Working my way through college as a waiter in the Catskill Mountains I learned that the best Jewish cooks were Chinese. A chef who can make a swell wonton has no problem with kreplach. Chicken soup? Roast duck? Pepper steak? Stuffed cabbage? Delicious. The guests always wanted to know what the secret ingredient was. Why was this brisket so good? Even better than Grandma’s. Why? It was easy. MSG.
Working my way through college as a waiter in the Catskill Mountains I learned that the best Jewish cooks were Chinese. A chef who can make a swell wonton has no problem with kreplach. Chicken soup? Roast duck? Pepper steak? Stuffed cabbage? Delicious. The guests always wanted to know what the secret ingredient was. Why was this brisket so good? Even better than Grandma’s. Why? It was easy. MSG.
After the Chinese, Indonesians were well regarded. The beauty of working in a Catskill hotel with Asian chefs was that they brought their pals and relatives with them to be sous chefs, salad men, and breakfast cooks, and they had to be fed their own cuisine. So if you were on the right side of the chef (bribe him with cigars) you were allowed to partake in the rice pot and whatever curries, stews and noodles went on top. It was fine for me as I didn’t like kreplach, kasha varneshkas, or even matzoh balls. And I’d rather burn my lips on a Balinese hot sauce than dive into a stuffed derma.
One of the first food jokes I learned was about the kid who screams AAGGGHHH whenever he hears the word ‘kreplach’. In an effort to cure him of his kreplaphobia his mother gently leads him through the process of making one. “See, Marvin, we take the dough and lie it flat and put the filling in the middle. Okay? And then we fold over one edge, and then the other, and then the other. Now we pinch it together and what do we have?” “What mama?” She says, “Kreplach” and the kid screams, “Kreplach! AAGGGHHH!!”
But I digress. Our head chef Nicky (who went on to cook at the great Shun Lee Restaurant in New York) brought his brother Andrew, a talented salad man and their cousin, Ming, to be Andrew’s assistant salad man in charge of side dishes. Andrew was in charge of making coleslaw, chopped liver, and herring in its various guises. Andrew designed and constructed the main dish salads of tuna, chopped herring and egg. Artful plates with delicate carrot sticks, carved radishes, scooped and serrated tomatoes. He spoke English and was fast. Fast was good at lunch in a Catskill salad kitchen because the guests wanted a ‘light’ lunch.
It usually began with a cold soup; borscht in tall ice tea glasses, or in a bowl with a boiled potato and sour cream, sorrel soup, fruit soup; then a bowl of one of the cheeses: farmer, pot, or cottage with a topping of fruits or chopped vegetables, then a side of chopped liver, some herring: pickled, matjes, or creamed with onions – great as a sandwich on a soft onion roll. This would be followed by a piece of broiled fish, a boiled potato and a modest desert of strawberry blintzes and a slice of honey cake. Speaking of sandwiches, the waiter’s favorite was found in a Loch Sheldrake deli: roast pork on garlic bread with plum sauce. It could make an observant man weep.
But I digress. As assistant salad man Cousin Ming was charge of all side dishes; as in, “Ming, I need two sides of cottage cheese, one side of sliced tomatoes, three sides of pot cheese, one sliced hardboiled egg on lettuce, a side of blueberries and two sides of peaches.”
The problem was that Cousin Ming didn’t speak English. He smiled bravely and proffered blueberries instead of boysenberries, pot cheese instead of cottage. He asked Andrew for help. But Andrew was too busy making his big salads. Poor Ming faced a line of angry waiters who desperately pointed at onions and mimed slicing, cupped their hands to signify an egg, and did what all Americans do when confronted by someone who doesn’t speak the lingo - they yelled louder. POT CHEESE! HERRING! HER-RING! NOT PICKLED! MATJES! BLUE-FUCKING-BERRIES! And so on.
Cousin Ming was losing it and knew he was looking at a one-way trip to Mott Street on a Shortline bus. Cousin Andrew tried to teach him the English words for the cheeses, the herrings, and the differences between a side dish, a monkey dish, and a bowl. But like many of us learning is difficult under pressure.
Enter my cousin Dennis. With a wisdom that eluded him later in life he realized he could learn the Chinese names for everything in the salad larder before Ming could learn them in English. A tutorial was arranged. Ming was an excellent teacher. He spent an afternoon with Dennis, pointing to everything and correcting his pronunciation as Dennis wrote down phonetically what a ‘side of sliced tomatoes’ was in Ming’s language.
It worked. The next day Dennis elbowed his way past a crowd of screaming frustrated waiters and rattled off his order. Ming looked up and smiled. In a flash – he was fast, too – Dennis loaded up his tray with salad booty and scooted out into the dining room.
Everyone took notice. At our request, Dennis convened a workshop and instructed the waiters and waitresses – medical and dental students, high school teachers, future lawyers - how to say in Mandarin what Jews eat for their midday meal.
Lunch was fast after that.
SPRING SORREL SOUP
Ingredients:
About 400g of sorrel
7-800g of potatoes
1 or 2 carrots
2 or 3 onions
4 vegetable stock cubes or their equivalent.
A bunch of spring onions.
A bunch of fresh dill
A few sprigs of fresh mint
A teaspoon of dried rosemary
1 or 2 bayleaves
Vegetable oil
Salt
5 litres of water
Heat the water in a large soup pot and while it's heating, peel the potatoes, onions and carrots and wash the sorrel, green onions, mint and dill. Cut the potatoes into 3 cm cubes, roughly chop the onion and grate the carrot. When the water boils add the potatoes and bay leaves. Fry the chopped onion until it is soft and transparent then add the grated carrot. Fry for two or three minutes more. Add the onion and carrot to the pot when the potatoes are soft, and a few minutes later add the chopped stalks from the sorrel along with the vegetable stock. Cook for 3 or 4 minutes then add the chopped sorrel leaves. Cook for a further 2 minutes, adding salt to taste, then switch off the heat. Stir in finely chopped dill, mint and spring onion, plus the dried rosemary. The soup is ready to serve.
Serve with a spoonful of sour cream floating in it.
Michael Elias has eaten well in Los Angeles while pursuing a career in show business. He remembers and misses old Spago, Joe Allen, Ports, and The Black Rabbit.