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09/14/2007 Archived Entry: "Happy New Year from Palermo"

A happy, healthy, prosperous, and peaceful New Year to all my Jewish friends. L'Shanah Tova. I hope you got my email elaborating on this Rosh Hashanah wish. If you didn't, please sign up for the next "newsletter" email in the box above.

I have now been in Italy and away from New York for nearly two months. Strangely, I am not missing NYC or the States. I miss only my private space – my apartment – and the ability to just get on the phone and talk to my friends and family. Email is great, but it isn’t a good chat. And I miss my personal routines. “It’s time to go home and smell our own coffee,” my friend Rozanne Gold likes to say, which hits the nail on the head. I have another month here, however. So I have to be content with the great coffee bars in Italy, where a superb coffee costs next to nothing compared to New York, even given the terrible exchange rate. I won’t suffer.

That may be all I miss, but that’s enough. I realize now that I am thoroughly American and that I could never live in Italy full time, as I always dreamed I would. I have an American work ethic and a New York sense of urgency and responsibility, and I have to say that the southern Italian way, which is not these, is occasionally getting on my nerves. As Bob said this morning, they even make it difficult to buy a stamp. (Don’t ask.)

Here’s a good one: Way back when I was in Calabria, Iris and Laura needed to buy train tickets to get back to Rome. The nearest train station was in Cosenza, so we drove 35 minutes to get the tickets at the train station in Cosenza, at the edge of the city, only to be told that they don’t sell train tickets in the train station in Cosenza after 1 p.m. We had to go to a travel agency in the middle of the city after 4:30 p.m., when everything reopens, to buy the tickets. We went where we were told only to find out that that particular travel agency doesn’t sell train tickets. We had to walk a few blocks to another agency. Well, Iris and Laura had to walk a few blocks to another agency. Bob and I waited in a parking lot until we got worried about them taking so long to go across the street. Finally, a few blocks further – on the main piazza, Piazza John F. Kennedy (I thought that was amusing, in Calabria) – Iris and Laura had found a travel agent who did sell train tickets.

They don’t sell train tickets at the train station in Cosenza after 1 p.m.?

“What can you do?” as Cecilia says often. Here’s another thing she says: “Italy is not a serious country.” And from my friend Nicolas, who is Belgian, but has been living in Italy full time for 16 years: “Remember, Italy is the country that invented the square toilet seat.”

My second Cook at Seliano group left a few days ago, which is why you haven’t heard from me in more than a week. Between then and now, there was a wedding reception at Azienda Seliano, so Cecilia, Bob, Nicolas, and I escaped to have dinner at a friend of Cecilia’s “who is a very good cook.” We went to town called Rutino, in Cilento, which is the mountainous area behind the Sele Plain, where Azienda Seliano is situated. It took only 30 minutes to drive into another world.

Anna Borrelli and her adult (divorced) son, Francesco, live in the house her father was born in – perhaps her grandparents, too. From the outside, you could never imagine how big it is, how high the ceilings are, how spacious the many rooms. Unfortunately, although it is furnished nicely, and it has recently been painted, the rooms are not what they were. Fairly recently, almost all their furniture was stolen. We have heard this story several times on this trip and on previous trips. People who have country homes (the Borrellis live mainly in Salerno, a little more than hour’s drive away) are always subject to robberies. One family told us that someone had driven a truck up to their house and just loaded all the furniture onto it. Again, heirlooms! Their caretaker saw it happen but was too scared to stop the robbers. Why didn’t he call the police? The question remains unanswered. Was it an inside job?

I just finished editing and mutchering (that’s Yiddish for “fussing over”; well, more or less) the galleys of “Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food: Yiddish Recipes Revisited,” which is going to the printer in mid October and should be ready for distribution by the end of February. It should be in the stores in early March, just in time for Passover. I am already booked many days (and nights) in March and April for book signings and to do my new slide lecture based on the book – lots of history, culture, and jokes to tell you – but I still have dates open. Please write to me at mavensmail@aol.com if you or your organization are interested in my doing an event.

Apropos of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, I offer here, from the upcoming book, a recipe for Honey Cake, a traditional treat, to insure sweetness in the New Year. To tell you the truth, I never liked honey cake very much until I baked and ate Lavana Kirschenbaum’s Sephardic Honey Cake. Now, however, I found an Ashkenazi cake, a Yiddishe cake, I like, too.

Lekach
Honey Cake

Makes 1 small loaf

This recipe is about as simple and as good as Ashkenazi honey cake gets. It is adapted from the The Molly Goldberg Cookbook, published in 1955. Later recipes try to make honey cake into spice cake, but in this version you can clearly taste the honey, with only a hint of brandy to frame it. I use very good cognac. It makes a difference. This cake is also not as rubbery as many recipes. Perhaps the crunchy walnuts are a distraction, although almonds are the more usual nut in this cake. In fact honey cake loaves are often decorated with sliced almonds glazed onto the top.

A measuring tip for the honey: Put the oil in a measuring cup. Roll it around to coat the inside of the cup. Pour in the honey. The oil will come to the surface and you will be able to measure the honey accurately, while the oiled cup allows the honey to pour out easily and completely.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup hot, freshly brewed strong coffee
2 tablespoons good brandy
1 3/4 cups sifted bleached all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (or hazelnuts or almonds)
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar

Position an oven rack in the upper third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 325˚F.
Oil a 3 1/2 by 5 1/2-inch loaf pan, then line it on the bottom and sides with either parchment paper, aluminum foil, or a paper loaf-pan liner.
In a small bowl, add the oil and honey (see headnote). Pour in the hot coffee and stir until the honey becomes more fluid, then stir in the brandy.
In another small bowl, stir together the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Stir in the nuts.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk, beat the eggs until well blended. Add the sugar and beat until light in color, fluffy, and thick. Beat in the honey mixture.
With a spoon or spatula, stir in the dry ingredients by hand.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 55 minutes in the upper third of the oven. Do not open the oven door.
Cool 15 minutes in the pan. Using the parchment-paper lining to lift it, remove the cake from the pan and let cool completely. Peel off the paper before serving.

Golden Blossom Honey

Golden Blossom Honey has been the honey taste in New York Jewish cooking since 1921, when the company was founded by John G. Patton, a gentile who had been in the bulk honey business in California. His son, John H., came up with the signature blend of white clover, orange blossom, and sage buckwheat honeys that continues to give the product its distinctively delicate taste. Golden Blossom, which is processed in New Jersey, quickly became the best-selling honey in the New York City metro region, reaching 60 percent of the market. The company is still owned by the Patton family, and it is still the most popular brand in the Northeast as well as southeast Florida, although today it has many competitors.