowers (or 556 bees) to make one pound of honey and each beehive produces between sixty and one hundred pounds of honey a year. Thus honeybees can only thrive in areas with plenty of blossoms. More than a third of the fruits and vegetables eaten by humans depend on bees for pollination.

  Ancient Israelites viewed honey with high regard. The Hebrew word for bee, devorah, was the name of two female biblical figures.

  In 2007, the earliest intact beehives in the Middle East, dating to the middle to the end of the tenth century BCE (about the time of the biblical split between the northern and southern tribes), were discovered at Tel Rehov in Israel's Beit Shaean Valley. This apiary consisted of three rows containing more than thirty and perhaps a hundred hives, which would have yielded perhaps a half a ton of honey annually. It is the first evidence of large-scale honey production in "the land of milk and honey" or anywhere in the Middle East before the Greek period.

  Nevertheless, the honey made by the region's fierce Syrian bees was rather difficult to obtain. Only with the introduction of the more docile European species of bee by the Greeks, did bee honey become common in the Near East. In addition to bee honey, people early on learned how to boil certain high-sugar fruits, most notably dates, grapes, pomegranates, and figs, into long-lasting honey-like syrups, which in ancient Hebrew were also called devash, and in Arabic, dibs. (When the Bible refers to "a land of milk and honey," it is referring to date honey.) In an era long before the advent of cane sugar, fruit honey served as the primary sweetener of the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean. In biblical Israel, the most common devash was made from dates. By Talmudic times, the Hebrew word devash generally meant bee honey, while fruit honey became less common.