Simmer

Chez Paul, located near the port of Marseille, stands at a crossroads with three other fish restaurants. But the license from the Beth Din of Marseille, hanging on the wall, certifying that the restaurant is kosher, sets this one apart. When I visited Chez Paul, Fathi Hmam, the Tunisian Muslim chef, was busy prepping bouillabaisse for the evening’s dinner. Technically, his bouillabaisse stew is a bourride, because it only has fish with fins and scales—those that swim near the magnificent rocky shore of this ancient port city of France. But he does not use lotte (monkfish), also a nonkosher fish, central to fish bourrides in Marseille. Bourride is one of the oldest dishes in France, said to have been brought by the Phoenicians in the sixth century B.C.E. Of course, the tomatoes and potatoes arrived much later. It is also said that a few Jews came with the Phoenicians on this voyage. Is that why, perhaps, there is no shellfish in the bourride? The success of this simple dish depends on knowing at what moment the fish is perfectly cooked. And, of course, don’t forget the rouille (see page 63), which North African Jews and Muslims alike make their own by adding a Tunisian touch: harissa.

Typically prepared at passover by French Moroccan Jews, this is one of the most colorful and delicious fish dishes I have ever tasted. Today most French Jews buy their fava beans, a sign of spring, twice peeled and frozen, from Picard Surgelés. Frozen is easier, but in this dish, fresh tastes even better.

One morning, as my editor, Judith Jones, and I were wandering around the streets of Strasbourg looking for a cell-phone store, I bumped into three young men having a smoke outside a restaurant. I saw “Crocodile” written on their chefs’ jackets and asked if Emil Jung, the chef-owner and a friend of a friend, was in the restaurant. They said he was and told me just to go knock on the door to say hello. We did; three hours later, we left the restaurant having been wined and dined beautifully by him and his lovely wife, Monique. One of their Alsatian specialties is fish choucroute (sauerkraut) with heavenly beurre-blanc sauce, a dish appreciated by customers who follow the laws of kashrut. In Strasbourg, where everybody eats sauerkraut, there is even a Choucrouterie theater and restaurant built on an old sauerkraut factory. Roger Siffert, the affable director of this bilingual (Alsatian dialect and French) cabaret theater, says that they serve seven varieties of choucroute, including fish for observant Jews. “With words like pickelfleisch and shmatteh existing in both Yiddish and Alsatian,” said Siffert, “people should reach out to what is similar, not separate. In Alsace we call Jews ‘our Jews.’ ”

In her modern kitchen, with its sleek mauve cabinets and red-and-purple tiles, Annie Berrebi showed me how to make this landmark dish. The stew can be prepped in advance and finished with a few minutes of simmering. Annie often freezes leftover grains of cooked couscous and then pops them into the microwave before using. Unlike Moroccan Jews, who serve their food in courses as the French do, the Berrebis serve everything at once (couscous, salads, and hot sauce). During this absolutely delicious meal, Annie told me, “I miss the sun in Tunis. But I love Paris. We have made our lives here.” You can either serve the couscous, fish balls, and vegetables on different plates, as Mrs. Berrebi does, or, if you want to make a big splash, as I like to do when presenting such a grand dish, pile the couscous in a pyramid on a big serving platter, then arrange the fish balls and the vegetables around it. Ladle the broth all over, and garnish with the cilantro. Pour some extra harissa into a little bowl, and put that on the table alongside cooked salads such as carrot salad (see page 112) or a tomato salad.

One of the earliest printed recipes for stuffed fish was in a volume entitled Le Cuisinier Royal et Bourgeois by François Massialot, published in Paris in 1691. The author suggested that the fish be cleaned and the skin filled with the chopped flesh of carp, along with chopped mushrooms, perch, and the nonkosher eel. The skin of the stuffed carp was stitched or tied together, and the fish was then left to cook in an oven in a sauce of brown butter, white wine, and clear broth; it was served with mushrooms, capers, and slices of lemon. In Alsace today there is still a special stuffed fish cooked in white wine, carpe farcie à l’alsacienne, which is similar. But by and large, gefilte fish came to France with the waves of emigrants from eastern Europe. Sarah Wojakowski’s Parisian version of gefilte fish from Poland uses pike, haddock, cod, whiting, sole, and carp, and sautéed onions. Although she makes her gefilte fish into balls, she also stuffs some of the chopped-fish mixture into the head of the fish and encloses more of it in the skin. I have divided Sarah’s recipe in half, but the amounts might still be too big for you. If so, just divide them again. I have a big Seder and always give some gefilte fish away.

According to the Talmud and the French sage Rashi, beets, fish, and cloves of garlic are essential foods to honor the Sabbath. French Jews also use horseradish, sliced as a root or ground into a sauce, and served at Passover to symbolize the bitterness of slavery. It was probably in Alsace or southern Germany that the horseradish root replaced the bitter greens of more southerly climes as the bitter herbs at Passover dinner. For hundreds of years, local farmers would dig up horseradish roots and peel and grate them outdoors, by their kitchens, making sure to protect their eyes from the sting. Then they would mix the root with a little sugar and vinegar and sometimes grated beets, keeping it for their own personal use or selling it at local farmers’ markets. In 1956, Raifalsa, an Alsace-based company, began grating horseradish grown by the area’s farmers in the corner of a farm in Mietesheim, near the Vosges Mountains. A few years ago, Raifalsa, still the only manufacturer of prepared horseradish in France, agreed to produce a batch of kosher horseradish. They had the rabbi of Strasbourg come to the factory to supervise the operation, which resulted in the production of six thousand 7-ounce pots, all stamped with a certification from the Grand Rabbinat de Strasbourg. Before grating the horseradish, just remember to open a window and put on a pair of goggles.

Heinrich Heine, the Author of the above poem (which is often sung to the tune of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”), wrote in a letter that he especially liked “the carp in brown raisin sauce which my aunt prepared on Friday evenings to usher in the Sabbath.” Ernest Auricoste de Lazarque, the famous nineteenth-century folklorist, was also impressed by this dish. In his 1890 La Cuisine Messine (Cooking from Metz), he includes a recipe for carpe à la juive from Lorraine. I have seen variants that use nutmeg and saffron as well. Taillevent has a recipe in Le Viandier of 1485 for the sweet-and-sour cameline sauce, so named for its tawny camel color, which includes ginger, cinnamon, cloves, grains of paradise, pepper, mastic, galangal, nutmeg, saffron, sugar, anise, vinegar, wine, and sometimes raisins. Most of the spices were trafficked from far corners of the world by Jewish and other merchants. Mastic, also known as gum arabic, is the resin from the acacia tree and has a sweet, licorice flavor; grains of paradise, sometimes used in making beer today, have an aromatic peppery taste, almost like cardamom and coriander; and galangal, a rhizome related to ginger, has a hot, peppery flavor. The carp with its sweet-and-sour sauce became a Jewish staple, brought out for the Sabbath and holidays, and surviving, as traditional recipes do, in the Jewish community to this day. Although the original recipe calls for a 3-pound carp, washed, cut into steaks, and then arranged back into the original shape of the fish, I often use a single large salmon or grouper or bass fillet instead.

Carp, originally from China, were unknown west of the Rhine until the middle decades of the thirteeth century, when the French started farming fish in ponds. They used holding tanks for live storage in a world without refrigeration or canning methods and in areas that had no access to the sea. Said to have been brought to France by Jews, carp became the most popular fish in Europe during the Middle Ages, and the Sabbath fish par excellence for the Jews of Alsace-Lorraine, in eastern France. Carpe à la juive, or “carp in the Jewish style,” as described above in C. Asserolette’s charming “letters” to a friend in which she recounted watching the preparations for a Rosh Hashanah dinner in an Alsatian home in Paris, is poached in advance and served cold. The evolution of the sauces used for this weekly fish reflects the culinary and cultural continuity of the Jewish people. In medieval France and southern Germany two sauces were very popular: the sweet-and-sour sauce (see preceding recipe) and this green parsley sauce, still used today in many homes at Passover. The green sauce is a simple one, often made with ginger, parsley, bread crumbs, and vinegar. Today few people in France except Jews use carp, since there are so many more poissons nobles (noble fish), as one Frenchman told me. Whatever fish you choose—carp, grouper, salmon, sea bream, pike, or cod—you can, for ease of preparation, use fillets or slice the fish into steaks, cook them on a bed of sautéed onions, then poach them in water and wine. When they are done, you may reduce the cooking liquid and pour it over the fish slices, arranged on a platter to resemble the whole fish, and serve the dish cold or at room temperature.

This is a recipe that Natan Holchaker, an avid cook, makes in Bordeaux. In a take on the classic frisée and lardons, Natan uses duck instead of the prohibited pork. I have found that in France even the most secular French Jews avoid pork, substituting smoked duck instead. You can also substitute turkey bacon or kosher beef fry (akin to pastrami).

Guy Weyl was a little boy during World War II, when his parents fled the Nazis, first hiding in the Dordogne and then crossing the border into Spain when France became too dangerous. They then went to Portugal, and from there took a boat to New York, where they stayed through the rest of the war. The whole time Guy was in the United States, he missed the green lentils from France. During the war, lentils were just beginning to gain popularity in New York as a wartime alternative to meat, but they still were not the delicacy they were in France. So, when Guy returned to France and went to school, he was thrilled to eat lentils again, but his schoolmates laughed at his fondness for them, because that was all they had had to eat during the war. This hasn’t lessened his ardor for the tiny green pulses, and Guy’s wife, Eveline, makes a wonderful lentil salad.

This classic french potato salad is very simple. A non-Jewish version might include lardons (a type of bacon) and shallots, but instead I use a tart mayonnaise. For a North African touch, you can add sliced hard-boiled eggs and cured black olives. I often add julienned basil with the parsley, or other compatible herbs.

When Dr. Sylviane Lévy (see page 65), a physician in Paris, got married, she had a Passover dilemma. Her husband’s Tunisian family ate m’soki, a verdant soupy ragout with spring vegetables—like artichokes (considered a Jewish vegetable), spinach, and peas—and meat; her family, originally from Toledo, Spain, and later from Tétouan, Morocco, ate a thick meat- and- fava- bean soup. So which did she choose? Instead of picking sides, she serves both at her Seder. Now her grown children associate these soups with the taste of home. M’soki, also called béton armé (reinforced concrete) because of its heartiness, is so popular in France today that Tunisians, Algerians, and anyone who has tasted it now prepares it for Passover, and at special events throughout the year. This very ancient soup, probably dating from the eleventh century, would have included lamb, cinnamon, rose petals, and white or yellow carrots. It would not have included harissa, as peppers were a New World import.

Eveline Weyl remembers growing up in France with a green-wheat soup, served every Friday evening. “We called it gruen kern or soupe au blé vert, and it was made, basically, by simmering onions and carrots and using green wheat to thicken the broth,” she told me. “My mother said it was very healthy for us children.” I asked all over for a recipe for this dish but couldn’t find one. Then, watching a Tunisian videographer from Paris taking photographs of his mother making soup, I realized that the soup Tunisians call shorbat freekeh, made with parched wheat, is nearly the same as the green-wheat soup for which I had been searching. Young green wheat is available at select health-food stores these days, and made into juice. Ferik or freekeh is the parched substitute. I like this soup so much that I often use barley, bulgur, wheat berries, or lentils if I can’t find the green wheat. In fourteenth-century Arles, Jews ate many different kinds of grains and legumes. Chickpeas, which came from the Middle East, and green wheat were probably two of them. The original recipe for this soup called for lamb bones, but I prefer a vegetarian version. The tomato paste is, of course, a late addition.

Beef bouillon was not served only at times of mourning. It was and still often is a base for matzo balls, it is served with noodles, and it is perfectly delicious as a broth, served hot, or cold as consommé gelé (aspic), at the beginning of any meal.

I once knew a very distinguished French ambassador to the United States who felt that soup was the only way to start a dinner. For Jewish people in France, the broth of a stew is often the prelude to holiday and weekday meals, whether it is an Alsatian pot-au-feu or a North African dafina. A way to give new life to leftover meat and vegetables, soup has always been the food of sustenance for poor people. When I first tasted this extraordinary soup at a dinner at the French embassy in Washington, I thought that it must have been made with good chicken broth and heavy cream, but to my surprise, it wasn’t. Francis Layrle, the ambassador’s former chef, made it with fresh vegetable broth, something he used very often for guests at the embassy who kept kosher or were vegetarians. This elegant and light soup has become one of my favorites, with its wonderful vegetarian broth that can be used as a basis for so many other soups. Those who do not keep kosher may, of course, substitute chicken broth. I have separated the ingredients for broth and soup, to facilitate making the vegetarian broth as a separate recipe for other occasions.

I love gemarti supp, or selbst gemarti supp, which means “homemade soup” in the local Alsatian dialect. Unbeknownst to most Alsatians, this is an ancient Jewish recipe, as its name reveals. Selbst means “myself ” in German, but gemarti is a Hebrew word meaning “I have completed.” So this delectable mushroom soup thickened with semolina flour is named “I made it myself.” I found this simple recipe at a tiny Jewish museum (Musée Judéo-Alsacien de Bouxwiller) in Alsace. Similar to potage bonne femme, the broth is thickened with a roux made of oil or goose fat and semolina or barley, a common thickening technique brought to the United States and especially to Louisiana by Alsatian immigrants, including many Jews. “We’d take the leeks out of the ground at the end of summer,” recalled Jean Joho, the renowned Alsace- born chef and proprietor of Everest, Brasserie Jo, and Eiffel Tower Restaurant in Chicago. “We would keep them fresh in sand in the root cellar so that we would have them all winter.” In the Middle Ages, people believed that everything that grew in the soil, including mushrooms and truffles, was from the devil. Potatoes at first went into that category, but by the first half of the eighteenth century, potatoes, introduced in about 1673 by Turkish Jews, were well established in France, and this recipe changed. Little by little, gemarti supp, with its marriage of mushrooms and leeks, became almost extinct when the mixture of leek, potatoes, and cream became so popular.

This Tunisian holiday chicken soup that Yael calls consommé nikitouche is filled with little dumplings that have become so popular in France because of the growing Tunisian population. Nikitouches, similar in size to Israeli couscous, are today prepackaged. When presenting this recipe for her blog, Yael wrote, “It is winter; you are feeling feverish. Nothing replaces the nikitouche soup of our grandmothers.” Here it is. Just remember that you must start the recipe two nights ahead.

Chef Daniel Rose starts his day in the kitchen at 7:30 a.m. He begins with the chicken broth, first browning chicken wings, then adding a wine reduction, and then water, leeks, and other aromatics, but never carrots. “This isn’t the way my grandmother would have done it,” Daniel told me. “But we don’t want so much sweetness in our soup.” He doesn’t bother with a bouquet garni: “I just stick the herbs in the pot.” Freeze any broth that you don’t use right away.

The recipe for these Knepfle, also known as quenelles de matzo or the more prosaic matzo balls, came from Madame Maryse Weil of Besançon, the late mother-in-law of my friend Nanou, French matzo balls, often called boulettes in French and Knödeln in German, are made from stale bread or matzo sheets, soaked in water and dried. These dumplings are neither as big as American matzo balls—they are the size of walnuts rather than golf balls—nor as fluffy, since no baking powder is used. Like many middle-class women in her day, Madame Weil rarely cooked but instead guided those who cooked in her kitchen. Her original recipe read, “Take as many eggs as goose fat. Mix well; add salt, pepper, and ginger and enough matzo meal so you can roll them.” Many of the old recipes, including this one, often substitute marrow for the goose fat. I prefer to cook the matzo balls in boiling salted water and then immediately transfer them with a slotted spoon to homemade chicken broth. This way I can make them in advance, and the soup remains clear.

Dried fava bean, a North African staple, taste very different from their fresh counterparts, which are only available for a short time in the spring. After they cook for a few hours with garlic, cumin, and harissa, they become creamy and take on an earthy heat that is especially comforting on colder days. When served with a hunk of baguette, this soup could very well make an entire weeknight meal.