HUNGRY GERALD

Yesterday, HG picked up a big box of first-of-season strawberries at a roadside stand on Prince Edward Island. Took a big breath and inhaled sheer magical goodness. Out of season strawberries (imports from Mexico, Chile, etc.) are tasteless with a cottony texture. These local strawberries, grown in the good red earth of PEI, are a world apart, full of juice, flavor and fragrance. A favorite dessert is a bowl of these berries sprinkled with a bit of sugar and covered with sweet cream. Very nice macerated with a bit of kirschwasser. BSK is planning a compote of rhubarb and strawberries. When HG was a little fellow enjoying summers is Rockaway, Italian truck farmers would arrive and shout: “Stromberry!!” That shout announced that strawberry season had arrived and for days and nights HG would enjoy big bowls topped with sour cream. In the kitchen of HG’s Mom, almost everything edible received the inevitable (and delicious) dollop of sour cream. In the here and now, HG/BSK are breakfasting on the berries with Greek yogurt, walnuts and honey. In a few weeks, heaven will get a new dimension. That’s when the local raspberries and blueberries appear. HG/BSK and famille pick them every day from the bushes surrounding the HG/BSK home. Salt spray from the sea seems to give them another delightful dimension.

During the economic depression of the 1930’s, HG’s family spent the summers in a Rockaway boarding house. (HG gathers Hurricane Sandy-bruised Rockaway has become a destination for Brooklyn hipsters and surfboarders with some nice restaurants springing up near the reconstructed boardwalk). When HG was a little fellow, Rockaway was cheap and decidedly proletarian. HG’s parents rented two rooms in the boarding house for $25 (July 1 through Labor Day). Not luxurious. Communal bathroom (commode and sink) serving four families. Communal showers in basement (one for women and one for men). No hot water. Soapy five year old HG frolicked under icy water with naked bosomy ladies. (Remembered with much fondness). Here on Prince Edward Island, HG comes off the beach sandy, sun baked and salty. With much foresight, BSK carefully planned a spacious outdoor shower. Not just a place to rinse sandy feet, the BSK shower has doors for privacy, wooden pegs for towels and bathrobes, shelves for soaps and shampoos. Best of all: Plentiful hot water. Yes, the HG/BSK home has luxurious indoor showers and a jetted bathtub. But, HG prefers the outdoor shower as being somehow reminiscent of earlier days by the sea.

There are tastes — namely the sour sting of sorrel and the sweet freshness of watermelon — that HG associates with the sunny days of
summer’s past. HG’s Mom used sorrel to make Schav, a mouth puckering Eastern European sorrel soup. This was a thin soup of sorrel leaves, served ice cold and accompanied by a hot boiled potato and sour cream. Very refreshing. BSK makes a different version of sorrel soup. Sorrel (cultivated by BSK in her Prince Edward Island herb garden) is cooked with lettuce, onions, butter and some egg yolks in chicken broth. When done, BSK purees the mixture with a hand blender. Sublime where HG’s mom’s soup was simply refreshing. Terence Conran, the multi-talented furniture and design merchant and prominent restaurateur, describes the soup as “very useful for lifting jaded appetites.” True…Athough HG’s appetite rarely needs leverage. On the sweltering sands of Rockaway Beach HG used to savor a thick slice of watermelon, the chilled juice running down HG’s chin — a wonderful, minimal pleasure. BSK, on the other hand, uses watermelon in an inventive summer salad. Chunks of watermelon are mixed with chopped tomatoes, scallions and parsley. Feta cheese is added to the mix and BSK gives it a hit of a secret ingredient — fig vinegar. Last night, BSK served demi-tasse cups of hot sorrel soup (the perfect amuse geule). The watermelon salad accompanied batter fried hake. A Perfect meal of updated summer pleasures.

Following yesterday’s posting, Hungry Gerald followers have expressed curiosity about the cuisine in the tiny, cramped, non-air conditioned Rockaway rooming house occupied by HG’s family during the steamy summers of the Great Depression. Sour cream (smetenya, HG’s Mom called it, harking back to her Belorussian roots), was the basic foodstuff. Big spoonfuls were mixed into Mom’s cold and flavorful beet borscht and sorrel soup (schav). Main dish at many dinners was simply a bowl of boiled potatoes with sour cream. The family also ate bowls of sour cream with chopped radishes, scallions and cucumbers. Sour cream adorned Mom’s blintzes (crepes stuffed with pot cheese or peppery mashed potatoes). Sour cream was served with kasha varneshkes (buckwheat groats and butterfly pasta). Best of all were bowls of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries adorned with sour cream. Meat didn’t play a big role in the Rockaway diet (except for salami and eggs in a pancake style). Lots of fried flounder. Mom dipped the fish in beaten egg and rolled them in bread crumbs before popping them into an pan of sizzling Crisco. This was served with Mueller’s Spaghetti and Mom’s very rudimentary tomato sauce (HG loved it). Tuna and sardine salads were basics. A truck manned by a Long Island farmer pulled up on the Rockaway block daily loaded with fresh tomatoes, lettuce and seasonal vegetables. Fortunately, he always had a load of just picked corn and HG managed to eat a ton of it dripping with butter. The drink was always beer fetched at the beginning of dinner from Reidy’s Saloon on the corner (in later years, HG had an Abie’s Irish Rose romance with the proprietor’s lovely daughter). Yes, HG (at the age of six) drank beer with his elders. It was considered a healthy drink unlike the sugary sodas that were not allowed on the HG table. HG had a joyous errand at the end of dinner. It was his job to get a quart of ice cream (35 cents) at Barney’s Ice Cream Parlor. This was hand churned deliciousness that Barney scooped into a container. HG had to race back home with the ice cream before it melted. Anticipation gave the little fellow winged feet.

When HG was a little lad during the Great Depression, the HG family of four (and sometimes five) spent summers in a Rockaway Beach boarding house. Two rooms (a kitchen/”dinette” and bedroom connected by a foyer. Mom and Pop slept in the bedroom. Sister slept in the foyer. HG slept on the kitchen floor. When brother occasionally joined the family, the kitchen table was shoved to a side and he joined HG on the kitchen floor. The rudimentary sleeping pads were rolled up in the morning and stored under the parental bed. Toilet was in the hall outside the apartment and was shared with another family. The arrangement encouraged alertness. Showers were in the basement of the boarding house and the water had two temperatures — cold and very cold. The summer season began July 1 and ended the day after Labor Day. Rent: $25 for the season. Did HG (or any of the other family members) feel deprived because of the crowding and primitive facilities? No. It was heaven. Life was lived (during the day) on the beach and in the sea and (at night) on the boardwalk cooled by salt air breezes. HG’s father commuted to the hot city and (rain or shine) upon his return spent an hour being refreshed in the Rockaway surf. The kitchen had no refrigerator. It had an ice box (serviced by a muscular Italian ice man named Vito). There was a basin beneath the ice box to contain the melting ice and it was little HG’s responsibility to make sure the basin was emptied before it could overflow. HG was dedicated to that task. As a reward, HG could use the ice pick to chip a bit of ice for a cooling treat. HG’s Mom would often chip some chunks of ice to put in her bowls of pink, cold beet borscht (best cold summer soup in HG’s long culinary experience). The ice pick got a lot of use. During that same time period ice picks were being used for lethal purposes by the Murder, Inc. killers from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhoods. The renowned Jewish assassin, “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, would plunge an ice pick into his victim’s ear or temple. He was so deft that many medical examiners assumed the victim died of a cerebral haemorrhage. According to a recent New York Times story, the ice pick (after a decades long absence) has reemerged as a an anti-social utensil. It is now a weapon of choice for many Bronx street gangs. Obviously, these thugs have an affection for retro artifacts.

As HG and BSK prepare to leave their oceanfront Prince Edward Island home they gaze upon the limitless sea, the silent rocky beach, the blazing sunset. Serenity. Quiet. Isolation. Beauty. A dramatic contrast to the shores of New York’s Rockaway where HG spent his youthful summers. Rockaway was, and remains, a crowded barrier beach filled with a million (literally) sweaty New Yorkers seeking relief from the sweltering city. Every inch of the beach was filled with hairy (for the most part) men, robust (and busty) women, screaming children and hyperactive teenagers involved in the timeless mating dance. Every inch of the sandy beach was occupied. Armenian families roasted lamb in pits dug into the beach; Italians set up folding tables to hold mounds of sausage, peppers and onions; the Irish settled in with ham and cheese sandwiches plus growlers (tin pails) of tap beer from
boardwalk bars.

Little HG tasted everything. Life on the beach was noisy, friendly, communal. In this sweaty environment there were few anatomical secrets. And, of course, there was the Atlantic Ocean. HG was an active swimmer, body surfer and splasher of nubile young women.Saddest day of the year was Labor Day. Fun was over and the first day of school loomed ahead.