[Sca-cooks] The Atkins Schmaltz Diet

[vicki shaw]

boy am I glad I grew up Sephardic!  Welll, I am a mix of the two, but my dad
was a Sephardic Jew and we lived in Morocco, so I never ate the Ashkenazi
food, but when i came back to the States I was introduced to matza balls and
gefilte fish etc.
Angharad ferch Iorwerth; MKA Vicki Shaw
Barony Beyond the Mountain
East Kingdom
vhsjvs at gis.net

www.omygoddess.biz
----- Original Message -----
From: "Heleen Greenwald" <heleen at ptdprolog.net>
To: "List, SCA cooks" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 11:09 PM
Subject: [Sca-cooks] The Atkins Schmaltz Diet


Folks, I just got this from my Jewish list.  As I read it, I could hear the
Yiddish spoken.  I grew up on most of this food.

I remember as a child, my bubbie  (grandma) once made cow brains as an
appetizer. My grandfather hated it, but ate it with a smile. He told me that
if his wife had gone to the  trouble of making the dish, he would eat it.

I just remembered that you can no longer get chicken feet (at the grocery or
kosher butcher - Maybe NYC???) and those yolk eggs that formed in the hen
but had no white with them yet. Ah the days!...

Phillipa



THE ATKINS SCHMALTZ DIET

The Atkins Schmaltz Diet Before we start, there are some variations in
ingredients because of the various types of Jewish taste (Polack, Litvack
and Gallicianer).

Just as we Jews have six seasons of the year (winter, spring, summer, fall,
the slack season, and the busy season), we all focus on a main ingredient
which, unfortunately and undeservedly, has disappeared from our diet. I'm
talking, of course, about SCHMALTZ (chicken fat).

SCHMALTZ has, for centuries, been the prime ingredient in almost every
Jewish dish, and I feel it's time to revive it to its rightful place in our
homes. (I have plans to distribute it in a green glass Gucci bottle with a
label clearly saying: "low fat, no cholesterol, Newman's Choice, extra
virgin SCHMALTZ." (It can't miss!)

Let's start, of course, with the "forshpeiz" (appetizer). Gehockteh leiber
(chopped liver) with SCHMALTZ is always good, but how about something more
exotic for your dear ones, like boiled whitefish in yoyech (soup) which sets
into a jelly form, or "gefilteh miltz" (stuffed spleen), in which the veins
are removed (thank God), and it is fried in (you guessed it) SCHMALTZ, bread
crumbs, eggs, onions, salt and pepper.


Love it! How about stewed lingen (lungs) -- very chewy -- or gehenen
(brains) -- very slimy. Am I making your mouth water yet? Then there are
grebenes -- pieces of chicken skin, deep fried in SCHMALTZ, onions and salt
until crispy brown (Jewish bacon). This makes a great appetizer for the

next cardiologist's convention.

Another favorite, and I'm sure your children will love it, is pe'tcha
(jellied calves' feet). Simply chop up some cows' feet with your hockmesser
(handl-chopper), add some meat, onions, lots of garlic, SCHMALTZ again, salt
and pepper, cook for five hours and let it sit overnight. You might want to
serve it with oat bran and bananas for an interesting breakfast (just
joking!).

There's also a nice chicken fricassee (stew) using the heart, gorgle (neck),
pipick (a great delicacy, given to the favorite child, usually me), a
fleegle (wing) or two, some ayelech (little premature eggs) and other
various chicken innards, in a broth of SCHMALTZ, water, paprika, etc.

We also have knishes (filled dough) and the eternal question, "Will that be
liver, beef or potatoes, or all three?"

Other time-tested favorites are kishkeh, and its poor cousin, helzel
(chicken or goose neck). Kishkeh is the gut of the cow, bought by the foot
at the Kosher butcher. It is turned inside out, scalded and scraped. One end
is sewn up and a mixture of flour, SCHMALTZ, onions, eggs, salt, pepper,
etc., is spooned into the open end and squished down until it is full. The
other end is sewn and the whole thing is boiled. Yummy!

My personal all-time favorite is watching my Zaida (grandpa) munch on boiled
chicken feet. Try that on the kinderlach (children) tomorrow.

For our next course we always had chicken soup with pieces of yellow-white,
rubbery chicken skin floating in a greasy sea of lokshen (noodles), farfel
(broken bits of matzah), arbiss (chickpeas), lima beans, pietrishkeh,
tzibbeles (onions), mondlech (soup nuts), kneidlach (dumplings), kasha,
(groats) kliskelech and marech (marrow bones).
The main course, as I recall, was either boiled chicken, flanken, kackletten
(hockfleish--chopped meat), and sometimes rib steaks, which were served
either well done, burned or cremated. Occasionally we had barbecued liver
done to a burned and hardened perfection in our own coal furnace.

Since we couldn't have milk with our meat meals, beverages consisted of
cheap soda (Kik, Dominion Dry, seltzer in the spritz bottles) or a glezel
tay (glass of hot tea) served in a yahrtzeit (memorial candle) glass and
sucked through a sugar cube held between the incisors.

Desserts were probably the only things not made with SCHMALTZ, so we never
had any. Momma never learned how to make SCHMALTZ Jell-O.

Well, now you know the secret of how I've grown up to be so tall, sinewy,
slim and trim, energetic, extremely clever and modest, and if you want your
children to grow up to be like me, you're in gohnsen meshuggah (completely
nuts)!

ZEI MIR GEZUNT. (go in good health)... and order out Chinese.

Aub Burp! (Pardon my greptz!!)


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