The Grandma Zone
6 recipesWhen my grandmother passed, I inherited several worn-looking coffee cans and small boxes full of scraps of stained paper inscribed with my grandmother's lovely handwriting. These dinged up containers number amongst my most cherished possessions, for this is the collection of recipes that my grandmother turned to again and again over the years, and they form the basis for some of my happiest childhood memories. She transcribed these from her mother in law and sister in law, clipped these from magazines, wrote down notes dictated by friends over the phone. They are often difficult to decipher… the ink or pencil has faded, the ingredients splashed the notes, the paper has grown brittle with time. And so I am slowly digitizing the recipes I love best, photographing the original scraps of paper and including them on the page, transcribing what I can make out, and then, when necessary, interpreting the recipe to conform more closely to modern conventions (e.g. I know what my grandmother meant by "a third of a yahrzeit glass" but not everyone else will know what brand she meant or that those candles are not made in those glasses any more).
A truly classic version. Also makes a truly obscene quantity, so consider scaling this down if you're not cooking for an event or an army.
I make my chicken soup in a 12 quart pot. That's huge. Most people have an 8 quart soup pot, maybe a 10. So, you will likely need to scale it back. I also do this almost entirely by feel - I know I've got the right amounts in by looking. I'll try to guestimate as well as possible amounts, but as a benchmark, know that the soup pot is pretty full of ingredients (with lots of airspace, of course) by the time it's time to add the water. This was transcribed from phone calls with my grandmother when I had just graduated college, so there is no scrap of paper to photograph. I just have it written in my own hand, from long ago, somewhere. I've made it so many times that I don't need to look... I'm putting this here for everyone else's reference.
Hey, sometimes we don't have a box of matzah ball mix lying around. It happens.
This soup is very hearty - a meal unto itself. It also has the charming attribute of freezing very well - it's great for stocking your freezer so you don't have to cook when you're sick. A final note - Soup bones are usually not on display, but you can ask for them at the butcher's. They don't usually cost much. They freeze well, so you can get enough bones for several batches and store them in the freezer. You can make the soup without the bones, but the bones help for both both flavor and thickening.
My grandmother had multiple cabbage borscht recipes, and she made more than one version regularly. They primarily differ in terms of how sweet vs. sour they are, which reflects a fairly well characterized phenomenon: the Ashkenazi culinary palette used to vary based on geographic area of origin, but after the incredible upheaval of the 20th century, Jewish families are often comprised of members of the tribe hailing from culinary traditions even within a given subset of Jewry. The rule of thumb is that as you move northward through Eastern Europe, Jewish cooking traditionally became less sweet and more sour. Some of this had to do with the climate - there is also more pickled food as you go northward so as to keep over the long winters, and pickled foods are typically sour. This recipe is somewhat unintelligible because it’s actually one index card with the original barely legible version taped to one side and a much more legible partial transcription written on the back of the index card. As a result, the recipe is lacking some of the ingredients and the directions are confusing.
This may in fact be my grandmother’s handwriting. Her cursive script was lovely, and mostly what she used. But every now and then she’d write something out in block print - this may be that, or it may be from someone else. Anyway, this is clearly a recipe she used. Kreplach is the Yiddish word for dumpling. They can be dairy or pareve, but are most commonly filled with meat as they are here. They are often served in chicken soup which is why I put them in that category.