The comfort of kreplach

The other day I made kreplach. I needed to make kreplach. A huge pot of chicken soup had been simmering for a couple of hours and kreplach were calling. Jewish ravioli. Meaty soup dumplings. Small doughy parcels of salty, fork tender, shredded beef top rib. Time to reach back into my past, to soothe my soul, to still my frantic heart. There is something about food, about certain dishes, that connects us to our heritage, to our community, to life. Connects us to a peaceful time.

It was 1964. Melbourne, Australia. I was born into a world of fried onions and schmaltz. My Buba Sheindel had set the scene long before my arrival, in the 1920s, in Brest Litovsk, Poland. She passed away when I was four, so the scene I have in my head is the one often described to me by my late father.

I have definitely turned what I’m sure was a challenging and unromantic life into a sort of balaboosta fantasy. In my mind, Sheindel spent her days cooking for, and feeding, her family, and did so with absolute joy. 

She baked the most delectable golden, shiny challahs on Friday and irresistible platzalleh - bread topped with fried onions - on Sunday. Sheindel visited the shochet to choose her chicken for the Shabbat meal and carried it home to then pluck and clean. She roasted the chicken, keeping the fat and some skin to later fry with onions into gribenes, that mouth-watering sweet, fatty shmear. 

Her stone cellar was a treasure trove; vats of cucumbers at different stages of pickling alongside jars of pickled cabbage and salted herrings, stewed apples and preserved tomatoes, jams and preserved fruits. And Sheindel rolled the thinnest pastry for the most perfect apple strudel without a cookbook in sight.

My father’s never-ending stories, told with an unexpected (food-related, for him) enthusiasm, ensured that I dreamt of her cholent, fried fish and cabbage rolls, the likes of which I will never taste, and of her butter cakes, rolled biscuits and cheesecakes that I can only imagine.

Now for a bubble-bursting reality check. I am the youngest of three, born to Paula and Jack, both doctors. We ate well, but simply. My mother could cook four things, and she cooked those things very well. Dad did voosht (kosher, no-garlic wurst from Kosher Continental Butcher in Melbourne, of course!) and eggs, pumpushkis (don’t ask!) at Pesach and a mean Monday night BBQ.

The only spice we knew was cinnamon, which went into the charoset, and the only herb was dill - to be found in the pickled cucumbers scooped straight from the barrel at Mr Pose’s Carlton pickle shop. Food was not a priority in our house; there was more attention paid to whatever diet the family was on (Mayo Clinic or Israeli Army, Scarsdale or Cabbage Soup) and who had their weight under control and who did not.

To my parents’ disdain, I was food obsessed. They just didn’t get it. I was more interested in the hot jam donuts than the ships at Port Melbourne, the pastrami on rye more than the Empire State Building in NYC, the Mauna Loa macadamia nuts (from the mini bar, can you believe it?) more than the beaches in Hawaii. My childhood travel diaries read like a good food guide.

Fast forward a few years to the wedding of a friend of mine in Melbourne. I was seated at “the singles table” and the waiter offered us a choice of chicken or veal for our main course. A guy across from me ordered the chicken. I called across the table, “excuse me, I don’t know you, but I was at a wedding here last week and the veal was better than the chicken”. He promptly changed his order and introduced himself. Sadly, the chicken turned out to be better than the veal but, happily, we have now been married for 35 years. 

I left Melbourne for Sydney (and Danny, the “should have stuck with the chicken” guy) about six months later. Danny and his family were almost more food obsessed than I. My life changed. I was introduced to cumin, coriander and paprika, to flat leaf parsley, chives and mint and I met an eggplant for the first time. I could finally be out and proud with my all-consuming love of food and I embraced it with my arms wide.

Working as a solicitor in the Sydney CBD, I ran up to court most days, always stopping on the way back at the brand new, gleaming, gorgeous David Jones food hall. It was telling that the food court was the highlight of my day, rather than the NSW Supreme Court, and that pretty much set my future career path in food rather than the law. (More on that another day). 

Over the years, I often found myself searching for those dishes that connected me to the past, and to people or occasions that warmed my heart.

Growing up in my household always meant “egg and onion” to eat alongside challah on Friday night and my mum’s once-a-year slow cooked brisket with onions and ulnyik (a sort of Polish roesti slab) at Pesach. Growing up in Melbourne also meant a Patterson’s rainbow cake with fresh cream and that delectable outside crumb (IYKYK!) for every single birthday, and that incredible shiny glazed strawberry tart from Fleischers in Chapel Street.

My Aunty Myrna made outstanding gefilte fish (sweet, as I loved), rich golden chicken soup and soft kreplach, and she often had “Mrs Gunn’s boymeltorte”, a pareve cinnamon slab cake with a sugary crust, waiting in her kitchen for me to devour. (On a side note, Mrs Gunn, who apparently did the ladies’ nails, made this exceptional cake and I have been searching for a recipe for about 30 years, to no avail!)

Family friend Sara Robenstone was known for making gefilte fish as good as Aunty Myrna’s (yes, we did compare and judge, not going to lie!) and a unique sweet honeyed and roasted pickled brisket at Rosh Hashanah (you can find it in the first Monday Morning Cooking Club book). Next door neighbour, Miriam Berman always made her exceptionally good Ashkenazi-style Cholent to break the Yom Kippur fast. 

The list goes on. 

It is these dishes that I return to time and time again. To remember them is a joy, to make them in my kitchen decades later is calming, and to then sit down and eat each of these dishes simply soothes my soul.

So it is in these troubling times and - in this particular week - I find myself drawn to kreplach. To revel in the memory of Aunty Myrna’s table, to read the recipe with nostalgia and to feel the soft dough and my heritage with my hands. Then, best of all, to savour the smell, the texture and the flavour, and, then, to simply eat. 

To feel calm yet resolved, ready for the next battle.