03/10/2017
As we do at the end of each week, here is a brief spotlight from a Yizkor Book that JewishGen has translated. You can find an archive of past spotlights here:http://on.fb.me/1nH4Fq4. If you are not familiar with the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, please click on this link:http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/faq.html
This week’s excerpt from the Yizkor book of Lubtch and Delatich in Belarus is about food in the shtetl … cooked, fried or baked with various kinds of fat. In “Lubtch Foods” (http://bit.ly/2chI2WC), K. Hilel writes of delicacies and staples, lists favorite foods for the holidays and provides a Yiddish glossary of words for the implements needed to prepare them, from the “boike” (a small barrel for churning butter) to the “katuch” (a place under a baking over for keeping chickens).
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Jews from Lubtch, like most of the population of that region, liked to eat fatty foods. There was simply a cult for fat: fatty meat, fatty chickens, fatty geese and ducks, goose fat, beef fat, fried chicken fat, fatty stuffed derma, fatty membranes, fatty puddings, fatty soup, a fowl's throat stuffed with fat, a fatty piece of breast meat, calves' feet jelly, and even a fatty bone.
Food, cooked, fried or baked with various kinds of fat, were the most delicious: cutlets, latkes , blintzes, pancakes, potatoes, mushrooms in butter, puddings, “blinis”, Passover matzah balls with goose fat, Shavuot (Feast of Weeks) “babke” cake dripping with butter, butter rolls, etc. Today, who still talks about a good piece of sausage, a fatty herring, and certainly a fatty fish right out of the Nieman River?
And since we're still on the subject of fish, we should, in fact, mention the different kinds of fish which the Jews of Lubtch served on their tables: First of all, there was pike - the king of all kosher Jewish fish. After pike come carp, various species of local fish - and the cheapest fish of all, called the “poor man's fish”, smelling like swampy ponds. Besides these, people would sometimes allow themselves a luxury and buy a smoked herring and, in fact, a herring with the addition of herring sauce in which to dunk hot, boiled potatoes.
Yes, potatoes. What delicacies mothers in Lubtch used to make from them! Potatoes in their skins, peeled potatoes, fish potatoes (without fish), potatoes with beans, dairy potatoes, potato soup with fish, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, potatoes cooked in Sabbath meat stew (“cholent”), potato pancakes (“latkes”), potato pudding with egg yolks (“kugel”), roasted potatoes, fried potatoes, pancakes made from potato gruel, potato dumplings (“kneidelach”), dainty potato stew with plums, dainty carrot stew with potatoes or potato dumplings (“tsimmes”) and, in fact, the entire set of potato items made with flour just as the song goes:
“Sunday potatoes, Monday potatoes
Tuesday and Wednesday, again potatoes”…
Flour was also widely used in Jewish cuisine: rye flour for baking delicious rye bread was also good for real, honey- sweetened gingerbread (“lekech”), wheat flour for baked goods, noodles (“lokshen”), dough crumbs (“farfel”), small triangular cakes of batter filled with chopped meat or cheese (“kreplach”), and soup almonds which mothers used to make by themselves. Coarse meal, with a bitter taste, to bake dark brown “poor man's” challah and cake; buckwheat meal for making for matzah balls, pancakes (“latkes”) and for baking a “gutman” on a tin sheet and finally a certain kind of meal which had to be toasted a little over a fire before use, to make Sabbath gruel (“kasha”) and delicious matzah balls and pudding (“kugel”) — “royal treats”.
With regard to puddings, there were also different kinds of different ranks: a noodle pudding made with fat and a noodle pudding with cheese for the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) occupy first place. Next comes a pudding made with flour and filled with fruit. This is followed by a “poured out” pudding made with flour, eggs and fat, a potato pudding, and a pudding in the shape of a stuffed neck of a fowl…
Holiday foods:
Sabbath: gefilte fish, radishes with chicken fat, chopped liver with onions, onion stew, “tsimmes” (dainty stew of vegetables) “cholent” and potato or noodle pudding (“kugel”).
Passover: matzah balls, fermented beets, matzah “farfel” pudding, “cremzlach” (little cakes baked dry in a pan), matzah meal “pampushkes” (pancakes), mashed potato and egg pudding, fancy cake made with potato starch and eggs, dainty stew of prunes.
Shavuot -Feast of Weeks: cheese blintzes, babka, cheese cake, butter rolls all served with a good glass of chicory with milk.
New Year: challa in the shape of a ladder or hand, honey coated dough balls (“teiglach”) - a symbol for a sweet year.
Eve of Day of Atonement: when one performs an expiatory ritual with a sacrificial fowl, called “beating kaparot”,
Hoshana Raba (sixth day of Festival of Tabernacles), when one beats willows on the ground...
..Purim (Feast of Lots), when one beats Haman, and it was the custom to eat “Hamantaschen”, small triangular cakes containing chopped meat or cheese. And scoffers would add that these cakes could be eaten as well whenever one beats his wife!
..Chanukah: potato pancakes or pancakes made with wheat or buckwheat meal or, in fact, both mixed together and fried in sizzling goose or chicken fat.
When we baked bread, we also cooked a “kaslucha”, a mixture of sour leavened bread and sugar- a finger-licking delicacy…
And a buckwheat porridge of meal whitened with milk, a fatty onion stew cooked in sweet and sour sauce; chopped eggs and onions, chopped herring in wine vinegar. These are all foods we ate and enjoyed in Lubtch. We can't forget their taste, for which today I would gladly give up the best, medium rare “steak”.
And a dish of “shtchav” (sorrel), whitened with yolks and sour cream with chopped up scallions, fresh cucumber and sweet beets. And the earthenware jars, set aside, of butter milk and sour cream, the sour liquid which remains in the barrel after butter is churned, and just a glass of self fermented juice of pickled cucumbers having the good taste of dill, caraway and garlic - and even more so when whitened with sour cream. It is really so refreshing!
Indeed, and preserves of raspberries, (“may there be no need for them!”) cherries, gooseberries, pears and even of radishes - yes, of radishes-, cowberries and whortleberries. And besides these, we must add the big bottles with blackberries, cherries and raspberries, which also served as a medicinal cure.
Blackberries, raw or cooked, garnished with sugar and starch, red berries served with sugar and sour cream, small radishes with cucumbers, salad greens and scallions from one's own garden mixed with buttermilk, with slices of black, rye bread spread with butter. Just remembering this makes one's mouth water.
All of these were the foods that our mothers and grandmothers prepared, giving up a lot of their time, energy and health. Foods the Jews of Lubtch enjoyed and which also produced physically healthy generations.
And as we're already mentioning the various foods, let's also mention the cooking utensils, instruments and vessels which our mothers and grandmothers used for their work. In doing so, it should be noted that some of the names originate in White Russian and have been Yiddishized:
“boike” – a small barrel for churning butter
“deinitze” – a milk pail
“deizshe” – a small barrel for kneading dough
“dreifuss” – an iron tripod (stand) for cooking
“volgerholtz” – a wooden instrument for turning wash in a wash basin
“voyik” – a kind of lever or anchor for drawing buckets out of a well
“vilke” – a half- rounded fork for putting pots in the oven
“vechetch” – a rag for scouring and cleaning pots
“zaslinke” – a piece of tin for closing or covering the baking oven, an oven-lid.
“zipele” – a thick sieve for flour or meal
“tarke” – a grater
“tshohon” – a small pot made of “tshohon” (cast iron)
“yoshke” – a chimney cover, a damper
“ladishke” – an earthenware jug or pitcher
“lopete” – a small board with a stick, like an oar, for placing food in oven for baking
“lokshenbret” – a board for rolling dough
“liak” – a small pot with a narrow opening for boiling water
“multer” – a wooden instrument for kneading dough
“stupe” – a wooden pestle for grinding matzah.
“skorvede” – a frying pan
“pomoinitze” – a bucket for dirty water after use
“pomele” – a broom for cleaning the oven, an oven mop
“fendel” – a small pan used mainly for cooking fish
“pripetchik” forepart of an oven, a place for cooking by an oven
“tzuber” – the lower pestle made of wood, a tub
“kotchere” – a piece of bent iron with which to scrape pots from oven
“katuch” – a place under a baking over for keeping chickens
“katshelke” – a round stick for rolling dough, a rolling pin
“kvart” – a tin cup serving as a measure (quart) for milk
“kendel” (“kubak”) – a cup with a handle for taking water out of a bucket
“kargeshir” – a small pot, corrupted from the German “Kochgeshir”, cooking utensils
“reshete” – a sieve with bigger openings, from Hebrew (“reshet”, screen, net)
“shtoisel” – a small, brass barrel (mortar) with a pestle for crushing poppy seed, pepper, etc.
“shtchirke” – a dishtowel
