We are famous! An ordinary meatless plate frequently prepared by my Mother called "rakott krumpli", that is layered potatoes, appears in the holy New York Times! The author waxes extatic: "I was so excited by the simple and tasty sound of it, that..." I had eaten it innumerable times and never knew that it was so exciting. Moreover, all this time I had been ignorant of the fact that it is a special plate of ultra-religious Hungarian Jews. I went trough life believing we were simple folks eating ordinary food, while in fact we had been tasting exotic gourmet plates.
11 comments:
Argentinian Jews sure get around!
http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/the-most-emailed-new-york-times-article-ever
I don't think it's true that rakott krumpli is a dish of the ultra-Orthodox. Rather it's a Hungarian recipe (my Galician mother never made it - the closest thing would have been a potato kugel made from grated potatoes) very slightly adapted for kosher use. The non-Kosher versions sometimes have sausage or bacon included.
The interesting thing about Jews is that they always take on the culture of the place that they inhabit. The Jews of the Diaspora did not have their own architecture or art or cuisine. Even their language was borrowed (either from German or Spanish). They would adapt these things and make them their own. Even in Israel the national dishes (felafel, hummus, etc.) are borrowed and not indigenous to the Jews. When my mother came to America she learned to make dishes like spaghetti and meatballs - they would even print the recipes in the Yiddish newspaper.
The result is that the cuisine of the Jews of Hungary is (with modifications for kashrut) more similar to the cuisine of the local goyim than it was to the cuisine of the Jews of Poland.
The Jews of Hungary must have been very rich (and fat) to make a dish that calls for SIX eggs and TWO CUPS of sour cream. The food of the poor in Poland would consist of mostly potatoes, onions and flour and other inexpensive ingredients.
K
This is one of the interesting things to me. Though it is forbidden to intermarry with the goyim or eat their food (indeed, to walk in their ways,) we wind up resembling the ones that surround us in cuisine and looks. The standard out of "nobody knows what the original Jews looked like" holds no water-maybe they looked like the Jews of Norway, maybe they looked like the Jews of Kerala, but they couldn't have looked like both at the same time. So, what did the process by which those genes were introduced into our gene pool and those foods came into our cuisine look like, and how long did it take? How were those Jews able to avoid assimilation while this was going on?
As far as eggs and sour cream are concerned, a milk cow and laying chickens were not such a luxury; the first was almost indispensable to survival in medieval Europe.
I think you underestimate the amount of food that a cow eats. You can't graze when the ground is covered in snow which is more than 1/2 the year in E. Europe so you have to feed the thing. The Jews were semi-urbanized in their shtetls and not everybody could afford a cow or the food that it ate. My mother's family had one because they were relatively well to do but for my father's family this was a totally unaffordable luxury. If they were lucky they kept a goat.
Chickens ditto and unless they are given artificial light they don't lay any eggs from winter to spring. You might have an egg or two but to put SIX eggs in one dish was quite a luxury.
My general impression is that the Jews of Hungary were relatively well off and located in a relatively prosperous country. Poland, both the Galician and the Russian ruled part, was quite poor - Galicia was like the Appalachia of the Austrian empire.
Today we live in such unimaginable plentitude, where the "poor" are as fat as pigs, that real poverty is literally inconceivable - we just can't get our heads around being in such a state of truly having nothing. My father told stories of visiting the poor (and his family was only maybe a couple of rungs up the ladder) in the winter and they could not afford any fuel so the walls of their house (hut) would be glazed with ice from the condensed humidity of their breath.
K
K,
I can't speak about the situation in Hungary, but in the Russian Empire it was like this: http://www.rees.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/35053/Productivity_CSL_Jan_2010.pdf
Livestock raising actually becomes more profitable vs. raising grain as you go north. Cows can graze in snow to some degree, and preparing hay for the winter has always been a major pastime for European peasants. This is why potatoes enabled such an explosion in the population of places like Ireland; before their introduction, it was much harder for the poor to secure an adequate and steady supply of carbohydrates during periodic wars. They had an adequate enough supply of fish and milk cattle that there was enough protein and fat available to even the poor, but population didn't explode until potatoes were introduced.
This relative ease of raising cattle in Northern Europe was the reason that Indoeuropeans, with their lactose tolerance and cattle-based lifestyle, were able to displace the original population. It's the reason that Europeans are so much bigger than non-lactose tolerant Asians. The rich can always get enough fat and protein from non-lactic sources, but to the poor, it was a literal matter of life and death. Not to say that there weren't those in such dire straits that milk and eggs were a luxury, but they didn't represent the majority-they couldn't have, since the human body can't produce its own essential amino acids, and needs some kind of quality protein intake to survive. The two major sources of protein for Europe's poor have traditionally been salt fish and milk.
Total output (which is what the linked article provides stats for) proves nothing - it is possible to starve amid plenty. In order to eat you have to have enough money to buy food. During the Irish potato famine, Ireland continued to export grain to England - the poor Irish peasants couldn't afford to buy it.
K
It is possible to starve in the mid of plenty.
Obviously, I can't teleport back to 19th century Russia and conclusively prove my assertion. I can, however, say that there's an old, widespread colloquial Russian word for a cow, "buryonka". This word implies female gender, affection and the cow being either the lone cow or one of a very few.
B - I think you are confusing peasants with Jews. Peasants lived in villages in the countryside and certainly many kept cows. Pigs were perhaps more popular because they are not picky about their diet, while cows are. If you really want decent milk production you have to supplement the diet of grass/hay with something with more protein - corn, grain, etc. Living on a farm you realize that animals (especially cows) get all sorts of diseases just like humans - especially in the pre-antibiotic age it was not easy to keep them alive and producing milk. Once a year at Christmas you would slaughter the hog, eat a bunch of easily spoiled stuff (blood sausage) right away in celebration of the holiday and smoke the rest for long term preservation (ham, bacon, etc.) Modern humans eat too much animal protein and you can get most of the protein you need from vegetable sources anyway. You would put a few ounces of ham in a cabbage soup with potatoes and you'd be fine.
Jews were semi-urbanized in shtetls or in many cases fully urbanized and did not keep a cow as often - if I had to guess I'd say considerably fewer than 50% of Jewish families kept a cow.
K
Producing and selling milk was a specialized business, like Tevie the Milkman. People bought milk from the milkman instead of keeping a cow in the back yard. Jews operated in a commercial economy, not subsistence agiculture.
Even Tevye did not keep cows - he would buy the milk from the farmer and sell it to his fellow Jews. As a Jew he could be trusted to handle the milk in a kosher way. Jews excelled in this middleman role - they bought and sold everything it was possible to buy and sell.
K
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