Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

  Greek Foot Soup (Patsas/Sopa de Patsas)

  6 to 8 servings

  [MEAT]

  5 pounds (6 lamb's, 4 sheep's, or 2 calf's) feet (trotters), cleaned and cut into 2-inch pieces (have your butcher cut the bones for you)

  ¼ cup olive or vegetable oil

  2 large yellow onions, sliced

  4 to 7 cloves garlic, sliced

  10 cups water

  2 bay leaves

  Salt to taste

  ¼ to ½ cup fresh lemon juice or white wine vinegar

  3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil

  1. Place the feet in a large pot, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil. Boil until scum rises to the surface, about 10 minutes. Drain off and discard the water. Rinse the feet and pat dry.

  2. In a clean large pot, heat ¼ cup oil over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté until soft and translucent, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the feet and brown on all sides. Stir in the garlic. Add the water, bay leaves, and salt. Cover, reduce the heat, and simmer over low heat or bake in a 180°F oven until the meat falls away from the bones, 4 to 5 hours, or overnight.

  3. Remove the feet from the soup. Shred any meat from the bones and pick out any marrow and add to the soup. Discard the bones. Add the lemon juice and 3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil.

  Pepitada

  Pepitada is a drink made of melon seeds.

  Origin: Middle East

  Other names: Arabic: soubia, soubiya, subiya.

  For centuries, toward the end of the summer, as musk melons reached their peak in September, many Sephardim from Turkey, Rhodes, Crete, and the Balkans saved the seeds for making a drink known as pepitada—pepita in Ladino means the "pip/little seed" and the suffix ada is the equivalent of the English suffix "ade." The melon seeds can be raw or toasted; toasted seeds produce a flavor akin to that of toasted sesame seeds. Pepitada is lightly sweetened with a little sugar and perfumed with rose water or orange-blossom water. A similar Greek beverage made from bitter and sweet almonds is known as soumada or soumatha.

  This milk-like drink, its whiteness symbolizing purity, is traditionally served in small glasses after Yom Kippur to break the fast and sometimes also after Tisha b'Av. Sephardim believe that the pepitada coats the stomach, making food more digestible. Unlike Ashkenazim, who typically break their fasts with dairy foods. Sephardim historically began with pareve items, like pepitada followed by a light repast of panisicos dulces (sweet rolls), reshicas (pretzel-like cookies), or other pastries and cookies and fresh fruit—and then frequently a meat meal or fried fish. Today, as melons are available year round, some families make pepitada throughout the summer as a refreshing drink.

  Greek Melon Seed "Milk" (Pepitada)

  about 1 quart

  [PAREVE]

  2 cups melon seeds (seeds from about 4 cantaloupes, 2 to 3 honeydews, or 2 Persian melons)

  4 cups cold water

  1 to 6 tablespoons sugar or honey

  Several drops rose water, orange-blossom water, or almond extract (optional)

  1. Clean all the flesh and filaments from the melon seeds. Spread on a large baking sheet and let dry for 1 week. If desired, toast the seeds in a 350°F oven, shaking the pan occasionally, until golden brown, about 45 minutes, or stir the seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat until they are lightly browned and begin to crackle, 6 to 8 minutes. Let cool.

  2. Place the water in a pitcher, large bowl, or other large container. In a blender, mortar, or food processor fitted with a metal blade, finely grind the seeds. Place the seeds in several layers of cheesecloth, bring the corners together, and tie to form a little bag (sakito). Place the bag in the water and let soak at room temperature, squeezing the cheesecloth occasionally (the water will begin to turn murky), for 24 to 36 hours.

  3. Squeeze any moisture from the cheesecloth into the soaking liquid and discard the seeds. Transfer the liquid to a medium saucepan. Add the sugar, adjusting the amount as desired. Simmer, stirring, over low heat until the sugar dissolves. If using, add 1 to 2 drops of rose water for every 1 cup liquid. Serve chilled.

  Pepper, Sweet

  In 1493, Spaniards brought to the Old World the fruits of a member of the nightshade family known as capsicum peppers. (Peppers, like tomatoes, contain seeds meant for dispersal, making them at least botanically a berry.) At this point, these were all chilies, containing stinging amounts of the chemical compound capsaicin, and they were virtually ignored in most of Europe—their fiery charms were more warmly appreciated in areas with hot climates. Capsicum, however, interbreed with relative ease, producing an ever-increasing array of varieties. In the eighteenth century, European horticulturists cultivated milder forms of capsicum, such as the tomato pepper, which has only a hint of a bite, and then those without any fire, called sweet peppers. In America, the predominant sweet pepper is the bell, named for its squarish shape with two to four lobes. Another popular sweet pepper, favored in the Mediterranean and Middle East, is the Italian pepper—also known as pepperoni, Turkish pepper, and frying pepper—a long, tapered variety that is paler green than bell peppers when immature and ripens into a yellowish green or red color. Varieties of Italian peppers include Corno di Toro (bull's horn), Italia, and Sweet Banana.

  Small chilies tend to be fiery and are primarily used as a spice, while sweet peppers are larger and are usually employed as a vegetable. All capsicum peppers start out green. As they mature on the vine, they generally grow sweeter and turn into an array of colors, including red, yellow, orange, brown, purple, and black. Green peppers have an herbal flavor and are more bitter and slightly firmer than ripe ones.

  Sweet peppers became an important part of cooking, particularly in the moderate climes of the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Hungary. Bell peppers are routinely added to salads, casseroles, and stews. Sweet peppers are also marinated and used in relishes, such as the Turkish muhammura. Middle Easterners commonly cook them with tomatoes. Roasted sweet peppers—roasting brings out a smoky flavor—are popular throughout the Mediterranean area in various salads and stews.

  After the advent of the bell pepper, people throughout eastern Europe and the Middle East discovered its boxlike structure made them ideal for stuffing. Cooks eventually began stuffing them with ground meat, grains, and other mixtures and simmering or baking them. Hungarians also enjoyed peppers stuffed with sauerkraut. Cheese-stuffed peppers are particularly popular in Italy, Hungary, and the Balkans. In Romania and the Balkans, Italian frying peppers are used for this dish.

  Stuffed peppers became one of the few pepper dishes widely adopted by the general Ashkenazic community. Stuffed peppers seem to have reached America toward the end of the nineteenth century. The first edition of The Settlement Cook Book (Milwaukee, 1901) contained four recipes for them. Most of the few earlier American references to stuffed peppers entailed various pickled peppers.

  Initially, stuffed peppers were confined to the pepper season from August through October. Since tomatoes also came into maturity at the same time, the peppers were frequently paired with a tomato sauce—savory among Sephardim and Hungarians, and sweet-and-sour in southern Poland and northern Ukraine. In the twentieth century, as most vegetables became available all year, so did stuffed peppers.

  As a rule of thumb, Middle Easterners serve meat-stuffed and cheese-stuffed peppers hot, while rice-stuffed versions are offered both hot and cold. The cold version is perfect for a buffet or mezze (appetizer assortment). Some families serve stuffed peppers on Sukkot as a symbol of a plentiful harvest, but in many homes it is a beloved everyday dish, either as a hearty appetizer or a flavorful main course.

  (See also Ajvar, Chili, Lecsó, Matbucha, Mechouiya, Muhammara, and Paprika)

  Peppercorn

  Pepper, from the Sanskrit pippali (berry), was trafficked by traders from its home on the Malabar Coast of southwest India to the far corners of the ancient world. The majority of the recipes in the Roman cookbook of Apicius (c. 400 CE) called for pepper. For much of history, pepper was incredibly costly. In
medieval Europe, pepper—used as a preservative, a flavoring agent, and a mask for rancid meat and off-tasting foods—was affordable only to royalty. Commoners made do primarily with mustard.

  As far back as the ancient Roman sea voyages across the Indian Ocean to the Malabar Coast beginning in the first century CE, most of the spice merchants there were Cochini Jews. For four centuries during the early Middle Ages, until around 1000 CE, Jewish merchants known as Radhanites imported all the spices from the Far East into the Middle East and Europe. After the collapse of the Radhanites, Venice acquired the monopoly on the European spice trade. It is not an exaggeration to claim that the modern world emerged as a result of Europe's pursuit of this spice. The Venetian monopoly led Portugal's Prince Henry the Navigator to concoct an unprecedented plan to circumnavigate Africa and bring pepper directly from India. In 1497, Vasco da Gama realized Henry's dream, passing the Cape of Good Hope and reaching India. In 1503, the Portuguese broke the Venetian monopoly by returning from India by ship with thirteen hundred tons of peppercorns. Another source of competition in the pepper trade during the fifteenth and sixteenth century was the Ragusans, who lived in the maritime republic of Dubrovnik, a city-state in southern Croatia. Many of that region's spice merchants were Sephardic Jews. The Dutch also began to ship spices from the Far East. In the meantime, Spain attempted to follow a different course to find the Spice Islands, and Christopher Columbus sailed westward, discovering America in the process.

  Throughout this time, most of the spice merchants within Europe were Jews. Many Jewish communities were required to pay an annual tribute of peppercorns and other gifts to the local nobles and the church. Pepper was also commonly used as payment for using land for synagogues and Jewish cemeteries or leasing lakes for farming fish.

  Subsequently, the pepper trade became an important form of commerce in Europe and the return of each voyage was awaited with anticipation. However, pepper costs fluctuated greatly depending on the cost of the voyage and whether the ship returned at all. Merchants in Amsterdam and then London solved this dilemma by the creation of stocks, engendering the concept of and coining the term capitalism. The wealth accumulated through the spice trade, as well as the abundance of spices, led to the development of modern European cuisine.

  Eventually, spice importers grew more successful at maintaining a large, steady influx of peppercorns. Pepper became accessible to everyone and grew progressively less expensive, quickly emerging as the world's most widely used spice.

  True pepper is the small fruit of a climbing vine that grows only in tropical climates, generally within fifteen degrees of the equator. The plant produces long spikes, each of which bears twenty to thirty small berries. There are three types of peppercorns—black, white, and green—all derived from the same vine. Szechuan pepper, sansho (Japanese pepper), and pink peppercorns are from different plants and are not true pepper.

  Black peppercorns (pilpel in Hebrew, from the Sanskrit name, pippali) are berries picked when mature and then sun-dried. They are the most pungent of the three types, with a spicy-fruity aroma and flavor, as well as the most widely used. The longer the berries mature before harvesting—size is an indication of maturity—the richer the flavor.

  White peppercorns (pilpel lavan in Hebrew) begin life as black peppercorns, but are left on the vine longer to mature more fully. After the peppercorns are harvested, they are soaked in water to soften the outer husks, the husks are removed, and the inside kernels are dried. White pepper has a creamy color and an earthy aroma.

  Whole peppercorns are renowned for heat and flavor complexity. Pepper's spicy-fruity aroma and flavor, including citrus and pine, derive from volatile chemical compounds that are released upon cracking. As soon as the peppercorns are cracked, the compounds begin to disperse, which is why commercial ground pepper lacks the subtle nuances of freshly ground pepper. Pepper's pungency comes from piperine, a nonvolatile chemical irritant that activates neurons of the somatosensory system, making the tongue feel warm. The aroma of whole peppercorns is not a guarantee of quality, as the aroma is not fully released until they are cracked. Black pepper varieties, each possessing their own individual attributes, are named for the various places in which they are grown. There are five areas that mass-produce peppercorns: India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Brazil. The world's best pepper still comes from the Malabar Coast. The largest and most mature Malabar peppercorns, considered to be the most complex and rich, are called Tellicherry. Other Indian peppercorns are called Malabar and remain the most widespread peppers. Malabar is very robust, but lacks the balance of Tellicherry.

  By the first and second centuries CE, pepper had become an important seasoning in the Mediterranean region. The spice subsequently found its way into an array of Jewish dishes, although used quite sparingly by most. Beginning around the eighteenth century, as the supply of pepper increased and its price declined in Europe, pepper became the most important and widespread spice in Jewish cookery, although the amount required a matter of heated debate. Pepper is usually a flavor accent in dishes, but can take a starring role, such as the Lithuanian zalts-un-feffer kugel, German pfefferkuchen and Israeli kugel yerushalmi. The plural of its Arabic name, filfil, gave rise to the name for fried chickpea croquettes, falafel.

  Persimmon

  There are two kinds of persimmons: American and Japanese. The Japanese persimmon was introduced to the United States by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1855 on his return from Japan. Eventually, the more commercially viable Japanese variety took over the marketplace. Immature Japanese persimmons are firm, encased in edible skin, and mouth-puckeringly astringent. Ripe ones, which tend to fall apart, are red-orange in color and mushy in texture, with a sweet and tangy flavor.

  An Israeli hybrid of the Japanese persimmon, the Sharon fruit, named after the valley between Tel Aviv and Haifa where it was first grown, has no seeds, no core, and, even more importantly, no bitter taste even when unripe. Its season runs from October through February. Sharon fruit, a trademark name used exclusively in Israel, is now a major Israeli export—seven thousand tons were exported in 2009—and is also being grown throughout the world under the name Kaki or Fuyu (although commonly called Sharon fruit). The popularity of Sharon fruit, primarily eaten raw, also led to increased usage in Jewish cooking, including in salads, smoothies, chutneys, latkes, and kugels.

  Peshkado Frito

  Peshkado frito is a fish fillet coated in egg and flour, then fried in oil.

  Origin: Spain

  Other names: peixe frito, pescado frito.

  Israel Zangwill included a description of Jewish cooking in his tale of Jewish life in late nineteenth- century London, Children of the Ghetto (1892). He wrote, "Fish was indeed the staple of the meal. Fried fish, and such fried fish! With the audacity of true culinary genius, Jewish fried fish is always served cold. The skin is a beautiful brown, the substance firm and succulent... fried fish reigns above all in cold, unquestioned superiority."

  Any Sephardi would instantly recognize this dish as the favorite and most celebrated of the numerous Sephardic fish dishes—peshkado frito, fish fillets coated in egg and flour and fried. The first record of coating and frying fish fillets was a recipe for "Hout Mu'affar" (dusted fish) in an anonymous thirteenth-century Andalusian cookbook. The author directed, "Then take ground bread crumbs or wheat flour and add eggs, pepper, coriander, cinnamon, and spikenard [a rhizome from the Himalayas crushed for its aromatic oil with a spicy, piney flavor, probably the nard of Song of Songs], beating them all together. Roll the pieces of fish in it over and over, then fry in fresh oil until browned." Well before the expulsion from Spain, Sephardim had developed their fried fish along the same lines.

  Following the expulsion in 1492, Sephardic refugees brought their fried fish to their new locales, including Italy, where the dish became a standard of the Roman ghetto. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese brought deep-fried battered fish and vegetables to Japan, where it became tempura.

  Jews we
re expelled from England in 1290 by Edward I, and only openly readmitted in 1656 under Oliver Cromwell. However, during the sixteenth century, Conversos, particularly from Portugal, made their way to England by way of Holland and introduced to the British their way of frying fish in oil, rather than lard or butter. By the mid-eighteenth century, fried fish was entrenched in British cooking. Thus Hannah Glasse, in the 1781 edition of her extremely popular book, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, included a recipe for "The Jews Way of preserving Salmon, and all Sorts of Fish," and began a recipe for marinated fish by explaining the frying process. Significantly, in her earlier editions, Glasse had provided several other dishes made "the Jews way," but the 1781 edition was the first to include fried fish.

  In the first Jewish cookbook in English, The Jewish Manual (London, 1846), Judith Montefiore, drawing on her husband's Portuguese roots, included the standard Sephardic oil-fried fish and its marinated version, as well as the non-Jewish butter-fried fish.

  Alexis Soyer, a Frenchman who spent most of his career in London and became one of the first celebrity chefs, was a proponent of Sephardic fish. He included a recipe for "Fried Fish, Jewish Fashion" in his book A Shilling Cookery for the People (London, 1855), along with this note: "This is another excellent way of frying fish, which is constantly in use by the children of Israel, and I cannot recommend it too highly; so much so, that various kinds of fish which many people despise, are excellent cooked by this process; in eating them many persons are deceived, and would suppose them to be the most expensive of fish. The process is at once simple, effective, and economical."

  Thomas Jefferson discovered the dish during his tenure as ambassador to France (1785—1789), shortly after it achieved wider popularity in England, and subsequently Jewish fried fish was served at Monticello and probably in his Washington, D.C. residence as well. Jefferson's granddaughter, Virginia Randolph, copied the recipes he brought from Europe, as well as those prepared at Monticello and the White House, in a handwritten copy of the manuscript passed down through the generations until published in 1949 by Marie Kimball as Thomas Jefferson's Cook Book. Jewish fried fish never achieved widespread popularity in America, although another recipe Jefferson brought back from his tenure in France eventually did—deep-fried potatoes.