In a town as literary as Seattle, writers come through nearly every day to talk about their books. But it’s rare when the author bakes her audience cookies. That’s exactly what Judy Bart Kancigor did in early March, when she came to Ravenna Third Place Books to talk about Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family (Workman Publishing, 656 pp. $19.95).
Part memoir, part photo album, all cookbook, Cooking Jewish is the result of many years of genealogical research, recipe collection, and testing. And while 500-plus recipes of Jewish comfort food might be impressive in its own right, Kancigor wrote it with a much bigger intent: to capture her family’s history through food, and to tell the stories that might otherwise be lost.
“Because I love my family and because I love food, I hit on the idea of a cookbook,” she says. “Jewish food is not just something to eat. We learn about our histories, our customs, our religious practices.”
The book started out much smaller, as a self-published, spiral-bound book called Melting Pot Memories. She printed up 500 copies in 1996 and expected them to sit in boxes in her garage. Six weeks later, however, the first run had sold out, and, eight printings later, she had sold around 11,000 copies.
Her book deal with Workman fell into her lap, but it took four-and-a-half years for Melting Pot Memories to turn into what became Cooking Jewish. The challenge, however, did not come from obtaining recipes.
“In-laws of in-laws of in-laws begged to be in my cookbook,” she says.
She initially submitted 1,000 recipes to Workman, and eventually whittled them down to the 532 in the released version of the book. Deciding what to leave out got quite political, Kancigor says, particularly when it came to what she called “the Kugel Wars.”
The real hard work came with testing the recipes. She had baked her very first recipe, Mama Hinda’s Passover Nut Cake, with her mother standing by as sous chef. Kancigor’s grandmother had died in 1975, and the recipe, written down by a prescient aunt, had not been tasted in decades.
“I vividly remembered that moist, nutty cake. I could almost smell it and taste it after all those years,” she writes above the recipe. Upon completing the finished product, she cut off a piece and handed it to her mother. “For the first time in her life my mother was speechless. Her eyes became saucers and filled with tears. No words were necessary.”
But reminding the taste buds of years past was impossible with every single recipe, particularly when the original cook had engaged in what Kancigor called shidderein — “a little of this, a little of that, and something wonderful emerges.”
Which meant that pinches, cents’-worths (yeast was sold by the penny when one recipe was recorded), and “cook until done” — or even her favorite instruction: “Six months ago, you soak cherries in brandy” — had to be replaced with kitchen testing and exact measurements. For that, she enlisted an army of testers, all of whom are listed in the foreword of the book, as well as subscribers to the Jewish cooking Internet listserve www.jewishfood-list.com, some of whom dedicated much time and effort to help in bringing Kancigor’s dream to fruition.
She also had testing parties, brought dishes to friends’ dinner parties, and tortured her husband with different versions of the same recipe, night after night, until she got it the way she wanted it.
This is not, Kancigor says, the definitive work of Jewish cooking; rather, it’s a history of her own family’s Jewish recipes, “warts and all.”
“Yes, it’s my family cookbook, but it has to work and it has to be good,” she says.
Kancigor grew up in Bell Harbor, N.Y. on the first floor of a duplex home. Her grandparents lived upstairs in what she called the hub of her family’s activity.
“It’s the grandmother who’s responsible for the continuation of culture,” Kancigor, now a grandmother herself, says. “We feed the generations to come, and not just the food.”
In addition to the recipes, she collected family stories from eulogies, roasts, and personal anecdotes, something she said all families should write down.
“We are the ancestors of our future generations,” she says.
Melting Pot Memories, which had 29 photos, expanded to over 500 for Cooking Jewish, and the result of collecting the stories means that every recipe gets one, so that the readers, even if they’re not a part of the Rabinowitz clan, can feel like they truly are a part of the family.
The best recipe, she says, is what many would consider among the most simple: her mother’s chicken soup — though that claim gets challenged. Her response? “When you write your cookbook, you can say your mother’s is the best. But mine is the best.”
Though she still has traces of her Long Island accent, Kancigor has lived in Southern California since 1971. Today she tours the country to talk about her book and writes a biweekly food column for the Orange County Register. But she beams about her accomplishment of bringing all of the elements together to complete Cooking Jewish.
“The thing I’m really most proud of is [that] what I set out to do, I did,” she says.
And Mama Hinda’s Chocolate Chip Mandelbrot? Delicious!
Select Passover recipes from Cooking Jewish by Judy Bart Kancigor:
Matzoh Brei
From Lillian Bart
1 board matzoh
1 large egg
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
Dash of ground cinnamon
About 2 tablespoons butter or nondairy margarine, for frying
Maple syrup, jam, or cinnamon sugar
1. Crumble the matzoh into a small bowl, add cold water to cover, and let it soak a few seconds, just until the matzoh is soft but not soggy. Drain the soaked matzoh thoroughly, wipe the bowl dry, and return the matzoh to the bowl.
2. Beat the egg into the matzoh. Add the sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon.
3. Melt the butter in a medium-size frying pan over medium heat. When the foam has subsided, pour in the batter all at once. Spread it out with a fork, and cook until it is golden and set on one side, about 2 minutes. Turn it over and fry on the other side, about 2 minutes.
4. Serve with syrup, jam or cinnamon sugar.
Notes: You can even fry the Matzoh Brei using vegetable cooking spray instead of butter or margarine. (Yeah, right, diet during Passover. Ha!)
Serves 1.
Banana Cheese Chremslach (fritters)
From Sylvia Robbins
1 cup matzoh meal
1 cup milk
1/2 cup mashed banana (1 medium-size banana)
1 cup cottage cheese
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
About 2 tablespoons butter, for frying
1. Place the matzoh meal in a large bowl and pour the milk over it. Stir, and allow to stand for 10 minutes. Then stir in the mashed banana, cottage cheese, cinnamon, and salt. Add the eggs and mix well.
2. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat, and drop the batter bythe tablespoon into the hot skillet. Fry until the fritters are crisp and brown on one side, about 2-1/2 minutes. Turn them over and fry on the other side, about 2 minutes.
3. Serve the chremslach immediately, or keep them warm in a preheated 200ºF oven for up to 15 minutes.
Serves 4 to 6