My childhood Friday nights were spent around Grandma Doris’s table — sitting on old-fashioned chairs with springy cushions on which we’d bounce and giggle while the brachot were recited. I’d leap up to help clear up the roast potatoes so I could pick the crunchy leftovers in the dish. My mother and her sister would (half-jokingly) compete for best dessert with their home-made contributions. We were the winners.
On Saturday, the feasting continued in Grandma Betty’s dining room. We’d race to slurp bowls of chicken soup then spoon the soup pasta — tiny stars — onto slices of sliced white, Mother’s Pride, folded into a soggy, salty sandwiches. Bliss. Or on other weeks, Shabbat tea — the trolley, laden with honey cake, strudel-style biscuits and other home baked goodies wheeled proudly from kitchen to lounge by Grandpa John. Both gatherings were filled with life, laughter, cousins and Kalooki.
Food and family memories live with us forever. As a mother, I’m trying to recreate that magic for my children. Times have changed, however and although chicken soup and kneidlach feature at times, there’s more cosmopolitan colour to our Shabbat dinners. Sephardi flavours have crept in. Alongside home-baked challah are dishes of hummus, baba ghanoush and other Israeli salatim.
Roasted chicken, is more likely to be chicken thighs showered with za’atar, sumac and red onions or marinated with olives, capers, dried fruits and herbs. When it’s just us, there are no rules. Some weeks we feast on chicken soup, kneidlach and challah — nothing more. The children love it.
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Chicken soup and kneidlach are pure comfort Photo: Getty Images
Pudding is essential — a simple fruit crumble or ice cream, but without it my family feel cheated. There’s one hard and fast rule: after we’ve dissected the week and filled out stomachs, everyone should be smiling.
My Shabbat build up can start sooner, but more often — when it’s just us — preparation begins on Thursday afternoon when I finish work. Rebbetzen Ilana Epstein, whose husband Rabbi Daniel Epstein is at the helm at Central Marble Arch Synagogue, spends far more time on hers: “If I were to do a pie graph of the amount of time I think about week night dinners versus Friday night dinner, there would be a tiny piece for the week with the remaining 98 per cent dedicated to Shabbat. Almost from Sunday morning I ruminate on my menu, how to best please my family, my guests, stick with our tried and tested family favourites, be respectful to the recipes of the past and at the same time express my creativity and experiment with dishes from around the world.”
Recipes like cholent and kugel have been evolved over centuries to fit our religious rules and traditions. We may try new recipes but those old favourites are always there offering comfort and security. “The food is the food of our past, the food of our present and our future” says Rebbetzen Epstein.
I treasure my grandmother’s recipes —stored in a folder I found in one of her old cookery books. I’m not alone. “The recipes of the past, handed down lovingly on scraps of papers, stained with remnants of sticky fingers, function as edible nostalgia” says Rebbetzen Epstein. “For me growing up with a Sephardi grandmother, hummus and Israeli salad were always the mainstay of a Friday night dinner. My mother’s chicken soup, learnt from her father will grace our Friday night table even at the height of summer. My family and now our friends and congregants will request my Aunt Eudices’s brisket.”
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Challah is a must for most Photo: Getty Images
She’s also introduced new dishes, including curries from India, salads from Thailand and proper British bakes “Tastes of the past, vibrancy of the present and hopes for the future. A future where my children will carry forth some of my recipes and memories and make more of their own.”
Some of us are making new traditions. We recently spent a Friday night as guests of Rabbi Adam Zagoria-Moffett and his family, a colourful and delicious feast of vegetarian and vegan dishes — many with a Middle Eastern flavour. He tells me: “Growing up, I didn’t have a Shabbat practice, and certainly not one of structured formal meals as we do now. After years in New York City, where Judaism is often very intense, formal, and even sometimes competitive, it has been a pleasure to be able to develop our own Shabbat practice in our home here in the UK. For us a key part about the food is having lots of options. Our family has a high percentage of picky eaters, and that means we’ve often been at Shabbat meals where there was one dish and someone was stuck in rather an uncomfortable position! As a result, my wife, who is the unquestioned chef de cuisine, makes a point of providing lots of smaller dishes to allow anyone to have at least one or two things they’re happy to eat.”
His table was pleasingly informal with something for everyone — even my fussy children. Rabbi Zagoria-Moffett calls their cuisine peasant comfort food: “For many years a staple at our Shabbat table was ratatouille, but we’ve struggled to find the right squash at markets here to make it work. These days there’s a lot of reliance on mushrooms (especially Portobellos), and as a strictly vegetarian household, we often use Quorn products to supplement the protein content of dishes. It is important to us that Shabbat, while holy and sacred and special, doesn’t feel too ‘fancy’, and so we often make quite simple, comforting fare — a decent amount of mac ’n’cheese tends to be available!”
They follow Sephardi customs: “Neither of us grew up in observant households, we’ve had to put a decent amount of thought into learning and developing our own style, both around food and formality. A lot of our favourites are Sephardi dishes which we’ve worked to learn and perfect over time.”
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Dips and salads fit the bill for many Photo: Getty Images
One of their family specials is Moroccan Harira, a warm and hearty vegetable and lentil soup, “our own family’s equivalent of the conventional Ashkenazi relationship with chicken noodle soup. Although neither of us grew up having Shabbat meals or eating the kind of food we do now, by study, practice, and hard work, we’ve come to make our own customs, our own comfort food, and our own family traditions.”
I’m also creating my own family traditions. Challah is home-made — the children have become positively Paul Hollywood-esque in their crumb critique — and wine (or juice) is drunk from our special glasses. No matter what we eat, it’s all about taking that time to be together at the end of a hectic week and make memories that will last a lifetime and beyond.
Shabbat UK takes place this weekend - May 13/14 2022
