Video: The former Soviet republic’s Jewish history dates back millennia. This simple recipe is one of the community’s treasures.
By Joan Nathan for Tablet Magazine
Ever since I first visited Georgia (then part of the Soviet Union) in the late 1980s, I have loved its cuisine, in particular a bright beef and red pepper stew called Salyanka. So, I was delighted when, on a recent trip to Israel with Mike Solomonov from Zahav Restaurant in Philadelphia, we decided to eat at Racha, a Georgian restaurant in downtown Jerusalem. As we entered the stone British Mandate office building where the restaurant is located, right across from the original office of the Jerusalem Post, I felt transported to a home in Racha, the western province in Georgia, whose Jewish community dates back 2,600 years.
Today most of the Jews from Georgia have immigrated to Israel. Two of them who came as children in the 1970s were Lily Ben Shalom, who became a post office employee, and her brother Israel Shahar, an electrical engineer. They had a dream of opening a restaurant, so they saved their money and mementos of Racha. A few years ago they opened this charming restaurant filled with family pictures on the walls, white lace curtains on the windows, Georgian music, and recipes passed down through generations in the kitchen. “We cook how they cooked at home,” said Israel, the chef. “We don’t have any cookbooks. The recipes come from the head and the hand.”
What intrigued me as I bit into this delicious beef stew (recipe here) is that, like many early Jewish recipes I have found around the world, the beef, often a tough inexpensive cut, is first boiled in water until it is almost tender and then layered with flavor from onions, spices, and in this case bright red peppers, so easy to obtain today. After slowly simmering for a few hours, you are rewarded with a melt-in-your-mouth, silky stew. As they say in Georgia, ghmert`ma shegargos—bon appetit!
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Kibbes
are our version of little meatballs, and are a staple in the Syrian
household. We cook them with peas, cherries, sour soup and many other
savory dishes. Let’s just say it’s not Friday night without a kibbe (or
many) at the table. Now don’t confuse these little kibbe meatballs with
the bulgur-shelled and meat-stuffed kibbe torpedoes. They’re completely
different. If that made no sense to you, continue reading this blog,
we’ll definitely explain more about these middle-eastern staples soon!
In
a 65-year-old, silent, black and white home movie of my maternal
family's seder, everyone seems to be laughing and joking. I've
scrutinized the six minute movie, wondering what they were talking
about, and I've tried to glimpse the food too: a split second shot of my
great-great uncle scooping up my great-Aunt Gertie's famous gefilte
fish with gusto (the recipe now too arcane for me to dust off, even for a
holiday) and some mysterious cousin savoring a matzah ball.
While
looking at cooked spaghetti squash one day and noticing its remarkable
likeness to its namesake, spaghetti, I was inspired to experiment with a
noodle kugel. I researched classic recipes for a “yerushalmi kugel”
calling for caramelized sugar using 2 cups of oil and two cups of sugar,
in addition to eggs. At first I attempted it, but seeing all that oil
and sugar in the pan, I couldn’t bare to expose my beautiful and
healthful squash to such a fatty fate and decided to experiment starting
with just a teaspoon of sugar and a few tablespoons of oil. To my
surprise and delight, the kugel came out light, fluffy and delicious.