Nostalgia: 4 Delicacies of My Jewish Childhood
There are several foods that I find incredibly, unbelievably delicious and wonderful, yet I rarely eat them because they are not particularly healthy. Here’s the first one:
It’s halvah (see photo). It’s a sweet, greasy candy with the consistency of crumbly sawdust. I guess it’s an acquired taste. But once I start eating it, I can’t stop. It comes in flavors like vanilla, chocolate-covered and marble. I love marble. My guess is that a one-square-inch chunk of halvah contains enough calories to feed a small city.
Then there’s chopped liver. I don’t like liver, but I love chopped liver — chopped very fine, with egg and onion mixed in.
Then there’s stuffed cabbage, with a tangy red sauce covering a thick meat-and-rice-stuffed wrapper of cabbage.
Then there’s Jewish hard salami, the kind you see hanging in a window at the deli. The ‘hard’ part is key; no soft salami for me.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Halvah – can’t say I care for that. My Dad used to say it tasted like cardboard!
I do love all the other stuff mentioned and I’m not a huge liver fan either. Although chicken liver is way better than beef (blech).
Other Jewish delicacies I love are gefilte fish (you have to raised on it I think to like it) and lox. Hamentaschen is yummy too!
January 15th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Ah, you are making my mouth water, especially for halvah. But you missed one! Matzah Balls, hard ones that you can feel going down; not fluffy, fluffy is no taste.
January 15th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I love matzoh balls, but I still eat them so they don’t fit under the category ’stuff I loved as a kid and don’t eat today’.
January 15th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Oh! I love Halvah! Friend and I (both Irish kids) saw it in a store and bought it because it looked like some kind of candy we’d never had before (which it was, of course.) Well, he hated it, but I adored it. I buy a block every now and again and revel in it’s texture and taste.
And hard salami? Heaven. Pure heaven. I wish I had some right now.
January 15th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Yeah, halvah is a love it/hate it kind of thing. Let’s grab a hard salami sandwich sometime.
January 15th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Ummmm… I love the hard salami. I used to slice pieces in my dad’s store and eat it alone. Love it. The chopped liver too. Not as familiar with the cabbage dish but it sounds yummy. And, the halvah… I used to get it in NYC to try… it was one of those things I “decided” I was going to like, like liverwurst (which I do like). Someone mentioned gifilte fish. I used to eat this in Philly with matzah (sp) and red horse radish.
I want salami now!!!!! And, I’m totally with you on the hard part.
January 15th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
There’s a whole lot of salami craving going on here today. Lorrie, you’re not secretly Jewish, are you?
January 15th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
The cabbage dish is golabki. The latest video on TrueBlueBuffalo features that in one segment.
January 16th, 2009 at 5:39 am
My first time of eating salami in Romania was such an amazing and a funny moment. After taking two rolls, I went again to take four, and again three rolls. I really love it.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Hmmm…. I could be Jewish…
January 17th, 2009 at 1:51 am
We ought to compare notes on where you get your favorites of these items.
In our family, when a child reaches the ripe old age of 1, we do the ‘halvah’ test. If the baby doesn’t like halvah, then it is obvious that he/she was switched at birth and is not really a blood relative. We like halvah that much!
Have you tried out the new Russian store right down the street from me? It’s called BaZaa and they have halvah to DIE for. Plus, they have an entire charcuterie the length of a supermarket aisle with every kind of sausage in the free world. And then some. It’s amazing. It’s scary. It’s mind-boggling.
My mom used to make the BEST stuffed cabbage, with golden raisins in the sweet and sour sauce. I think I still have her recipe around, but it was an all day affair and you need a kitchen with 15′ of counters. I get my fix from the Butcherie but it doesn’t even come close to Moms.
Chopped liver? I make the best in the world. With REAL schmaltz. And real chicken livers, sweet onions and farm fresh eggs. I chop it all up myself with a mezzaluna in a wooden bowl that is ONLY used to make chopped liver. A bowl that my grandmother, mother, and now I am using. It’s really well seasoned and I think it adds to the flavor of the liver! But I only make it once a year. My cardiologist would KILL me if I ate it more often than that. But probably not before the liver killed me itself. It tastes phenominal, but slightly deadly.
January 17th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Margalit, my mom had a wooden bowl and chopper just like yours! We must be separated at birth. I have not been to BaZaa, but of course now I have to go there! I had no idea there was a place like that around here. As you know, Boston really needs a decent deli. Do you know of any? Michael’s in Brookline, I suppose.
January 19th, 2009 at 7:45 am
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January 19th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
mmmm, I loved chopped liver and stuffed cabbage!