(by Carolyn Swartz)
When an extended family lives under the same roof, the maternal figure we most fondly remember can leapfrog a generation—as was the case with my paternal grandmother and me.
In our two-family home north of Boston, my parents, my older sister and I occupied the spotless and nearly equally joyless second-floor apartment, while Bessie, whom we called Bubbie, lived on the first floor. Between the two units, or houses as we called them, traffic was fluid. On any given evening, dinner could be upstairs or down. Dinner downstairs was always the better deal.
Upstairs, my mother could put a square meal on the table. But Bessie's downstairs kitchen offered a mouthwatering surfeit of tantalizing tastes and aromas: chicken soup with kreplach, Jewish-style dumplings in dough so light, it melted in your mouth. Stuffed cabbage in a tomato-based sweet-and-sour broth. Calves liver, charred on the outside and pink within, smothered in caramelized onions. Gedämpfte flanken: short ribs slowly braised to fork tenderness in a savory gravy coaxed from chopped onion and lima beans.
By contrast, my mother embraced the shortcuts and conveniences available to mid-century housewives. For starters, she might serve celery sticks stuffed with cream cheese and sprinkled with Lawry's salt, or a grapefruit half dotted with a maraschino cherry. Then came broiled meat, chicken, or fish, along with a potato and two vegetables, from cans or the freezer, served side by side in a divided melamine bowl. In summer, she often added ears of fresh sweet corn that she’d killed in a pressure cooker, served in corn-shaped plastic troughs. And for dessert: Jello or My-T-Fine pudding.
Despite the clear discrepancy, my mother never expressed envy of Bessie's cooking skills. Nor did she appear to be intimidated or threatened by her mother-in-law's prowess in the kitchen. My mother, who worked in an office for only a few years when I was growing up, saw herself as a modern woman. For her, putting a healthy, balanced dinner together for her family was a responsibility, not a point of pride.
While she didn't say much, I'm sure that my mother regarded Bessie's cooking as heavy and labor-intensive: a carryover of shtetl sensibilities that her own parents, also Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, had intentionally left behind.
Besides, all that cooking and baking from scratch made a mess. My mother was high-strung and prone to migraines. Household dirt and disorder literally made her ill. Hence all the rules, regulations, and monitoring that dominated life upstairs.
Beds had to be made the moment we got up—bedspreads tight and wrinkle-free. No clothes lying around: They were to be hung up or folded and put in drawers. No splashing of water on the floor next to the kitchen and bathroom sinks. No dishes of food could travel from kitchen to den without a metal tray underneath. No touching the walls (something about wallpaper and oily fingerprints). No feet on couches. And never, ever place a drinking glass on bare wood.
At Bessie's house, on the other hand, you couldn't eat off the floor. She didn't damp-mop after every meal or vacuum daily. Her porcelain sink didn't shine. And even when she did deep-clean, her methods didn't measure up. In a years-long game of cat and mouse, my mother would routinely sniff out Bessie's perpetually damp cleaning rag, toss it into the washer and dryer, and without comment, return it to a cabinet or closet.
Not surprisingly, wherever dinner (or supper, as we called it) was served, after the meal my sister and I preferred to spend our evenings downstairs. There we could sprawl out on the rug to build card houses, or snuggle close to Bessie, feet up on the couch, as she sounded out the words of a Yiddish-language newspaper or watched TV. If a bowl of ice cream got knocked over, or the occasional drink got spilled, instead of recriminations and exasperated sighs, whatever went down would be promptly cleaned up and replaced.
On weekend mornings, I liked to sit surrounded by Bessie's battered pots, blackened frying pans, and knife-scarred wooden boards, breathing in the fermented perfume of yeast dough rising for challah, and watching her scrape pin feathers from a freshly butchered chicken by the sink. If I was lucky, she would—like a magician—pull from its cavity a tiny shell-less egg that she'd cook and hand to me to eat.
(The pewter-handled carbon steel knives—a wedding present to her mother c. 1885—
that Bessie used to scrape pin feathers from chickens and slice beets)
When it was time for a snack, she'd give me a thick slice of rye bread smeared with gribenes—the Jewish chicken skin-and-fat equivalent of pork cracklings. While not forbidden, my mother often expressed her disapproval of this deliciously fatty treat. If we heard her footsteps approaching the door, Bessie's cluttered table always offered plenty of hiding places.
(At the World's Fair, in between my sister Diane and Bessie)
Functionally illiterate, Bessie had never been schooled in "the old country," now western Ukraine. Nor did she attend school after arriving, via steerage, in Boston—aged 12, with her mother and three siblings. Upon arrival, the family found themselves unexpectedly fatherless (that is, abandoned by the father who had emigrated first). They needed money, so Bessie lied about her age and got work on the assembly line of a candy factory, stuffing chocolates into pretty boxes.
With effort, Bessie could draw out numbers and letters in the oversized scrawl of a first grader. But she would not have been able to read a recipe. She didn't clip recipes from magazines. She didn't own a single cookbook. The only spices she used were salt, pepper, citric acid (for sweet and sour dishes), and cinnamon. But among her circle of friends and relatives, her cooking was legendary.
It was said that she could bake a cake three feet high out of only flour and water. Her blueberry blintzes, which she brought as hostess and housewarming gifts, were prized. Each spring, just before Passover, cars lined up in front of our house: nieces and nephews, cousins and friends, arriving for their allotment of the gefilte fish she'd cooked in giant vats, and the eye-popping horseradish she'd surely cried her eyes out grating.
With the perspective of time, I now believe that my mother expressed her love through acts of service—cleaning, sewing, knitting, shuttling, and doing all she could to raise two refined, well-dressed, well-groomed, beyond reproach American daughters.
In a square-format Kodachrome photo, my sister and I, aged seven and three, wear the matching ribbed sweaters and hats she knit for us. She once made me a plaid birthday cake because I'd seen a picture in a women's magazine and requested it
For all the hours I spent with Bessie in her kitchen, she never taught me how to cook. In all fairness, I never asked her to teach me. I was happy simply to take it all in. My own life has taken me around the world, introducing me to foods that Bessie could not have dreamed of. My kitchen shelves are lined with Indian, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Hungarian, French, and Middle Eastern cookbooks—cuisines I explore with regularity.
But each fall, when vine-ripe melons are gone until next year and heirloom tomatoes lose their kick, I find myself recalling the heady aromas of Bessie's kitchen, and drawn to the foods that once meant comfort, acceptance, and a kind of love that every child needs.
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Carolyn Swartz is a filmmaker and a writer whose work has been in multiple publications including The New York Times and Chicago Tribune. She also scores silent films on piano, both live at screenings and for recordings such as Cinema’s First Nasty Women. After plenty of years in New York City, she lives with her husband and rescue dog in Portland, Maine. She can be found at www.carolynswartzcreative.com and https://vimeo.com/greynaggcreative.
Gedämpfte Flanken
Note: Here's where a watched pot is essential, maintaining an inch or two of liquid at the bottom of the pot. Flanken, or "flanks," are short ribs, But Bessie wasn't fussy. Almost any cut of stew beef will do.
2 lb. boneless short ribs or quality stew beef, cut into in 2-in. cubes
1 T. vegetable oil
1 large Spanish onion or two medium onions, sliced thin
1 large clove garlic, minced
2 12 oz. packages frozen lima beans (or 1 1/2 c. dried beans—soaked and cooked)
"enough" kosher salt
"a little" freshly ground pepper
water or beef stock, monitored to prevent burning
Dry the beef between paper towels.
Heat oil in a heavy pot, preferably enamel-covered cast iron, then add the beef to brown on all sides, about 5 minutes
When beef is brown, add the onions and about 1/2 inch of water to prevent burning.
Cover the pot but stay close. You may need to add more water.
When the onions have given up some of their liquid, add the beans, minced garlic, and 1 inch of water.
Cover, keep watch, and cook for 45 minutes - 1 hour.
A nice thick gravy should have started to accumulate. Add salt and pepper. Continue to cook, adding more water or beef stock.
The dish is done when the onions have disappeared into the gravy, and the meat and beans are soft.
Taste for salt and pepper.
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