The yiddish word haimish means warm, unpretentious, down home comfort. It applies to the comfort level of a home, the personality of a person and the taste of certain foods. Brisket, potato latkes, chicken soup, matzo balls, blintzes, chopped liver, pastrami are among the long list of “haimish” foods. Despite being decidedly unkosher, pork chops taste “haimish” to HG. Sushi and sashimi are delicious. But, not haimish. Gyoza, curiously, are “haimish.” So is Menudo, the Mexican tripe stew.There are times when HG chooses among three foods for a comforting “haimish” dinner. These are dishes HG’s Mom fed her growing boy, so they are imbued with a strong element of nostalgia. First choice is kasha (buckwheat groats) with caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms and a big dollop of sour cream. HG accompanies this with chilled vodka and beer chasers. Number two is starkly simple (but lush): Little boiled potatoes in their skins. Butter. Sour cream. Lots of black pepper and Malden Sea Salt Flakes. Vodka and beer plus a platter of sliced Kumatoes and Vidalia onions. (No, HG’s Mom didn’t serve the little fellow vodka). Third choice is another simple dish: Egg noodles with cottage cheese, salt and pepper. Coffee if serving at breakfast. Trader Joe’s Vegetable Patch drink if serving at lunch. BSK, despite her Anglo-Saxon-Welsh ancestry and Canadian-Midwestern youth, makes superb matzo balls. HG longs for these winners floating in a big bowl of free range chicken broth. Unrfortunately, BSK has not made them for years. However,BSK makes a world class bowl of Straciatella, the Italian version of egg drop soup. Italian “haimishkeit”. The best cure for the common cold and a splendid nourishment when flu has caused (a very rare happening) the disappearance of HG’s hearty appetite.
Its true: Santa Fe doesn’t immediately pop up when thinking about Japanese food. While you do find a lot of New Mexico chili peppers, there’s also very good Japanese (and Italian) food available. HG’s favorite for sushi, sashimi and tempura is the very good Shohko Cafe. But, for delightful creativity and outstanding ramen and izakaya-style food, Shibumi Ramenya is the place. Here’s the lunch HG and Gifted AR, HG’s granddaughter, had recently. Started with a delightful burdock and carrot salad — slivers of burdock root and carrot sprinkled with sesame seeds and spiked with some fiery sesame oil. Healthy and delicious. Then, spicy pork gyoza, which, for some reason, reminded HG of the beef stuffed kreplach that HG’s Mom used to craft. Be assured, Shibumi’s very unkosher gyoza are better. Followed by big bowls of Tonkotsu ramen soup with springy noodles and melt-in-your-mouth slices of korubata pork. And, then the perfect dessert of strawberries and blackberries with custard and jam. Heaven. Will soon be back to sip superb sake and browse through the array of small plates utilizing the grill (yakitori) and the fryer (tempura). Must try the barbeque pork belly with eggplant; the cod and potato croquettes; the chicken yakitori and many other mouth watering plates. It’s all a tribute to chef/owner Eric Stapelman, a man totally dedicated to freshness and flavor. Before lunch, Eric gave HG and AR a tour of his back yard garden where he’s growing his own tomatoes, greens and herbs. From the garden to the plate with a touch of magic. That’s what Stapelman and Shibumi are all about.
I longed for dumplings before I even knew what longing meant. Yes…the classic Chinese, crescent-shaped, fried dumpling filled with pork and chives. My sister, LR and I loved them. We loved the ritual mixing of the soy sauce and vinegar; we loved that they came first at any Chinese meal; and finally we probably loved that there were never enough — at 6 to an order, our family of four always had 2 orders…3 each! Not Enough!!!!! When LR first got a boyfriend who had a car she quickly got him take us to this Chinese Restaurant in Teaneck, New Jersey whose dumplings were bigger than average, seriously juicy and had a fine balance between a crispy bottom and tender exterior. It was an act of true kindness to an annoying younger brother. With no parents around to say no, my sister and I went for the pay load — we ordered 8 orders of dumplings. We were finally going to have our fill. And we did. And it was genius. It was better than we could have imagined to shuck off the trappings of a meal and simply focus on what we really wanted all along. Needless to say, the boyfriend knew that he had been used by two dumpling obsessives as he pitifully tried to order Egg Foo Young. He did not last, and my sister ended up marrying a wonderful man who would happily join us for a mad 10 order dumpling fest with narry a blink of the eye.
As the years went by, my dumpling obsession did not cease. I knocked off thousands of orders of fried dumplings and expanded my horizons with Russian Pelmini, Polish Pierogi, Uzbeki Manti, Korean Mandoo, Japanese Gyoza and more. In my 30s, I sat once again with my sister at New Green Bo on Bayard Street and, still giddy to be free of all parental constraint, ordered an ALL DUMPLING meal of Xioa Lung Bao (Shanghai style Crab & Pork “Soup” Dumplings), fried dumplings and Schezuan Wontons in hot chili oil. Delicious.
My wife, the lovely Maiko, is Japanese and we were married in Tokyo. HG and BSK were in attendance. After the wedding, we decided to take both sides of our respective families to Kyoto for our honeymoon. While we loved the company and Kyoto itself, translating between, not just languages, but some general cultural concepts was a touch trying and a bit stressful for both me and my new bride. One night, we escaped our families and walked down from our hill-side hotel into the center of the city; swaying through the ancient streets and narrow lanes, I spied a dank, dirty store-front pulsating with the neon visage of yes…you guessed it…a dumpling. It was a clarion call we could not avoid. Inside, the ancient chef/owner confirmed that they only made one thing. Gyoza, and one type of gyoza at that. Though stuffed from a dinner finished not an hour before, we made our order and watched as the chef, with custom-made implements coaxed out a plate of 6 (what? Is there a world-wide dumpling standard?) perfectly identical dumplings bound together with a lacy sheet of golden brown, fried rice flour. We sat together on a tiny bench, armed with chopsticks and cracked that crunchy crust, dipped them in the soy and vinegar sauce and lifted those gyoza to our mouths. The rice flour crunch acted as a hearty welcome as the silken dumpling skin began to dance on our tongues. Oh yes! It was dumpling excellence taken to a power of what seemed to be infinity. It was a dumpling that took the basic dumpling components and elevated them — where some dumplings could be heavy, these were light; and yet they were unctuous and bursting with juice and porky goodness. We smiled at each other and really had to laugh — we had just spent a week of incredible Japanese wedding banquets and traditional Kyoto style Kaiseki meals, but these dumplings, these luminous gyoza were the high points of our culinary adventuring.
Well…back in New York, we started our married life. While we both had two busy schedules, I began to discover that Maiko could cook. Seriously cook. I would come home to discover the lightest tempura or a 2 week stint where pig heads slowly bubbled away to create a broth for a ramen soup that took my breath away. And then one day I came home and Maiko promised me a surprise. I waited patiently, listening to the sounds of cooking and finally she came to me with a platter of what I can honestly describe as the most gorgeous dumplings I had even seen — it was an abundance of dumplings! 25 or 30 of those crescent shaped gems bound together with that lacy filament of delectable rice flour crunchiness. And best of all, there were no side dishes or main dishes or any other type of dish to distract from the very dumplingness of it all.
And so I ate.
Where those great Kyoto dumplings had one perfect note, one perfect flavor, Maiko’s reached that note, sustained it and then followed it with a back beat of other subtle tastes and nuances. Simply put, she ascended the heights of the Kyoto dumpling pinnacle, stuck her flag in it and somehow went even higher.
I had an epiphany at that moment. Like that delicate rice flour crust, my existence had always seemed so fragile. It was a life predicated on the galloping momentum of my ancestor’s random choices and lucky escapes which finally led to a sperm in a million hitting an egg and creating me. But, as that dumpling coursed through my system, I questioned that randomness for the first time. How could it be anything but fate that one of the world’s finest dumpling eaters would meet a woman from across the globe and marry her only to find out that she was the world’s greatest dumpling chef?
The answer to that riddle my friends, in the most simple of words, is love, sweet love.
