HUNGRY GERALD

It has been said that the company, conversation, etc. are the important elements of a dinner party. Yes, but in HG’s narrow and obsessed view, food counts. A lot. HG has been fortunate. The food at the great majority of dinner parties HG has attended has been, if not distinguished, at least edible. Some notable exceptions took place when HG/BSK participated in a “gourmet” club in the Colorado mountains. The club members were sweet people but the meals they prepared seemed like absurd parodies of serious cooking. HG recalls a mushily braised rabbit, a shoe leather tough hunk of venison, a “health” salad of bean sprouts, carrots, honey and kale.

In terms of geography, Wyoming gets HG’s vote as capital of bad food. HG/BSK once ventured to the state on a horseback riding trek that took HG/BSK from ranch to ranch. Bunk beds, breakfast and dinner were provided. Memories: Watery coffee, insufferably sweet stale cinnamon buns; gristly, well done steak with canned peas; beef stew topped with congealed grease. HG/BSK ate lunch on the trail: “Luncheon meat” sandwiches and Kool Aid. Dismal. At least the majestic views of the Grand Tetons, the sunrises and sunsets were great – almost made up for the food. Almost.

In terms of bad food, HG mused that sometimes actual hostility was involved. This had to have been the case at a shrimp curry dinner an eccentric woman launched at her Fire Island home. HG is fond of spicy, even very hot food like Indian vindaloos. But, the shrimp at this party were like hot coals, they were mean. HG does not exaggerate. One bite and blisters formed on lips and gums. When the guests protested they were urged by the hostess — with a glint of sadism in her eyes — to gulp yogurt to staunch the flames. It didn’t work.

Sometimes bad meals had a hint of surrealism as in the very strange “white” meal a beautiful blonde, pale woman once prepared for HG/BSK: Vichysoisse. Chicken in a creamy a la king sauce. Mashed potatoes. Creamed puree of cucumbers. White wine. White Bread. Dessert? You guessed it. Vanilla ice cream.

Finally, a dinner party meal that HG/BSK have often recalled was made notable for the absence of food. Throughout the night, there were smells of cooking (HG/BSK may have imagined this). Periodic noisy clatter coming from the kitchen where the nervous hostess continued to dart. But, no food ever appeared. No explanation from the hostess or her playwright husband. Hours went by. Before midnight, famished HG/BSK mumbled farewells and raced to the nearest diner.

Ring those bells. Make noise. Shout happy new year wishes. Rosh Hashonah is upon us. Though not a practitioner of very orthodox Judaism, HG’s Mom would always make a tasty, multi-course dinner to welcome the new year. A feature was tzimmes, a sweet and savory carrot stew. The sweet element was supposed to induce a happy new year. Among the ingredients were chicken fat (of course), ginger, honey, a touch of cinnamon. And, plenty of chicken feet. HG”s Mom thought they brought a rich, glutinous quality to the “tzimmes.” HG loathed them. They looked very much like what they were — scaly feet, with nails — and were unpleasantly gristly and nasty. HG ate his way around them. HG still hates chicken feet. The Chinese love them, serving them up as snacks at Taiwanese movie theaters and, of course, they are a standard on dim sum carts the world over. HG likes every other part of a chicken–liver, heart, gizzard–so last year HG tried to give them another chance by tasting them at Nom Wah, the venerable dim sum eatery in New York’s Chinatown. Terrible. For some obscure reason, the word “tzimmes” is a Yiddish idiom for a fuss or tumult. HG’s Mom didn’t believe in coddling. When little HG sought sympathy for a cut or a scrape, Mom said: “Don’t make a tzimmes. It’s only a scratch.”

New York 1953 or 1954. HG was combining two careers: journalist and night club (mostly jazz joints) press agent. HG was press agent for the short lived midtown Clique Club where the late Sammy Benskin, a superb jazz pianist and an HG pal, was headlining with his trio. Sammy called HG and told him to get down to the club the next night when a vocal duo, Jackie and Roy, would be making a guest appearance. You will be blown away, promised Sammy. And, so it came to pass. They did “Mountain Greenery” and it was a revelation. Did their takes on some standards and the tunes became as fresh as a Spring morning. How to describe Jackie’s voice? Champagne bubbles. A mountain stream. Silver. Warm, glowing verbal precision with the earthy hint of her Midwestern accent. No, words aren’t ample, HG was surprised at the couple’s appearance. Jazz performers either wore outlandish clothes (women in super snug “mermaid” gowns) or were drug addled and unkempt. Handsome Roy Kral looked like an Ivy League fashion plate and beautiful Jackie Cain wore tweeds. Yes, tweeds. Not sequins. The two best looking people in the jazz world. (No need to recount their career. The NY Times and LA times had good, accurate obituaries of Jackie this week). Listened to their albums but never saw them again until Fire Island in the 60’s. Jackie and Roy were beach neighbors and HG/BSK formed a close friendship that lasted through Roy’s death in 2002 and Jackie’s death this week. When HG/BSK moved to Montclair, NJ. in the 70’s, Jackie and Roy soon followed (and that’s where Jackie died). So many joyous memories. And, some tragic ones. Their strikingly beautiful daughter, Niki, died in an automobile accident. Jackie and Roy were wonderful to our children. Jackie, who had an ethereal beauty, was a surprisingly robust cook in the Czech/Polish tradition. Our families ate, drank, played and laughed together for many decades. Now, Jackie’s gone. Another bright light from HG’s life has been dimmed. Permit HG to share a memory: Roy once recalled that the first time he accompanied Jackie was at a Chicago night club. Jackie was 18 and fresh out of high school. Roy was reluctant. Didn’t think much of girl singers. She changed his mind. Jackie sang that great Harold Arlen/Yip Harburg song: “Happiness Is Just A Thing Called Joe.” Said Roy: “The place went nuts.” Years later, at an HG birthday dinner, sang the song (unaccompanied) as a birthday treat. HG went nuts.

In the wake of frightening events in Missouri, HG/BSK watched a wrenching video of Billie Holiday singing the anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit.” It was in 1946 that young HG heard Holiday sing the song during her appearance at the Club Onyx on New York’s W.52nd Street (then known as “Swing Street.”). As was her custom. lights were dimmed (only a spot on Holiday’s face) as she sang “Strange Fruit.” At the end, all lights went out. No encore. HG nursed a beer at the bar and Holiday moved HG to tears. The song was written by a Jewish, Bronx high school teacher, Abel Meeropol. He wrote the song after seeing a photo of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, two young African-American men, hanging from a tree following an Aug. 7, 1930 lynching in southern Indiana. The lynching of African-American men (most prevalent in the South) was very much part of American life for many years. Lynch mobs (and their leaders) were seldom prosecuted. The Dyer Anti-Lynching Law (which would have made lynching a federal offense), was introduced in the House of Representatives in 1918 and was passed but was defeated in the Senate by a Southern filibuster. This established a disgraceful pattern. Some 200 anti-lynching measures were introduced (the last in 1956) but all were blocked by Southern Senators. In 2005, the United States Senate issued a formal apology for its actions. Deemed superfluous by later civil rights legislation, the United States has, in fact, never passed an anti-lynching law. (A sidebar: Abel Meeropol, a Communist, and his wife, adopted the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg following their execution for espionage. According to the boys, they had a happy childhood with the Meeropols. They recalled Meeropol as an uproariously funny household comic and mimic. Our days were filled with laughter, said the boys).

In a recent post, HG mentioned that Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan stood by his statement that Jews had historically used blood from murdered non-Jewish children for making their matzos. Oddly, this ridiculous claim of blood libel (hearkening back to medieval anti-semitic insanity) drew little outcry from the determinedly anti-Israel European (and American) intelligentsia and left. Mused HG: How little have we progressed in 100 years. It was in 1913, in Kiev, Russia, that Menahem Mendel Beilis, father of five and superintendent in a brick factory, went on trial for the murder of 13-year-old Andre Yuschistky. Beilis, who had been kept in prison for two years before the trial, was accused of killing the boy with a knife in order to obtain blood for use in making ritual matzos. The accusation and trial sparked outrages against Jews throughout Russia. At the trial, a principal witness was a priest who was an alleged expert on the Talmud and Jewish ritual practices. His testimony was so blatantly fraudulent and incompetent that he was the object of courtroom laughter. The press in the United States and other western countries condemned the trial as an example of Russian anti-Jewish policies. Beilis was acquitted and moved to Palestine. He expressed gratitude to a number of non-Jewish Russians who supported him–namely detective Nicolas Krasovsky (who discovered the true murderers of Yuschistky) and the eloquent journalist Brazul-Brushkovsky. In later life, Beilis moved to New York where he died in 1934. He is buried in the Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Queens. HG’s father is buried there as well as the author Sholem Aleichem (whose work inspired ‘Fiddler on the Roof’) and Leo Frank, a Jew who was lynched in Georgia after a spurious murder trial. Some 4,000 people jammed the Eldridge Street Synagogue and surrounding street for the Beilis memorial service (SJ’s Deadly Dragon reggae headquarters is close to the Synagogue). Bernard Malamud loosely based his novel The Fixer (It won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award) on the Beilis case. A work of imaginative fiction, the book angered Beilis’s descendants since the protagonist had little resemblance to the real life Beilis. Malamud’s letter of apology did not appease them.

One of the shocking aspects, to me, of the Hamas-Israel bloodshed, is the failure of the European intelligentsia and the young “new left” to condemn Hamas for their specifically anti-Jewish ideology (aside from their anti-Zionist ideology) and its cynical use of the suffering civilians of Gaza to gain world sympathy and support. Hamas is a dangerous, ideology-driven terrorist organization. Emory University Professor Deborah E. Lipstadt pointed out in a recent Op-ed piece in the New York Times: Besides calling for the destruction of Israel, “the Hamas charter contains reference to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery by Czarist officers in 1903 and used by Hitler [and many other Anti-Semitic organizations] as Nazi propaganda. The [Hamas] charter accuses Jews of relying on secret societies to foment global economic and political disasters. It calls on adherents to prepare for ‘the next round with the Jews, the merchants of war.’ ” In addition, Hamas revives some of the oldest anti-Jewish libels. Writes Professor Lipstadt: “When a Hamas spokesman recently stood by his statement that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children for their matzos, European elites were largely silent.” The plight of the civilian population of Gaza is frightful. While many Israelis sympathize (A recent headline in Haaretz, the Israeli English language newspaper read: “Images From Gaza Should Trouble Every Israeli.”), there are also many Israelis, furious at living with rocket fire, who call for more military ferocity. From my perspective, the people who do not overthrow a zealous government of ideologues eventually pay a terrible price in civilian death. The examples are many. The Germans under the dictatorship of Hitler. The Russians who died from famine, terror, purges and the gulags during the Stalin era. The suffering Chinese who had to endure Mao’s “Cultural Revolution.” I am not an Israeli apologist. I disagree with many Israeli policies and find many Israeli politicians opportunistic. But, I cannot condemn Israel’s violent response to Hamas’s terror attacks. Today’s conflict is not between Israel and the Palestinian people. It is a battle against Hamas terror. Unfortunately, as always, the innocent suffer.

Oh, happy days!! Sweet corn is in season and BSK has the source for the best ever. Every morning, in a shopping center parking lot in the town of Montague, Blum Farms parks a pick up truck laden with freshly picked corn. BSK makes a well-worth-it 20 minute drive from HG/BSK’s Prince Edward Island oceanfront home to grab a dozen or more ears before it all sells off (as it typically does by noon). The corn is sublime: yellow niblets so fresh that each kernel seems to explode with flavor and the sweetness of sugars that haven’t even dreamed of turning to starch. HG/BSK (plus family visitors) eat many ears slathered with butter and sea salt. Extra cooked ears are refrigerated and are used for many dishes including BSK’s sublime corn and clam chowder. Here’s how BSK does it: Lean bacon goes into a sauce pan and before it crisps chopped onions and diced potatoes are added. Salt and Aleppo pepper go into the the sauté as well as a splash of olive oil (if the bacon is very lean). Little neck clams are steamed in clam broth (the clam juice adds potency to the broth). Clams are removed when just barely open. Plucked out of the shells, they are cut in half (if using larger, tougher clams, BSK gives them a sturdy chop). The clam broth and a half cup of whole milk is poured into the deep sauce pan over the bacon-onion-potato mix and simmered until the mineral rich PEI spuds begin to soften. Some chopped thyme adds a nice herbal touch. Clams go into the pan with corn kernels from five ears of corn. When all is heated through the chowder is given a dusting of smoked Spanish paprika or Aleppo pepper (this is optional–favored by HG who likes spicy heat). The dish is a nice fusion of farm and sea, a good metaphor for Prince Edward Island itself.

HG derived vicarious pleasure watching distinguished son-in-law Profesore Massimo R. devour a giant marrow bone at Prince Edward Island’s Terre Rouge bistro (yes, the generous Ufficiale gave HG a taste). Roasted marrow bones have long been served at old time Paris bistros. HG has relished them with a crusty baguette and a carafe of rough red wine in Left Bank rooms perfumed with Gauloise smoke. For years, the health police managed to have them banished from most American restaurants but, thankfully, marrow bones are making a comeback: In the mid 90s Fergus Henderson, the British chef and cookbook author served a dish at his St. John restaurant in London of roasted marrow bones with parsley and capers that was an immediate trend-setter and was soon replicated at New York restaurants like Prune and Blue Ribbon Bakery; now there is hardly a meat-centric New York menu without marrow bones. In older times, bone marrow found a elegant approach as a specialty of the old Oak Room in New York’s Plaza Hotel: A big scoop of bone marrow adorned braised celery which accompanied tournedos and potatoes soufflé. It was one of HG/BSK’s favorite meals. HG once had a very lusty steak, a pave, topped with almost a half inch of bone marrow at some long defunct bistro near the Place de Clichy. Memorable. Bone marrow is frowned upon by cardiologists because it is pure fat and cholesterol, a big time artery clogger. Wickedly delicious, however.

In order to have an insightful and balanced view of the dismal, unending conflict between Israel and its neighbors, HG suggests reading a book published this year: My Promised Land–The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit. The author is a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and also serves on its editorial board. The book was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review and the reviewer said: “Shavit has an un-doctrinaire mind and comes not to praise or to blame, though along the way he does both, with erudition and eloquence; he comes instead to observe and reflect.” The review goes on to say: “It is a Zionist book unblinkered by Zionism. It is about the entire Israeli experience.” The book has made HG reflect about Zionism. Yes, the displacement of Palestinians has been a tragedy (often a tragedy of their own making). But, HG retains his admiration for Zionism. Theodore Herzl witnessed the hatred of Jews that boiled over in France, a civilized European country, during the Dreyfus affair. Herzl realized, as did subsequent Zionist visionaries, that Jews had no future in Europe. Did the Zionists foresee the industrialized murder of millions of Jews by Hitler? Perhaps not, but they did know the destruction of Europe’s Jews was imminent. It was Zionism’s mission to rescue Jews and provide them with a homeland. This is what gave Zionism its urgency. As Shavit notes: “The need was real. The vision was impressive.” Like all nations, Israel was born in blood and fire and maintaining its nationhood has demanded more blood and fire. HG must sadly acknowledge:There has been no other choice.

“Comfort” has now entered the lexicon of gastronomic writing — whole restaurant describe their menus as “updated comfort food” or “comfort food with a twist” or (most depressingly) “luxury comfort food”. Well, in the HG/BSK home, comfort food sticks to its root — beloved dishes that are easy to prepare, often repeated and have the ability to be both familiar and thrilling. One such dish that BSK cooks is a take on Chinese Ma Po Tofu: BSK stir fries (in peanut or canola oil) ground pork with chopped onion, garlic (much); fresh ginger (heaps); frozen peas; sliced mushrooms. Flavors it with chicken broth, Chinese oyster sauce, soy sauce, a bit of Vietnamese fish sauce and dashes of Sriracha. Adds cubes of tofu. Showers the finished dish with chopped scallions. The dish is accompanied by plentiful room temperature angel hair (or other very thin) pasta flavored with sesame oil and chile oil. Belgian endive is nice with this. HG scoops up the pork mixture with these crisp leaves. Happily,BSK makes enough of this “comfort food” to have it for two dinners. Nice in hot weather when HG/BSK don’t want to linger near an oven.