A Kosher Cake for Irit

A little context might be helpful here. This blog post is actually the ninth in a series of essays I have written about baking Kosher cakes for Irit Weissman. The Weissmans were Orthodox Jews who lived next door to us for six years before returning to Israel in 2011. Since then, Irit’s work occasionally takes her back to Durham. Out of privacy concerns, all names have been changed in this essay except Dan’s and mine.

On a Saturday afternoon last April, I check my email and see a message from Irit. In a moment, I am running through the house screaming, "Dan! Dan! Irit is coming! Irit is coming!" She will arrive only a week or so from now, on business -- has it really been three years since we last saw her -- and fortunately we will be in town. Can she stay with us Saturday night, after Shabbat? Of course. No sooner do I send her an enthusiastic reply do I start to think about food. The Kosher birthday cake tradition established when she lived next door has morphed into "any time we are lucky enough to see Irit, there must be a Kosher cake," and last visit we even upped the ante, with Irit's permission, by cooking a meal in our decidedly un-Kosher kitchen, in brand-new pots stirred with equally virgin utensils, all of which have been carefully marked meat, milk, or pareve, and optimistically stored in the basement awaiting a next visit. 

We know that when Irit comes to Durham, she stays with her Orthodox Israeli friends, the Zinns, and she had told me that I could surely bake the next cake in their kitchen. In fact, among the closing words of my last essay were, “Next time,” I said, “I think we need to have a chocolate cake!” “Next time,” said Irit, “you can make it at the Zinns!” So I email Irit telling her I would love to bake her a cake at the Zinns, and she sends me back Baruch Zinn's email. I send the Zinns an email with the subject line "Question from Friend of Irit Weissman" reading as follows:

Dear Baruch and Adira,

My husband Dan and I and our children were neighbors of Irit and Shimon and their children when they lived in Durham.  We became devoted friends, so we are very happy to be seeing Irit in a few days!

Irit will be having dinner with us on Saturday and stay the night.  We know how to make and serve a meal that Irit can eat, but I had a tradition of making Irit a cake for her birthday and on other special occasions. For this of course, I need a Kosher kitchen, and Irit thought you might be willing to let me use yours to bake a cake.

Is this possible?  I am free this Wednesday after work or any time Friday before Shabbat.

If this is possible, we can figure out the details. I would be most grateful.  Irit can tell you that I am familiar with the rules of kashrut and very respectful of them.

Kindest regards,

Maria

Baruch sends me Adira's cell phone number in reply. I call the number and a heavily-accented voice answers. I grew up with people speaking heavily-accented English, so I instantly feel right at home. Adira tells me she would be so very happy to have me come to her house to bake Irit a cake. And she sounds like she means it. My years of tracking down Kosher kitchens in which to bake these special cakes has convinced me that when you are trying to do a kindness for someone else, others are only too glad to help you. Friday is not so good, says Adira, as that is when she does her cooking for Shabbat. Of course I agree to come in the evening earlier in the week. Later, though, she calls me back -- a conflict has arisen, so please come Friday morning after all. "But what about your Shabbat preparations?" I ask. "Don't worry," she says firmly. I later learn she cooked for Shabbat earlier that week just so I could make my cake in time for Irit's visit.

So what to make? A chocolate cake, definitely, and I knew right away which one. The elegant Gâteau au chocolate: Le Doris, found in my copy of Simca's Cuisine. "Simca" is the charming nickname for Simone Beck, Julia Child's co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I found the book in a used bookshop, just happened to open it to page 107, and there it was: Le Doris, with the tantalizing English subtitle "Chocolate Cake with Almonds, Raisins, and Whiskey; Chocolate Icing." I scanned the recipe and promptly bought the book. I made a Doris for Dan's birthday several years ago when we went to the country home of friends located north of Winston-Salem where Dino and Bradley met us, so I knew how delicious it was. 

The only ingredient whose Kosher bona fides gave me any concern was the quarter-cup of Scotch. I thought I remembered from Shimon that hard liquor was generally Kosher, but my confirmatory Internet search threw me into the usual confusion of different websites and different rabbis coming to different conclusions. I decided that Adira must have some sort of whiskey that she would donate to the cause so I just assembled the other ingredients (German's sweet chocolate baking bar = Kosher!) and hoped for the best. 

On Friday morning I rang the Zinn's doorbell, ingredient box in hand. Adira answered and greeted me warmly. I was ushered into a perfectly neat and beautifully decorated foyer and living room, and taken back to the kitchen. Le Doris is admittedly is a teeny bit fussy, but Adira did not seem to mind my list of requests. An 8-inch cake pan? A little dairy pot to melt the chocolate? A food processor to pulverize the almonds?  And did she have a bit of Scotch or other whiskey that I might use for the cake (as I wasn't sure what kinds were Kosher)? "No problem!" she assured me with a wave of her hand, going to the cabinet and taking out a bottle.

I have written before about, to me, the special magic of making a Kosher cake, of entering into the world of Judaism's ancient traditions, but this baking experience was as much about my visit with Adira as it was about the cake. It became immediately apparent that she was not going to leave me to my own devices but keep me company as I baked. So as I melted and measured, pulverized and mixed, Adira and I talked, about our friendships with the Weissmans, our lives, our children, and in her case, many grandchildren. I told her my father had recently died, and although I had barely known her an hour, my eyes filled with tears. But I saw that hers did as well. She told me about her Russian immigrant grandmother, who had made heavy winter coats for the Cossacks, "like the ones they wore in Dr. Zhivago," she said, motioning with her hands to demonstrate the split skirts that enabled them to ride on horseback. 

While Le Doris is baking, I turned to the sink to wash the dishes. "No," Adira insists, "You are my guest." And she made us both cups of strong Israeli coffee and cut slices of a sort of chocolate-filled babka she had made. Not the time to bring up my low-carb diet. I ate every crumb, while she assured me it was "easy" to make. Then the cake was done -- it smelled wonderful. She told me it was fine to return the cake pan when we came to pick up Irit, after I had eased the cooled cake onto a plate at home. 

The next day, Saturday, Dan and I drive over to the Zinn's around 5 PM to get Irit. The sun is still out, which means Irit will not drive or be driven, but the plan is for Dan to take Irit's luggage back to our house in the car while she and I walk home. Which we do. We stroll back together on a lovely late-spring evening, talking about all the things we have always talked about, not hurrying, just happy to be relaxed and together.  Shabbat, the Sabbath, the day of rest!

The dairy dinner has been carefully planned and executed so as not to not violate a single convention of Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws. Here is exactly how I recorded the menu in the little book I keep of favorite meals:

Saturday, May 2, 2015

A wonderful Kosher dairy reunion dinner with Irit Weissman

Hummus and Pita Chips

Costco Mixed Nuts

Salmon with Lentils (from Barefoot in Paris) Veg Broth

Sautéed Fresh Asparagus

Challah + Butter

Zanzur Carménère (2013, Chilean)

Kosher for Passover/Mevushal

Gâteau au Chocolat: Le Doris (Simca's Cuisine) 

Homemade "veg broth" had replaced the fleishig chicken broth called for in the recipe (no meat of any sort is allowed in a dairy meal); I had no Kosher colander or strainer so I gently squeezed the vegetables in my hands. The wine I had carefully selected at Southern Seasons (Baruch and Adira told me that they get their Kosher wine much more prosaically at Total Wine, the local big-box wine store), and it tasted quite good, maybe even surprisingly so after I learned the meaning of mevushal. Mevushal is the Hebrew word for cooked and is designed to deal with the fact that without this extra step in the wine-making process (um, "cooking" the wine to the boiling point) Kosher wine can be rendered non-Kosher by a non-Jew, such as yours truly, opening or pouring or even moving the wine. Or as crazyjewishconvert puts it in her blog, "You can do everything normally with a meshuval wine, with no distinction between Jews and non-Jews. That's why meshuval wine is so awesome." Apparently modern meshuval processes are pretty sophisticated (running the "must" through flash pasteurizing, whatever exactly that means) and wine-drinkers can't really tell the difference. Like I said, the carménère was good, and drunk in good company. I think we still had Irit uncork it, out of habit.

The visit was wonderful. We talked and talked and once the sun set and the Sabbath was over, looked at pictures of the children -- impossibly grown up, now -- on Irit's phone. Dan and I marveled at the fact that Avi, who we first laid eyes on as a bright-eyed one-year-old, would get his bar mitzvah next year and that the whole family hoped to come for a visit to the US sometime after that. Oh, we said, we certainly hope so! The next morning, when it was time for Dan to take Irit to the airport, I embraced her in farewell and murmured Arrivederci -- that is, of course, Italian, for until we see each other again. 

As I write this several months later, we have been to Baruch and Adira's for a memorable Shabbat dinner (it turns out that the babka was only the tip of the culinary iceberg and Baruch is a great raconteur), and Avi's 13th birthday is less than four months away. Arrivederci, dear friends. Until we see you again.