1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (107 page)

With their distinctive, teasingly fresh whiffs of fish, salt, pickling, and sunlit air, the shops live up to their names. At peak hours and on weekends, they’re full of fierce activity: long lines forming and customers schmoozing and jostling as they gather the makings of the typical New York Sunday-morning breakfast. Countermen deftly slice thin slivers for tastes here and there so buyers can make informed, if not quick, choices.

Many of the traditional stores have expanded to other gourmet products and even
appliances, the famed Zabar’s in New York being a prime example. The Lower East Side’s Russ & Daughters and Murray’s Sturgeon Shop and Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side have stuck with more traditional fare, although they have added some meat-based products to the mix. Barney Greengrass also features a well-regarded café-restaurant, as does Russ & Daughters.

Where:
In New York
, Zabar’s, tel 212-787-2000,
zabars.com
; Russ & Daughters, tel 212-475-4880,
russanddaughters.com
; Murray’s Sturgeon Shop, tel 212-724-2650,
murrayssturgeon.com
; Barney Greengrass, tel 212-724-4707,
barneygreengrass.com
;
in Hallandale Beach, FL
, Sage Bagel & Appetizer Shop, tel 954-456-7499,
sagebageldeliordering.com
;
in Toronto
, Mendel’s Creamery N’ Appetizer, tel 416-597-1784,
kensingtonmarketbia.com/cheese
;
in Florida
, Epicure Gourmet Market at three locations,
epicuremarket.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Russ & Daughters
by Mark Russ Federman (2013).

The original breakfast sandwich.

Heat your bagels if you wish, but know that you are flaunting tradition and masking what should be the identifying characteristics of the classic ring-shaped roll. The best bagels of yore had thin, golden crusts and firmly chewy, gray-white interiors, and they measured no more than three-and-a-half inches in diameter. Edible only for about five hours after baking, they soon turned to stone. Even fresh, authentically chewy bagels gave jaws a Sunday morning workout that left facial muscles tingling for a good hour or two. And they were always served at room temperature, whether simply buttered or spread with cream cheese and layered with smoked salmon—or even more authentically, with the unsmoked, very salty brine-cured salmon known as lox.

These days the bagel has morphed into a shadow of its former self. Although still boiled in a lye solution before being baked (ensuring its trademark high gloss and chewy interior), today’s bagel incorporates dough conditioners like bromated flour (which keep it fresh and soft for at least two or three days). Most detrimental, perhaps, is the enormous size of the modern bagel; some look more like spare tires than inviting, individual portions with the correct proportion of crust to interior. Such size may be an attempt to justify the high cost occasioned by the handiwork still required for even mildly convincing bagels. (Although they’re cheaper, machine-shaped, frozen supermarket bagels rarely attract any cognizant bagel lover.) Under these conditions, toasting may be necessary to impart any texture at all.

New York and possibly London are the last bastions of bagel authenticity, and even in those cities sources are few and generally obscure. In New York, it is possible to pre-order “mini” bagels (two or three dozen at a time) from several bakeries, and these approach the standard size of old-time bagels. Every once in a while, some misguided maven announces that the world’s best bagels are to be found in Montreal. Anyone who prefers those thin, tough Canadian rings, flavored with lots of sugar but nary a grain of salt, and glassily encrusted with all sorts of seeds, is not to be trusted—even if the Canadian impostors come from the
much-heralded Montreal bakeries St-Viateur or Fairmont.

There has been much speculation on the origins of the bagel. A favorite yarn has it that the rolls were first baked along the Silk Road in Roman times, adopted there by the Jewish traders who took the recipe to eastern Europe. Another holds that bagels were created by Jewish bakers in Austria or Poland after the Siege of Vienna in 1683, to celebrate the victory of Polish general John Sobieski over the Turks; according to this theory, the dough was shaped to emulate the
beugel
, or stirrup, of the horseback-riding general. Whatever their beginnings, bagels have continued to be shaped by their travels. Back in the old days, anyone who pronounced the word BAIG-el would be marked as a Litvak from northern Poland, Lithuania, or Russia. Say BUY-gul and you were kidded for your Galitziana ancestors from southern Poland, Austria, or parts of Ukraine.

Finally, an exception to the no-toasting rule must be noted: one that was formerly prepared in the Fountain Coffee Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel by a counterman named Red. The soft insides of a sliced bagel were pulled out, leaving a quarter-inch shell that was briefly toasted under the broiler. Piled high with hot, softly scrambled eggs, then covered with the toasted top shell, the irresistible morning sandwich could be gently pressed down for convenient noshing by lucky patrons.

Where:
In New York
, Freds at Barneys (for Sunday brunch or retail), tel 212-833-2200,
barneys.com
;
in Brooklyn
, Bagel Hole, tel 718-788-4014,
bagelhole.net
;
in London
, Beigel Shop, tel 44/20-7729-0826; Brick Lane Beigel Bake, 44/20-7729-0616.
Dine-in, retail, and mail order:
In New York
, Russ & Daughters, tel 212-475-4880,
russanddaughters.com
; Eli Zabar, tel 866-354-3547,
elizabar.com
;
in Ann Arbor, MI
, Zingerman’s, tel 888-636-8162,
zingermans.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Inside the Jewish Bakery
by Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg (2011);
The New York Times Jewish Cookbook
edited by Linda Amster (2003);
epicurious.com
(search bagels);
cookstr.com
(search bagels roden).

There’s no arguing the fact that frying is a favored method in Jewish cooking. Take the Ashkenazic taste for fried fish like carp, flounder, and herring. Or the veal cutlet and all of the various mixed vegetable fries one can sample in Trastevere, the old Jewish ghetto section of Rome.

Eggplant, much loved and readily available in most of the Mediterranean and Balkan countries where Jews have lived, is no exception. Brought to Spain by the Moors in the eighth century, the vegetable is the star of the
Spanish-Sephardic dish
berengena frita
, in which it is not only fried but turned into an unusual and enticing dessert.

Just as for savory preparations, for this delicacy, thin, round slices of eggplant must be properly salted as a first step. Patted dry, they are dredged with flour and lightly fried in olive oil until pale sunny gold on both sides. Drained, slightly cooled, and placed on serving plates, they are then sometimes brushed with roseate, winey pomegranate juice before being anointed with honey and showered with toasted sesame seeds.

The result is a beguilingly nutty crunchiness and a warm sweetness that mollifies the eggplant’s acidity. It’s an unusual combination, but not unique to Jewish cuisine. The same bittersweet balance is also a specialty at the French restaurant Galatoire’s in New Orleans, where sticks of fried eggplant are served sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar.

Where:
In New Orleans
, Galatoire’s, tel 504-525-2021,
galatoires.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Book of Jewish Food
by Claudia Roden (1996);
food.com
(search fried eggplant with powdered sugar).

Could any photographer or food stylist make this homely, chewy bread roll, with its amorphous, ash-brown crust, indented center, and (nicely) burned onions, look appealing? It’s doubtful, but flavor is another matter altogether. To true aficionados of Jewish breads, the toasty yeast roll with a crisp crust and a crackling center is where it’s at. Accented with titillating bits of charred onion, at its most authentic the bialy will also be sprinkled with a dusting of crunchy gray-black poppy seeds. Because they used different doughs and different production methods, historically the true bialys and bagels were never turned out in the same bakeries.

But beyond that, bialys engender controversy. Mention them in a crowd and be prepared for a pedantic lecture on bialy origins that will claim the following: The bialy is really a
pletzel
(a flatbread) and is unknown in the northern Polish city of Białystok, but was in fact nicknamed in New York.

Wrong on both counts, though there is some truth to the first allegation. The bialy did morph from the pletzel, that flat, round board of bread sprinkled with poppy seeds and onions. But the bialy is generally much smaller than a pletzel—about three and a half inches across, although in its native city (more on that in a moment) it is still baked to the size of a salad plate. While the pletzel is level, the bialy is identified by its depressed center, which should be very crisp in contrast to its softer rim.

The bialy was invented in Białystok by Jewish bakers and was called
Białystoker kuchen
, its fans known throughout Poland as
Białystoker kuchen fressers
, or “prodigious eaters” of the fragrant, freshly baked, all-day treats. Sometime around the early 1900s in New York, the shortened name
bialy
came to be, but how the bialy evolved from the pletzel is open to conjecture. One assertion is that a baker dropped an unbaked pletzel on the floor and accidentally stepped on it with his heel. Not wanting to waste the dough, he baked it and the impressed mark formed the first crisp interior round.

Back in old Białystok, those who could afford it ate halvah along with a
Białystoker kuchen
, a chokingly dry experience that is not recommended. Cream cheese is a better fit, but not as it is applied to a bagel. True bialy connoisseurs warm the tight little roll in the oven (no toasting!) unsliced, and schmear spreads on top.

Where:
In New York
, Hot Bread Kitchen,
hotbreadkitchen.org
; Freds at Barneys (for Sunday brunch or retail), tel 212-833-2202,
barneys.com
; Russ & Daughters, tel 212-475-4880,
russanddaughters.com
;
in Asheville, NC
, Farm & Sparrow, tel 828-633-0584,
farmandsparrow.com
;
in Montreal
, Hof Kelsten,
hofkelsten.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Inside the Jewish Bakery
by Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg (2011);
The Bialy Eaters
by Mimi Sheraton (2002);
saveur.com
(search onion and poppy seed bialys).

Back in 2003, in the town of New Square, in New York State’s Rockland County (home to a large Hasidic community of the Skver sect), an observant fishmonger and his assistant both claimed to have heard a live carp speak—prophetically, and in Hebrew, no less. The fish they were about to kill had pessimistically predicted the end of the world.

Powers of divination aside, from a linguistic point of view the story does make some kind of sense. If carp could speak, perhaps they
would
speak Hebrew. It was the Jews, after all, who introduced carp to eastern Europe and then to Germany and France. They had sampled the fish in Asia, and—so goes the incredible sounding story—carried
live
specimens with them as they traveled the Silk Road purveying textiles and other treasures of the East. Yes, it has been said that the ancient Romans appreciated a species of local carp. But where’s the carp spouting Latin prophesies?

Whatever its lineage, this freshwater fish’s golden scales have turned it into a sign of good luck and wealth everywhere it is known, from China and Japan to Europe. In Austria and Poland, a carp scale is placed in wallets on New Year’s Eve or Saint Sylvester’s Eve, promising twelve months of prosperity. There and elsewhere, the fish is part of elaborate Christmas Eve dinners.

It is also one of the many specialties Jewish cooks added to the Alsatian menu.
Carpe à la Juive
, also known throughout Alsace as
Jedisch
(Yiddish)
fisch
, is a delectably cool, jellied carp covered in a silky, spring-green aspic redolent of parsley and garlic. The fish’s sometimes strong, earthy flavor is mitigated with an overnight salting before it is rinsed and poached in a court bouillon of onions, garlic, vegetable (not olive) oil, lemon juice or vinegar or white wine, ginger, bay leaf, parsley, and water; the stock reduces as the fish cooks. Sliced—bones, skin, head, tail, and all—then reshaped on a deep platter and topped with the strained stock, it goes into the refrigerator overnight until a sparkling gel has formed.