Selected text
Mama also cooked Jewish beef stew. Real Jewish stew is cooked with beef brisket – no other meat is good for this stew. There has to be a little fat in the meat. It has to be cut in small pieces and fried with onions till the meat and the onions turn dark brown. Then boiling water is added, salt, spices, pepper and laurel and stewed till it’s ready. If there was too much meat, Mama divided it into two portions and made sweet and sour stew. She added tomato paste and cherry jam plus sugar to make it sweet.
Another mandatory Saturday beverage is compote with black plums, and we also treated ourselves to tsimes [11]. In Bessarabia tsimes was made with potatoes, beans, carrots, peas and local sweet peas. Peas were kept in water since the previous evening and then boiled a little. Then flour was fried in butter, then a fat chicken tail base was added, onions fried separately and then mixed with peas, sugar was added and that was it: delicious tsimes was ready. Tsimes was to be eaten cold and with white bread. On Saturday we had white bread on the menu. Only Mama didn’t bake it, being very busy with her work. She sent me to buy fresh challah loaves in the store.
Now it’s difficult to recall all the dishes and on which day of the week we had them. I remember that we always had cutlets, fried potatoes and borscht on Monday. In our location Jewish cuisine was affected by the Moldovan cuisine and vice versa. Mama often made mititei, a Moldovan dish that I make myself now. It’s made from beef neck cut into pieces and left at room temperature for three hours. Then the pot is covered with a lid and the meat is placed in the cold – in a fridge and in the past it was kept in a cellar – for 24 hours. Then meat is to be ground with onions and garlic and some water and broth is added. Then sausages [meat balls] are made with this meat with the help of a special set installed on a meat grinder and fried in vegetable oil.
Another mandatory Saturday beverage is compote with black plums, and we also treated ourselves to tsimes [11]. In Bessarabia tsimes was made with potatoes, beans, carrots, peas and local sweet peas. Peas were kept in water since the previous evening and then boiled a little. Then flour was fried in butter, then a fat chicken tail base was added, onions fried separately and then mixed with peas, sugar was added and that was it: delicious tsimes was ready. Tsimes was to be eaten cold and with white bread. On Saturday we had white bread on the menu. Only Mama didn’t bake it, being very busy with her work. She sent me to buy fresh challah loaves in the store.
Now it’s difficult to recall all the dishes and on which day of the week we had them. I remember that we always had cutlets, fried potatoes and borscht on Monday. In our location Jewish cuisine was affected by the Moldovan cuisine and vice versa. Mama often made mititei, a Moldovan dish that I make myself now. It’s made from beef neck cut into pieces and left at room temperature for three hours. Then the pot is covered with a lid and the meat is placed in the cold – in a fridge and in the past it was kept in a cellar – for 24 hours. Then meat is to be ground with onions and garlic and some water and broth is added. Then sausages [meat balls] are made with this meat with the help of a special set installed on a meat grinder and fried in vegetable oil.
Period
Location
Moldova
Interview
Izia Antipka