The year I learned to make Mum’s strudel

Just a few hours before Yom Kippur — as I juggled making a huge roast dinner to serve at 5pm, with frying fish that we’d break the fast on — it occurred to me. There was something missing.

I mean, of course there was something missing. Mum was missing. This was our first High Holy Days without her, and the feeling of loss and emptiness was acute. But I was thinking of the things that we eat every year to break our fast.

Honey cake — yes, made by my niece, Avital. Challah, yes. Salads…smoked salmon… oh my…
There would be no jam strudel. Mum’s signature dish. And the idea of breaking our fast without this delectable mixture of rich, crumbly pastry, jam, cinnamon and sultanas was just unthinkable.

Luckily, my other niece, Eliana, had written down all of Mum’s most iconic recipes. But unluckily, I didn’t have all the ingredients, and there was no time to go shopping. Never mind — I would have a go. So, squinting at my phone, using plain flour instead of self-raising, soft brown sugar instead of caster, an egg and a rather ancient tub of Tomor, I made the pastry.

Reading the recipe was like having Mum at my side. “Grandma recommends cherry jam,” wrote Eliana, “or blackcurrant for a bit of tartness as the dough is very rich.” I had no cherry jam but discovered a jar of blackcurrant, left over from Pesach, lurking in the fridge. I rolled out the pastry, spread the jam, sprinkled on sultanas and cinnamon. Then to “roll it up like a roly poly,” and pop it in the oven.

The result didn’t look like Mum’s version. But there was no time to try it out. Just over 25 hours later, Dad had the first bite of my attempt at a family classic. “Lovely!” he said. “Like a Jewish mince pie!” My eyes filled with tears of joy. “Even better than your mother’s!” he added. Oh, Dad!

Since then I’ve made jam strudel a few times. There’s a knack to getting it right, and sometimes I’ve been left with a crispy outside and raw pastry at its heart (still delicious though). Cherry jam from Asda is lined up in my food cupboard. Dad is a willing taster. “That pastry that you think is like your Mum’s strudel,” he said the other day .“It makes a nice breakfast!”

Mum’s grandfather, Abram Socolski came from Chernihiv in Ukraine. He was a metal worker who spent time in Argentina working on the railway and set up a metalworks in Islington (now a popular club venue). Later in life he bought a big house in Surrey that had glorious gardens full of fruit trees. Mum adored her grandfather and had happy memories of that house and garden — and told me about the fruit that came from the trees and the jam he made from it. That was the origin of the jam strudel recipe — something to make with the jam from the Surrey orchards.

Did my great-grandfather want a garden full of fruit trees because they reminded him of a cherry orchard back in Ukraine or Argentina? Was the strudel recipe an old family one? I’ll probably never know.

But this is the beauty of family recipes. The stories get lost, people live and die. But the flavours and the love live on into the future.