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Fermenting and Foraging: Resourcefulness in the Historical and Contemporary Kitchen
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:05]
B
So, hi everyone.
- [00:07]
C
Welcome to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, or at least the virtual version of ourselves. I want to thank you all for joining us today for our event, Fermenting and Foraging Resourcefulness in the Historical and Contemporary Kitchen. So, for those of you who are not yet familiar with yivo, Yivo is a special place for the contemplation and celebration of Jewish history and culture. And at the core of yivo, we have our archives and our library, which have some 23 million items and 400,000 books. And so, all throughout the year, we do events like this one, and we have exhibits and classes to really showcase the kind of collections that we have here. So today's program is actually an outgrowth of one of our classes, which perhaps some of you may have already taken. It's called A Seat at the Table, A Journey into Jewish Food. And it's a class that goes into the history and even some recipes of Ashkenazi cuisine. The class itself is self paced. It's actually still available for anyone to begin now, and it's currently free. So if you haven't yet taken the class, you're welcome to go to the YIVA website and sign up. And one of our wonderful instructors in the course is Jane Ziegelman, who is here with us today to delve further into the topic of resourcefulness. Jane is the other Jane, not me, is the author of the James Beard Award winning A Square A Culinary History of the Great Depression, and is also an author of the bestselling 97 An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement. So we're delighted to have her here leading the discussion today. I'll note that throughout the program, we would love to have all of your questions in the Q and A function in Zoom. So we'll try to get to them at the end of the chat. And also to let you know that this event is also going to be on YouTube, so you're welcome to watch it later. Encourage your friends to watch it and check out all of YIVO's events on our YouTube channel. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Jane and our panelists for our event.
- [02:06]
B
Thank you, other Jane. I'm really happy to be part of this conversation. Resourcefulness has long been a kind of favorite topic of mine for a variety of reasons. One is that we often celebrate the sort of intuitive side of cooking, the love, the intuition. Resourcefulness kind of takes us to the other side of the brain, the thinking side. You need smarts to cook. And our Ashkenazi ancestors had plenty of kitchen smarts right next to Kashrut. The need for resourcefulness has been one of the great influences on the evolution of Jewish cooking. And in this case, Jewish cooking means Ashkenazi cooking. We're using it in this context as the cuisines of Eastern and Central Europe. In America, as Jews gained economic security and then prosperity, Jewish homemakers began to stray from the kind of budget conscious preparations that were so important to their European ancestors. But given the current state of events, I think this is an excellent time to reconnect with that history. And helping us do that are two very talented and also very articulate chefs, Jerry Umansky and Ari Miller. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about them, Ari. Ari Miller is the chef and proprietor of Muzi in Philadelphia, which opened in February 2019. Shortly after opening, Ari was named Best Chef by Philadelphia magazine. An eater named Muzi one of the 16 best new restaurants in the city since July 2020. Following a complete shutdown in the wake of COVID 19, Muzi is offering the Friswit. Am I saying that right, Ari? The Friswit.
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D
Friswit.
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B
Friswit, which is nothing less than Philly's best cheesesteak. And it's sourced based on the relationship approach. And Ari, I hope that you will have a chance to elaborate on what that is. Jeremy is the chef and proprietor of the Larder Delicatessen and Bakery in Cleveland, Ohio, which was nominated by the James Beard foundation for Best New Restaurant in America in 2020. 2019. Excuse me. In 2020, the James Beard people nominated Jeremy for Best Chef in the Great Lakes region. So Jeremy has received quite a bit of national recognition. That's wonderful. Jeremy has been featured in numerous publications including Bon Appetit, the New York Times and Savor, and was named the Delhi Prophet by Food and Wine. His new book, Koji Alchemy Rediscovering the Magic of Mold Based Fermentation came out earlier this year in May of 2020. Now we're going to bring in Ari and Jeremy, but one of my jobs here is to provide some historical context to the conversation. And that's sort of how we're going to. That's where we're going to start. If we look back, the Jewish homemakers who emigrated to the US at the start of the 20th century arrived with a full toolkit of strategies for making the most of precious food resources. I'm going to be looking at three of them. And as you'll see, they're all kind of interrelated. Now, we tend to think of Jewish cooking, of Ashkenazi cooking as a meat heavy cuisine. But in fact, that emphasis on meat is a relatively recent development. The pillars of the traditional Jewish kitchen were, in fact, plant based foods. There were potatoes and bread, and the bread was made from the heavy, dark grains like rye, millet, barley. There was also kashta and beans. So these were all plant based, cheap and filling materials, ingredients. When meat was consumed, and this includes both chicken and fish, they were reserved for the Sabbath or the holiday table. The one exception to that was herring, which of course, is a preserved food. And herring, you should know, was eaten three times a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When women did cook with meat, it was often with the most inexpensive parts of the animal. So it was the toughest and the fattiest cuts, the flanken, for example, which requires long cooking, or with organ meats, the brain, the spleen, the sweetbreads, and of course, liver bones were enormously valuable to Jewish homemakers as a base for soups. And even fish bones were used, for example, in gefilte fish, which is traditionally simmered on a bed of fish bones to give it that wonderful gelatinous sauce that we eat alongside with our gefilte fish. Jewish homemakers cooked with all the extremities, the wings, the feet, the necks, parts of the animal other people might throw away. Now, if one of those homemakers saw us with our supermarket chicken, unwrapping our chicken and reaching into the berg for that packet of giblets, and saw us throw that packet away, I'm sure she would shriek. One of my hopes for today is that Jeremy and Ari will tell us what to do with those packets. So please keep that in your minds, Diaz. Now, in a diet based around starches, an important source of both flavor and nutrition were fermented foods. Pickled cucumbers, sauerkraut, a whole range of pickled vegetables, actually, one of them being Russell, which was pickled beet juice, an important flavoring in borscht. And I'd like to note here that fermented foods played this very interesting kind of double role. On one hand, fermentation was a very important source of preservation. It served a vital practical function. It was also a way, however, of bringing intensity and excitement to the table. So resourcefulness was more than economic. It also contributed to our enjoyment of eating. And I think that's a good. That dialectic is something we can maybe play on today. Now, I know that Foraging is a promised part of the conversation, and we will be talking about foraging. There was not a lot of foraging in the tenements of the Lower east side or in the other great Jewish urban centers, but there was foraging in the old country. And as we get to that conversation, I'm gonna tell you more about that. So we're going to sort of hold off on foraging for a minute, and it's time now to turn to our chefs, Jeremy and Ari. I was hoping that you could tell us a little bit about your early culinary influences as a way to kind of introduce yourselves to all of the invisible people that are with us today. And, Ari, let's start with you.
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D
Sure. Hey, thanks, Jan. This is super exciting to be chatting with you in this way. Yeah. You know, the. I think the early indoctrination to food for me was. Was easily the holiday tables. The. The grandparents, like my mom and Zeta, who, you know, on Sundays would, like. Literally, my Zeta would bike up the. The block to Abes and sons and. And grab bagels and. And. And, you know, appetizing stuff. And. And. And that was our. I mean, that was Sunday. It was. You know, it was. It was so. It was so wonderful. You know, it. It's. It's this weird thing, I think, between, you know, coming around the table, being with your family in the food itself and. And when they mash up. Well, I mean, you know, great family can compensate for mediocre food, I suppose, and food can but say for mediocre family. But, you know, it was that. And then during the week when we would be in town for, you know, my.
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A
My.
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D
My grandfather and my Zeta and his. His brothers owned some. Some properties, and my dad was like the. The. The. The handyman or the contractor who'd like, you know, fix it. They. My. They would bring us deli sandwiches. My early favorites were tongue and. And hard salami. Those were, you know, just. As a kid, you know, I got fed herring, caviar, hard salami, and beef tongue. And, you know, the. The. The weirdness stuck, I think. And.
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B
Yeah, right.
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D
You know, to. To my own delight. Um, yeah.
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A
And.
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D
And that's how, you know, I. I love things now. The. The weird bits.
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A
The.
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D
The. The, you know, the unpopular. The unpopular kid. Foods of. Of heart and brain.
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B
Nothing. Like a giblet, you know.
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D
Like a giblet. Yeah, the little, you know, in Passover, you know, picking the. The chicken necks off of all the. The Seder plates, you know, that were on the. The long table. I would. I would eat them all the puppets. The stomach muscle. This was one of my favorite things as a kid. And looking back, too many friends who go ew at that. And I feel blessed.
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B
We're going to have problems if we ever find ourselves at the same table, because we're going to be diving for those same parks.
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D
I like my own people.
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B
Right. Jeremy, can you. Can you tell us about some of your early food influences?
- [13:04]
A
Yeah. You know, it's fantastic, Ari, hearing you talk about eating tongue as a kid. And my father always tells this story with his father. My grandfather would get the biggest kick in the world because even as a little baby, we'd go to his house and he'd give me slices of ham and yellow mustard, or I'm sorry, not ham, slices of tongue and yellow mustard. And even as an infant, it was like, one of my favorite things. Yeah, you know, those. Those odd bits and. And being introduced to them. My. My father's family for Thanksgiving. Everybody loves the. The tush of the turkey, the tail. Um, so as the years went on, finally got to the point where I would go to the butcher and get a 10 pound bag of turkey tails and not even worry about the whole bird. This way, everybody was happy. So, you know, I grew up. My grandmother ran the catering out of a synagogue here on Cleveland's east side. Around the time of my bar mitzvah, she started yanking me and bringing me in the kitchen and saying, it's your turn to make the tuna salad, to slice the lox and that sort of thing, and just grew up in a household with a love for food. My mother cooked all the time. My grandmother, of course, cooked all the time, doing all the catering. And I was really fortunate, too. My mom knew a few wild plants, so there was a BlackBerry bramble a couple blocks from our house. She'd take us there as kids, and we'd sit there and pick them, eat them. And she knew a couple other things. So the eating of opal, the finding of wild foods, even from when I was younger, these were just normal and naturalized things for me to do. And that tends to be pretty much all I do these days now.
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B
You know, it's interesting to me that as kids, you were both given free rein at the table, and the weird bits were not held back from you. And I see that as a great lesson for us in raising our kids is to let them eat the weird stuff and grow up to be Jeremy's and Ari's great chefs with this appreciation for these foods. So just on a parenting note, and of course, those bits are the cheap bits. So it really plays into the resourcefulness story. Were you going to say something, Jeremy?
- [15:39]
A
Yeah. I mean, my grandmother's gefilte fish, which we basically use. We use a little bit of an updated version of her recipe at larder. I mean, still to this day, I can never eat enough of it. Even as a little kid, you know, she would send my parents home with a Ziploc lock bag full of balls of it. And that was Passover. So special to this day still, because being able to eat gefilte fish every day for a week. Yeah, just especially hers, you know, very, very litvak. Very heavy on the pepper. Lots of good, sweet carrot in there. No sugar, but. But not lots of boiled carrot for a little sweetness. And. And everybody, everybody, I. I can still get tears in my eyes from her crying. It's so potent. But, yeah, even as a little kid, that was. That was so, so delicious.
- [16:32]
B
Well, just on the subject of the weird bits, Jeremy and Ari, what do we do with that packet that's in the chicken? For us home cooks, we only get one bird at a time. What should we do? I don't want to throw that out.
- [16:48]
D
I think one of the things that caused me to fall in love with the kitchen was those are the cooks bits. You don't have to share those. Well, there aren't that much. Like while you're cooking during the day, you know, while the bird's roasting, like, you know, I'm not opposed to, you know, you don't have to share everything. You know, cook them off a little bit of oil, a little bit of salt, and just. Just enjoy yourself.
- [17:14]
B
Excellent. I mean, that is actually what I do with the liver. I just fry it up quietly on the stove, and that's my little treat. So I'm. You've given me permission to continue. Thank you for that.
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D
You're cooking family dinner like you should, you know you should.
- [17:33]
B
Yeah. Pay back. That's right.
- [17:36]
A
You save them too, Jane. You know, first off, everybody out there should be buying whole chicken. There's no reason to spend $2 or $3 extra per pound to buy boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Buy whole chicken. It's very simple to cut it into the different pieces that you may need for any given application. You don't even need a knife. I use a scissors here at home. So it's a super, super simple, easy thing to do. And when you do it with scissors, even your kids can help you because there isn't so much sharp there as with a knife. But you know, when you get just a heart and a gizzard and a liver, save them. You know, a lot of times I'll put em in like a quart container and keep em in the freezer. And I keep adding to it every time I get a chicken. And then when it's time to make some chopped liver or, you know, I just like to saute the gizzards and the hearts together. You know, on another level too, if you're a meatloaf household or a meatball household, add it to your mix, it's great. It's super flavorful, you know, and if anybody's weirded out by it, they're not going to pick it out of the meatloaf.
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B
Right. So it's a great way to hide your weird bits to your more squeamish dinner guests.
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
You know, and you could tell them afterwards.
- [18:58]
A
I mean, listen, when it comes down to it, here's the black and white reality. When we really think that we raise an animal, another sentient being, solely to kill it and to feast on its flesh. When we talk about it in those words, in those contexts, the whole, all of its weird bits, it doesn't matter if it's a steak muscle group or the brains. It's, that whole act is, is pretty, pretty intense. So, you know, as far as value goes of my eyes, there's no difference between a good rib eye steak and, and some grilled liver. It, it's all the same.
- [19:37]
D
I think that's something I, I found myself saying frequently as well, that if, if you think that, you know, this part of the animal is, is ew and gross and this part of the animal is delicious and delectable that you should probably consider vegetarianism or veganism because you really are not engaging in the way. I mean, you know, you might not like liver, that's, that's legitimate. But to, to dismiss it as, as gross is, is, to me it's, it's, it's difficult to, to, to, to, you know, match up that thought process with. But the, the muscle ripped off of the leg is completely palatable.
- [20:18]
A
Yeah, yeah. And that's a, that's a great part of conversation. I've had many conversations with people too. Heart is especially beef. Heart is one one of my favorite go tos. And when you talk about beefy flavor, there is no beefier cut of meat on that animal than the heart. Um, it is just so flavorful and it's easy to cook because you have to cook it so fast. But when I have this Conversation with people, it's, oh, I'm not, I'm not. No, I'm not eating that. The steak's okay, but the heart's not.
- [20:49]
B
Well, of course, these are cultural precepts. And if we think about them and are more conscious about them, maybe we can sort of reform our ideas about which parts are okay and which parts aren't okay. So for people that are squeamish, maybe it is a good time to just question where, how we formed those categories and to people who have already sort of experienced the pleasure of them. Come, come over. We welcome you. So the giblet side, it's wonderful there, leaving giblets and the other bits for a moment. We promised a conversation on fermentation and you both are very advanced fermenters. It's a huge topic, obviously. And I guess I would just like to start by asking, what is it about fermentation that has captured the imagination of so many younger chefs? And do it yourselfers. And Jeremy, maybe we'll put this one to you first.
- [22:13]
A
So I'm going to give you a two part answer. Yeah, I think there's a direct answer to your question. And then I tend to be a little bit more esoteric, I guess we could say sure with it. So, so I'm going to give you both. So a fermentation equals flavor and it also equals you can do whatever you want, you can create whatever you want. And that is really, really attractive to a lot of young cooks and the home cooks to be able to take something and do it in a Vietnamese style or do it in a Litvak style or something from South America to start with the same core ingredient. But to be able to put these individual identities on something and have this wonderful fermented product I think is very empowering to a lot of people. You know, on top of that, rightly so. Fermentation is fortunately trendy. Again, it used to be out of necessity that we all had to. We didn't have, you know, consistent refrigeration and those sorts of things. So fermented foods were a huge part of our diet. Physiologically, we've evolved in a way where we need fermented foods in our diet to maintain homeostasis within our bodies and to have proper health. And then for me, I. I have this conversation with people often and this is what I tell them. In an 8 ounce jar of sauerkraut, we have about 10 trillion organisms in there, these beneficial organisms that create the sauerkraut. And if we extrapolate that out over a gallon, 128 ounces, we end up with a number that rivals the amount of observed bodies in the universe through any telescope that NASA has access to. So if you hold a gallon jar of sauerkraut, you can literally hold a whole cosmos in your hand, because every force of physics is happening in that jar. The weak electronic force, gravity, creation, destruction. It's all happening there all the time on a scale that's too small for us to really physically comprehend, just as it's happening out there on a scale that's too large for us to fully comprehend. So that universality of it, that I can be part of the greater cosmos and still hold and create another one within my hands, is immensely fascinating to me. And that's what draws me in. It's all. It's also very delicious, and it just tastes freaking good.
- [24:52]
B
Yeah, right. You know, when I promised articulate to our audience, I didn't know we'd be talking about the cosmos in a jar of sauerkraut, but I'll. I'll never. I'll never forget that. Maybe can you tell us, Jeremy, a little bit about the fermenting that you do in. In your restaurant?
- [25:13]
A
Yeah, we do a lot. And. And, you know, Covid has definitely changed things up for us in terms of what we have available on our menu, but it hasn't really slowed us down for the amount that we produce. So at any given time, we. We used to have about a dozen different types of fermented vegetables offered, in our deli case, all different types of pickles. We are highly seasonal with a lot of things. So our kosher dill pickle, while we typically always have one, what it's made from changes seasonally, so. So we only make it with cucumbers during cucumber season, and then we go into green tomatoes, and then the rest of the year, we do carrots. So we always have this constantly evolving set of what. What it is to be a kosher dill pickle. Carrots are by far the biggest seller, too, when we do them. So when. Even when we have the kosher dill cucumbers in there, people are like, where are the carrots? What we want? Aside from that, we do a lot of different fermentation techniques with different cuts of meat. You know, we make pastrami. We make that in house. That goes through a fairly subdued fermentation process, but one nonetheless. We bake fresh breads every day, and we're always creating various foods using fermentation.
- [26:39]
B
I notice you're. You're putting bread baking in the fermentation category. Can you explain a hundred.
- [26:47]
A
Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, outside of making a quick bread that relies on, you know, chemical leaveners like baking soda or baking powder, you know, bread baking itself relies on yeast, which is a organism responsible for a fermentation reaction. So it, it eats sugars that are found in the bread, and then as a byproduct, it produces carbon dioxide and alcohol. But that's what causes your bread to. To rise. These microscopic shots of CO2 that the yeast is putting out. So bread is. Yeah. And some of our breads, there's quick breads where you just let the yeast do its thing for a couple hours. Our rye bread is a long ferment. So it goes, the dough goes a minimum of 12 hours, allowing the yeast to do its work. We also work with some different other types of mold and fungi. This koji mold that we work with, so it, it takes, takes root there. And anybody that's baked bread, whether it's challah or rye bread, you're relying on fermentation to help you out there. Interestingly enough, if we go back, instant yeasts weren't, what, widely available till World War II. So anybody baking bread at home prior to that was either using a starter like this mother culture, wild and live yeast found in their home that they would keep alive in a, in a flower slurry. Or, you know, you may have had the money or been fortunate to get a live yeast cake, but very few people could actually afford those. So just going back, not too far, we have a whole generation of people, many generations of people, who all bread baking relied on wild types of fermentation.
- [28:40]
B
And of course, you can capture yeast out of the air. You can attract them to maybe a pot of potato water.
- [28:48]
A
Yeah. I want everybody to take one deep breath really quick with me. Congratulations. You literally just inhaled millions of yeast spores and fungal spores and bacteria that are in the air, most of them beneficial. So they are there. You don't really have to do much of anything to introduce them. When you're making sauerkraut or pickles or bread, what you have to do is you have to actually act as a shepherd or a farmer per se. You have to cultivate an environment that, that is conducive to them. So much like the shepherd keeps the wolf out of the flock and keeps them moving to fresh pasture, you have to do the same. You've gotta know the ins and outs to keep the pathogens away, the bad stuff. But then your job is to create this hospital environment so that they can thrive and then you can make delicious food.
- [29:46]
B
Ari, can you tell us a little bit about your relationship with fermentation?
- [29:51]
D
Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's actually. I was just reminded by a Facebook memory that this is actually the anniversary of the first time I made sauerkraut for an event, you know, some, some years back. And you know, I, I think that, you know, the deliciousness of sauerkraut that it's, it appears in more or less this similar form in, in so many different cuisines is, is like, it's so special because it's almost like your traveling buddy, you know, you like, go from, you know, Irish to Jewish to, to Polish, and, and, and like you've got your same friend sauerkraut alongside the whole time. It's also cabbage and salt and there's something, so, there's something so mystical, I think, like this. On sort of. On the same notion of like, let's call it this God complex that, that Jeremy's describing of creating this, this cosmos. Like, you know, Lisa's, you know, tooth in the petri dish where she creates a new world. And, and it's, it's so special, I mean, you know, because there's also something about, you know, the sort of the dry brining also where the salt draws out the liquid from the cabbage and it provides its own matrix for, for this to happen. It's just. There's something so, I think special and, and, and just. Just mystifying about this process that happens, that now this vegetable is going to defy its lifespan and, and. And live for. For, you know, forever, quote, unquote, you know, you're gonna eat it at some point and, and, and that's just, I think, really neat. And, and to Jeremy's point about, you know, the, the. The kosher dill pickle, you know, going from cucumber to green tomato to, to the carrot is. It's such a cornerstone of, of being able to, to be part of. You know, and this is where the notion of relationship cuisine that we. We use to describe this idea of being outside of an industrial food way system that we. You can't. We. We can't just get a cucumber all year round. You know, it's, It's. It's not really the point. I don't want, you know, you hear every, you know, waxing philosophic on, on the tomato is, is cliche at this point, but it's, it's very true. You know, that, that tomato, the first time of the year when you finally bite into that real tomato and, and, and that the pleasure and the joy of, of you've survived a cycle, you've, you've moved through seasons to get to this next point. I mean, that's, I think the holiday, back to the holiday table idea of, of this is life cycle, this is harvest, and it's interesting to do it in an urban environment. I think that's where we've, you know, as this generation of chefs have adopted this idea of, you know, of, of cooking seasonally and, and, and working with foragers or foraging yourself. You know, one of the most exciting things for me is that the notion of micro seasons, which I wasn't really familiar with until I got into the professional kitchen, that you can have a season that's a week long and, and, you know, so the specialness of the tomato, which is around for a few months, like you can have like a, a particular flower that just is everything and, and it's, it's, you know, it's gone in a blink of an eye. But for that brief moment, you, you connect with where you were the year prior and, and, and fermentation is sort of for, for me, that same notion of time travel, you know, when, when you dig into your Kraut six months later and you remember where you were and how that cabbage felt in your hands and, and what it was like at the peak of its season. And then, you know, how it is now that you've sort of shepherded it. It's, it's, it's, it's deterioration or it's, it's, it's, you know, regeneration is, is just special. I mean, it's, it's, you know, I, Right before the shutdown in March, we, we had a dish that had a lot of like mustard greens and things like that, and we just simply fermented everything and we have this vat of, of crowd right now that, you know, wouldn't exist if we hadn't had to. To deal with the fact that we had these cases of, of greens that we, you know, we had to save.
- [34:11]
B
What, what should we be fermenting right now, given where we are in, in, in the year? What foods do you recommend?
- [34:19]
D
We ferment everything.
- [34:23]
B
I mean, what, what are some that we might not think were ferment, compact fermentation compatible? Can you ferment a squash?
- [34:34]
D
Yeah. Broccoli and potatoes for me are heaven. You still have to cook a fermented potato. There are some toxin issues, but but you get. I mean, you know, the combination of potatoes and vinegar is, like, classic. And you get this super tangy potato that's just. Just absolutely gorgeous.
- [34:56]
B
People wanted to find out more on how to do that. Where. Where would we go? Where should we go for instructions?
- [35:02]
D
Um, I have a. There's a woman in. In Philly named Amanda Pfeiffer who published a book called Ferment your vegetables that I imagine if you want to go the Koji route, that there's another book that we could recommend.
- [35:17]
B
Yes. Would you like to say some things about Koji, Jeremy? Yeah.
- [35:23]
A
Yeah. First, I do want to say right now, pumpkin, pumpkin everything. I make tons of pumpkin pickles. And it's, you know, kind of parlaying off your. Your question, like, where would I learn how to do this?
- [35:39]
D
A.
- [35:39]
A
Ask a grandparent, because there's a chance they may have made these foods at one point in time, and they. There's some sort of family recipe that, for whatever reason, fell out of favor. So always go that route first and try to keep alive what traditions may have been forgotten. So that's really important. You know, the second thing to keep in mind is fermentation is so ubiquitous, not just because it was so important for us, but. But also because it's so easy. So once you learn, some of the basic tenants like, how much salt do I add to a vegetable to ferment it? And that answer is a minimum of 2% salt by weight. At our restaurant, we do 3% salt by weight because we. We like the flavor a bit better. So as long as you learn that and you stay clean, you don't cross contaminate, you wash your hands, you know, don't cut chicken on the cutting board before you shred the cabbage to make kraut use basic food safety pretty much, you don't need much more knowledge. That's you. The proper amount of salt is. Is first and foremost and then having really good, good hygiene practice. So this isn't something you should be intimidated by, you know, be fearful of or that sort of thing. And you should be grateful and thankful that these foods were around for your ancestors to eat so you could be here now.
- [37:02]
B
So I realize, Jeremy, I'm sorry to cut you off, but I realize we're sort of getting close to the time when questions come in and we haven't said anything about foraging.
- [37:16]
A
Sure.
- [37:17]
B
Do you think we can get some foraging into our conversation? Let's try. You know, I didn't bring in foraging to my intro because it wasn't part really of the Jewish American experience. But it was very much part of the Jewish shtetl experience. Living in the shtetls, Jews were surrounded by fields and forests and we don't normally think of Jews as being sort of people, people of nature, but our Jewish ancestors knew the natural world and one thing they knew how to do was forage. There were a couple of foods that they really went after. One was sorrel, which was a springtime food used to make stav, one of the great Jewish soups. There was also foraging for berries and foraging fir mushrooms, which were often then dried and used through the year. Jeremy, what brought you to foraging? You spoke a little bit about your mom and the blackberries. Tell us a little bit about foraging in your life now.
- [38:41]
A
So in my life now, it's something that I do all the time. I've gone to the extent that I'm a licensed wild mushroom expert through the Michigan Department of Agriculture. So I've, I've taken it to a bit of an extreme, one could say. But in, you know, in researching when we decided we were going to open up larder, which by the way is another name for a pantry or a root cellar, no connection with lard, we get a lot of questions about that. We decided we wanted the food to be of an Eastern European Jewish influence, but also speak through the lenses of we're in Cleveland, so we wanted to talk about the Great Lakes through our food and the people that were here indigenously while nobody was here permanent. There was a number of tribes that came through and then the people that came in after them and the people that are here now. We wanted to incorporate all those elements and one of the very common themes was the foraging of food. This Eastern European history of, yes, going after the mushrooms, the berries, in some cases different nuts was so important and we, we figured out we couldn't tell any of these stories without including it. So over the years, you know, this is something, you know, and I saw earlier that Irene is here, her late husband, Gary Linkoff. I had the fortunate opportunity to stunner underneath him in New York City. A great, great mushroom mind. And you know, seeing, seeing these foods, seeing them be used, it makes you wonder why they aren't more commonplace and why we've kind of forgotten this knowledge. Because not only is it just about great food and embracing nature, but I have a five year old daughter, she comes out with me, she's a lot closer to the ground than I am, so she spots the mushrooms a lot quicker and she has fun doing it. So it's something we can do as a family, and we can bond together, you know, and then we can take that food that we found very to very similar to, like, you growing something in your garden and taking it and then cooking it. There's a huge amount of intimacy and romance and sensuality associated with that. And to deny any of those things in any of our cuisine or any of our foods would be abhorrent. If we got rid of the sensuality of eating, nobody would find it pleasurable. It would be horrible. It'd be something we just stuff into an orifice just to make sure we didn't die. So being able to embrace it on that level is. It's just wonderful. It's. It's intimate, and it's incredibly romantic.
- [41:28]
B
I just. I. I'm. I'm so impressed by both of you, actually, for the holistic way that you guys think about food bringing in. You know, we're talking about the cosmos and sensuality, and, I don't know, it's every. It's everywhere. It's everybody. Anyway, it's a great perspective on food that I. I'm finding very inspiring. I hope other people are as well. And I'm sort of, I guess, trying to wrap up a little bit, because I think. And Jane can tell me this, but. Jane, is it time to bring questions in?
- [42:09]
C
Yeah. So we've gotten a lot of really great questions from all of you and a really lively chat, which I've personally, really been enjoying seeing. So one question maybe we can start out with from Irina. They say, I grew up in Romania eating brains, tongue, chicken, gizzards, and heart and liking them a lot. I wasn't aware of this being a Jewish food. I believe Europeans eat these things, too. Any thoughts?
- [42:32]
A
They do eat them. Everybody does. What makes it a Jewish food is Jews eating it in a given time and place and the specific things that they do with them that maybe the general population around them, who's also eating the same food, doesn't exactly do.
- [42:48]
B
Yeah, go on, Jeremy. I. I mean, well, actually, no Jews eat the foods that other people eat. Other people eat, but they do it Jewish. So it's the treatment, it's the way it's approached. It's the way the. The food is treated in accordance with the. The laws of kashru. It's the larger context. So it's true these are not exclusively Jewish foods, but they have played a very important role in the traditional diet, and we've lost them in this country. And I'm trying to think of ways to bring them back in. So these are guys that are. That are doing it, both Jeremy and Ari. But I think that's a good question. It's true. It's. These are not foraging, of course, is not an exclusively Jewish activity, but there's a Jewish way of doing it.
- [43:50]
A
And I'm sure Ari can elaborate a little bit with an Israeli perspective. Like, I look at Israeli food as Israeli food and not necessarily Jewish food. American Jew. And I'm sure, Ari, you've got a little bit of a different take on that too.
- [44:04]
D
Yeah, I mean, you know, well, one first thing is I was going to say in terms of that Jewish notion versus not Jewish notion of like, these opals and things like that, like liver is. Is something that jumps out to me, I think, like chop liver, like that shtetl chop liver that I. I grew up on, that I make and I love is so Jewish. And I remember being a kid loving chopped liver and hearing about, you know, the. The horrid liver and onions. I had no idea what liver and onions was. Like. It wasn't a dish that I encountered. And, you know, liver really only existed as chopped liver. And it turns out I like liver and onions also. But, you know, it's. There was like this, you know, Jewish and this, you know, goyisha version of things as my mom, which is really
- [44:44]
B
quite funny because it's the same ingredients, same.
- [44:47]
D
It's the same things.
- [44:48]
B
Right.
- [44:51]
D
I encountered corned beef outside of the deli, and my mom was like, well, it's not Jewish corned beef. This is goat corned beef. And I was like, I love corned beef. Like, you know, how is this going to be a problem? Like, I love the institution of corned beef. And I did. I love this Goyisha Irish corned beef. That was, you know, wonderful. But I mean, as far as the Israeli stuff goes, you know, I lived in Israel for 12 years, and I had been. I'd written about food and then got into the kitchen in Tel Aviv. I have a bit of a, you know, I think, sort of problem with. With some of the. The.
- [45:29]
B
This.
- [45:30]
D
This global term of Israeli, of Israeli cuisine and what that has come to mean. But, you know, these. It's. It's within Israel, Israeli cuisine, there's this, you know, very strong Eastern European. I mean, the chefs that I worked for and with in Tel Aviv, we, you know, stuffed spleen was something that was like a yearly thing that we would make, you know, spleen stuffed with a cow spleen that would be like, you know, very carefully fillet open and then stuff with every organ of the lamb and then stitch it back together. But it was always seasoned with, like, preserved lemons and herbs. So it was sort of not quite Ashkenazi and not quite Mizrahi as well, and it was somewhere in between, but at that same place. The first dish that I ever actually had to pick up on the line was haggis, and it was made by a local charcuterie on this guy, Alan Tuld Moore, who was like the sausage king of. Of Tel Aviv. Um, you know, and another thing that was, like, hugely wonderful, and I miss intensely, was lung. Lung is a federal. There's a. It's a federal crime to sell lung for human consumption in the States. We're, I think, the only country or one of the few countries that actually has this law. And, like, lung is one of the tastiest, best things in the world. And this was something that we would just, you know, skewer with some. Some. Some fat and. And grill over charcoal. And that. That, to me, is Israel. That's Israeli cuisine. Is. Is. Is lung skewers.
- [47:04]
B
Another question, Jane.
- [47:05]
C
Yeah, Another question we have from Tina, who asks. I read that when our ancestors immigrated. So of course, it sounds like R here is specifically referring to the experience of Eastern European Ashkenazi and Jewish immigrants, though I'll just note that, of course, there's all kinds of Jews that have immigrated. They often had a sack of potatoes in herring or kippers, because they would keep for days or weeks. Can you discuss the foods our ancestors ate when traveling? So perhaps, Jane, this is a question more for you.
- [47:33]
B
Yeah, no, I do think that. I know that Jews did travel with herring. It was one of the great traveling foods because it's preserved. I didn't hear about the potatoes, but I do know that they also traveled with. There's a term for it in Yiddish. It might be something like gefrishte, but bread that had been, well toasted so that it wouldn't mold. So you would carry this sort of very heavily toasted bread and herring. And those were two of the staples that. It was like a Jewish hardtack. It was one of the staples that our immigrant ancestors used on those long ocean voyages.
- [48:17]
C
Another question we have, which is maybe a little more practical. I'll combine two questions. One is just asking about what kind of equipment one might need in order to start fermenting. Um, and then also when pickling, if it's better to splurge on high quality vegetables or high quality salt slash vinegar.
- [48:34]
D
So maybe I I think one of the things and, and Jeremy, you know, sort of mentioned this as well with, with fermenting is there's a lot of intimidation around it. I think because there's this, you know, again, it's, it's this mystical procedure and I think like it's always how do you approach something of like, with, how do you approach mysticism? It's like this otherworldly thing and you're supposed to just be casual about it. But wash your hands, wash your container, use a clean cutting board and you're gonna be fine. You know, you wanna, you know, you don't wanna wash your, your vegetables too much. You wanna use that natural bacteria that is coming from what should be the farm. You know, there is, I think this is a good sort of pointed to mention there's a difference between an industrial vegetable and a non industrial vegetable.
- [49:26]
B
Should we use farmer's market vegetables for our fermenting?
- [49:32]
D
Ideally for everything, but maybe even more for fermenting. I think more so, yeah. I mean that's not to say you can't use supermarket cabbage or supermarket broccoli, but the idea of these bacteria that don't actually exist in the vegetable themselves but on the vegetable that comes from the, the soil and the earth and, and if, and how that, how that works.
- [49:57]
A
Yeah, I, I think quality wise too used, used the highest quality of anything for anything. That's what it should be at, at all times. And once you say to yourself, I'm only going to use things of a specific quality, then the conversation about economics and stuff goes out the window. You also notice too, generally speaking, food that is fresher and of a higher quality is more dense with bioavailable nutrients, meaning it's full of better stuff for your body. And in turn you are going to eat less of it because your body isn't going to crave for the nutrients that it's missing. So that's one thing and that's we've talked a lot about eating seasonally and enjoying these things this once a year, you know, kind of time. Eating that way is really important from a physiological and even a health standpoint as far as nutrition is concerned. So as far as salt goes, there's a lot of discussion at the restaurant. We use a fine grain salt that comes from Morton. It's akin to table salts, but it doesn't have any anti caking agents like cornstarch or anything. And it doesn't have iodine in it. We use that because it dissolves really easily in a brine. Then we don't have to cook a brine and boil it and that whole step gets removed. So it's also, you know, dissolves really nicely on, like crushing the cabbage. Um, now, if you're someone that is having issues with your pickles not being crisp, whether they're your cucumber pickles or their sauerkraut or any type of pickled food, try to use some sort of sea salt. It is very expensive compared to, like the salt I use at larder. I pay $10 for 50 pounds of salt. But sea salts have trace minerals in them. Um, these minerals are call them electrolytes. And we're familiar with like drinking Gatorade and Powerade and electrolytes. Well, these minerals in the vegetables, what they do is they keep water inside the vegetable cell, which keeps the cell from collapsing. And if the cell stays rigid, that's where you get the crunch when you bite a carrot or bite into a vegetable. So using these high mineral sea salts will help retain moisture and cell structure. So it'll give you crispy, crunchy pickles. That's the only circumstance I. I say to use a specialized salt in, but otherwise get the best quality and freshest vegetables you can to ferment. The same ones that you would use for a salad or for a saute or whatever it is are what you want to use to ferment.
- [52:43]
C
So maybe kind of to wrap up, we got one question from Zoe towards the beginning, asking if you all had any cookbooks to recommend. And I'll say perhaps also other kinds of books as well, history books. So you are also, of course, all encouraged to register for Yibo's online class. A Seat at the Table, A Journey into Jewish Food, which includes some of the more historical perspective as well as recipes, and a discussion board where you can chat with other folks who are taking the course. We have now something over 11,000 people who have registered for the class. So you have a lot of people out there to help kind of navigate all these wonderful questions that have been coming up so far. But for the three of you, any books that you have, or I guess even podcasts or recipe books or places where folks can go to learn more information about these topics.
- [53:31]
D
I'll chime in frequently find myself turning to the Gefilte Manifesto.
- [53:39]
B
Yay. Great book.
- [53:40]
D
Liz's book. I mean, they're friends also. So I like, love the fact that I love these people, but their book is phenomenal. And I frequently find myself listening to Gastropod, that is Cynthia Graeber and Nicola Twilley's. Sort of view of food through the lens of history and science, and it's. It's great.
- [54:04]
A
Listen to the Koji episode.
- [54:08]
D
Listen to the episode on cocktails where I talk about a terrible attempt I made at Bloody Mary jelly shots.
- [54:16]
A
I'm gonna have to revisit that one.
- [54:18]
D
Straight episodes.
- [54:20]
B
Well, I could say a favorite history book of mine is written by a French chef who toured Poland, Pre World War II Poland, looking at the Jewish food traditions of local Polish Jews. And he sort of got the last look before it all went down. His name is Edward de Pomiam, and the book is simply called the Jews of Poland. And it's a wonderful, in some ways, tremendously sad book because we know what's coming. But he's right there seeing it as it happens. And a really interesting book, and it's available out there.
- [55:09]
A
I, Jane 97 Orchard. I read that in culinary school. I will honestly say, if anybody hasn't read it, it's one of those books that, as I was forming my identity as a chef, that really got me to think critically about the food I wanted to do. And for me, it was really important to honor, like, my family's traditions and this Jewish influence, culinary influence on me. So that's. I gotta say, that's a huge one. And that's why today's been such a joke.
- [55:39]
B
My God, I'm blushing.
- [55:41]
A
You know, there's also Gil Marx's Encyclopedia of Jewish Food.
- [55:46]
B
Yeah.
- [55:46]
A
Is great because you don't have to read the whole. It's literally an encyclopedia A to Z of Jewish food. And you don't have to read the whole thing at once. You don't have to read a cover to cover. Let's say you're making matzo balls and you're like, oh, the recipe calls for schmaltz. Go ahead. His book. And look up the entry on schmaltz and just get a little bit of info and kind of fill in some of the gray areas. So. And there's also, if I may shamelessly.
- [56:11]
B
Yes. Do it.
- [56:12]
A
Here's. Here's my book, Foji Alchemy.
- [56:17]
B
So there enough time to talk about it, which is.
- [56:20]
A
Okay. But there are definitely, like, our. Our Jewish rye bread recipe that we make at larder and. And how we make our pastrami. And that sort of thing is definitely talked about in that there.
- [56:30]
B
So great.
- [56:31]
C
Well, good.
- [56:34]
B
Did we give you good stuff.
- [56:36]
C
Well, thank you all so, so much for joining us. And you are also welcome to revisit this conversation Afterwards on our YouTube channel. And also check out other events. We have another event that's food related coming up in December. We'll be talking about the origins of the love amongst many Ashkenazi juice of American Chinese foods. So you're welcome to. You also have to bring your own food to that. I apologize we can't provide you with yours. But you're welcome to, you know, bring your own takeout and join us for that event in December. So thank you so much to Ari and to Jeremy and to Jane for joining us today this afternoon and really spreading a lot of knowledge, I think. So. Thank you all.
- [57:14]
B
Thank you, Jane.
- [57:15]
A
Thank you,
- [57:22]
B
Sam.