Photo Courtesy of Hannah Gold
High Holiday Recipes Passed Down Through Generations
This year the High Holidays are late. (Rosh Hashanah begins October 2 and Yom Kippur, October 11.) As the saying goes, “Jewish holidays are always either early or late. They’re never on time.” The timing this year messes up my baking schedule, as our perennial break-the-fast favorite, Herta Heidingsfelder’s Plum “Cake”—Zwetchgenkuchen in German—calls for those small Italian purple plums available at the end of August, but fortunately, it’s just as delicious with regular plums, as shown here.
Herta was my cousin Lorraine Gold’s mother and contributed the recipe to my family cookbook, “Cooking Jewish.” The fruit must be tightly packed so very little dough is exposed, Herta told me. Sugar is sprinkled over the fruit right before serving. “Otherwise,” she said, “the cake will be too juicy.”
My cousin Lorraine provided Herta’s harrowing immigrant story for the cookbook. “My mother, Herta Lowenstein Heidingsfelder, was born in 1915 to Orthodox parents in Frankfurt am Main, the youngest of eight children,” Lorraine wrote. “Her life was idyllic until Hitler’s rise to power. My mom had met and dated my dad briefly in Germany. He left for America with his family in 1934 and told her that if he was successful, he would send for her. In 1937 the situation in Germany became untenable, and thankfully my father and his parents sent for her and welcomed her into their apartment in Queens, New York, where she lived until she found work as a nanny at the Louise Wise Adoption Agency. My folks married in 1939. My mother was so thankful to be given the opportunity to begin a new life in America that she devoted her life to making a home for my father and her in-laws, who lived with us until they died many years later.”
Herta got her second 15 minutes of fame recently when her great-granddaughter, Hannah Gold Zimmerman, a successful food photographer, memorialized her beloved plum dessert for simplyrecipes.com. “My great-grandmother Herta (Nana) lived to be 98 years old,” Hannah wrote, “and she was still putting herself to work in the kitchen well into her 90s. Her fabulous bakes were always a centerpiece at our Rosh Hashanah and Passover celebrations. She learned to bake from her mother-in-law (my great-grandmother) when she was in her 20s, so her recipes have been in my family for at least five generations! My great-grandmother’s version of this recipe is more like a tart with shortbread dough as the base. She actually used the same dough recipe to make her beloved shortbread cookies.”
Hannah graduated from NYU with a degree in nutrition, and the road to her success as a food photographer took its own meandering path. “In high school I was trying to cook vegan and taking pictures, documenting that,” she told me. “When I graduated from high school, my grandmother gifted me a camera. For the next couple of years, I was snapping pictures just for fun. As a sophomore in college, I was looking for a job in the food world, but I didn’t qualify, so I applied in social media to get my foot in the door. I was hired at a butter company based in Brooklyn running their Instagram.”
Her boyfriend suggested she do more with her photography, so she emailed 300 companies with samples of her work. “A few good companies took me up on it,” she said. “I was taking pictures, running their social media, Instagram, Facebook, etc.”
While she was still in college, her career took off. Today she mainly works with food brands, restaurants and publications. “I’m a one-woman show,” she said. “I do everything from recipe development to food styling to shooting to post correction. I try to keep the photos natural and approachable.” To see Hannah’s work (don’t try this on an empty stomach!) go to bitesizedstudio.com.
While our holiday table wouldn’t be complete without treasured family recipes handed down through the generations, we like to shake it up a bit with new twists on old traditions. Baklava Blintz Bundles from “Millennial Kosher” (Mesorah Publications, $34.99) by Chanie Apfelbaum, an innovative take on the blintzes we all know and love, caught my eye for our break-the-fast celebration. Apfelbaum, creator of the popular blog busyinbrooklyn, has redefined kosher cooking with this generation in mind. “The millennial kosher kitchen is one in which food is reinvented and reimagined in new and exciting ways,” she explained. She draws from her husband’s Syrian heritage as well as her own Ashkenazic roots, her Baklava Blintz Bundles being a delightful mash-up of the two cuisines. “I was determined to come up with a fun twist on blintzes that did not involve standing over the stove ladling batter into a frying pan and swirling it just so. Modern kosher food reinterprets and reinvents tradition, while still staying true to our heritage. It’s food that is influenced by culture and cuisine and not limited to, but inspired by, kosher guidelines.”
Herta Heidingsfelder’s German Plum “Cake”
This “cake” is really a tart with its rich, sweet cookie crust.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing pie plate
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
Yolk of 1 large egg, at room temperature
1 cup all-purpose flour, plus 1 to 3 tablespoons if needed
2 to 2 1/4 pounds fresh Italian plums, halved and pitted
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch pie plate, or bottom and 1inch up sides of a 9-inch springform pan.
2. Be sure butter and egg yolk are at room temperature. Combine butter, 1/2 cup sugar, and egg yolk in bowl and mix by hand until thoroughly combined. Gradually add 1 cup flour. If too sticky, add the extra flour, 1 tablespoon at a time. Press dough onto bottom and barely up to rim of prepared pie plate, or over bottom and 1inch up sides of springform pan.
3. Cut two slits in each plum half, slicing it two-thirds of the way down, so it fans out into three sections. Stand plums upright in pie plate, packed tightly in circles with skin facing out and uncut ends pressed into dough. There should be very little dough exposed. Bake until dough is lightly browned, about 45 minutes. Tart will seem juicy when it comes out of oven. Let cool on wire rack.
4. If serving tart the same day, store at room temperature. Otherwise store it, covered with plastic wrap, in refrigerator up to 2 days.
5. If you used springform pan, remove sides before serving. Immediately before serving, sprinkle remaining 2 tablespoons sugar over fruit.
Source: “Cooking Jewish” by Judy Bart Kancigor
Photo Courtesy of Chanie Apfelbaum
Yield: 24
1 pound farmer cheese
8 ounces cream cheese (not whipped)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 egg yolk
5 ounces walnuts (1 cup chopped), toasted
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 (16-ounce) package phyllo dough, thawed
8 tablespoons butter (1 stick), melted
1. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. In bowl, combine farmer cheese, cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice, vanilla, and egg yolk.
3. In food processor, pulse walnuts, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt to lightly grind. (I prefer a finer grind. If you don’t mind larger pieces of nuts, you may do this step by hand.)
4. Lay sheet of parchment paper on work surface. Spread 1 sheet phyllo dough onto paper; brush lightly with melted butter. Top with second sheet phyllo dough. Repeat and top with 2 more sheets of phyllo until you have a stack of 4 sheets. (Do not brush top layer.) Cut stack into 6 squares. Cover remaining sheets with damp paper towel so they don’t dry out while you fill the first bundles.
5. Place 1 heaping tablespoon cheese mixture in center of phyllo square. Top with 1 tablespoon nut mixture. Gather phyllo dough over filling to form a bundle. Place on prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining squares, cheese, and nut mixture until all filling has been used.
6. Bake until browned and crisp, about 20 minutes. Remove bundles to wire rack to cool.
Source: “Millennial Kosher” by Chanie Apfelbaumh
Jlife Food Editor Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of “Cooking Jewish” (Workman) and “The Perfect Passover Cookbook” (an e-book short from Workman), a columnist and feature writer for the Orange County Register and other publications and can be found on the web at www.cookingjewish.com.
