Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

  Whether the mezze constitutes an entire meal or just a starter course, it is always a deeply social ritual, offering the opportunity to share food and converse about food in particular and life in general. The Middle Eastern signal that the mezze or party is over and it is about time to leave is when the host offers hot coffee and tea.

  Milchig

  The Yiddish adjective milchig or milchik refers to dairy foods and utensils. Since the late nineteenth century, the colors blue and white have typically been used to designate milchig soap, utensils, and sometimes dish towels.

  The identical Hebrew prohibition of "lo tevashel gedi ba'chalav emo" (you shall not cook a kid in its mother's milk) appears three times in the Pentateuch, closing important sections. The first of these directives follows the institution of the three pilgrimage festivals, all invoking an agricultural and seasonal origin— Passover "in the month of the aviv [ripening grains]"; Shavuot, "the festival of the harvest"; and Sukkot, "the festival of the ingathering." The section concludes with the sentence, "Reisheet ["choicest," i.e., first "fruits" of your land] you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God; you shall not cook a kid in its mother's milk."

  Brevity and precision are hallmarks of Torah legislation, generally explanations and elucidations are left up to the Written Law and exegesis. Therefore, this threefold repetition was certainly intended to impart something. The Talmud records, "The school of Rabbi Ishmael taught: 'You shall not cook a kid in its mother's milk' is stated three times: one is a prohibition against eating it, one a prohibition against deriving benefit from it, and one a prohibition against cooking it." The rabbis extended the ban to include any kind of cooking or mixing, whether with or without a liquid, of meat with a dairy product. The Sages also expanded the prohibition to include fowl as well. From the various Talmudic rulings on meat and milk evolved much of the distinctiveness of the kosher home—limiting the types of permissible foods, dividing the Jewish kitchen into two sections, and establishing waiting periods between consuming meat and dairy.

  According to the Talmud, in order to ensure the separation between consuming meat and dairy, it is necessary to wait at least "until the next meal" to eat dairy after having eaten meat. What constitutes "the next meal" became a matter of dispute; rabbis disagreed as to whether there was a minimum time period between eating meat and dairy, or merely a prohibition against serving both items at the same time. Se- phardim, following the ruling of Maimonides, adopted the practice "one must wait about six hours." On the other hand, Ashkenazim initially merely recited the concluding benedictions, changed the table, cleaned their mouths, and could immediately begin a dairy meal. Consequently, the traditional Rosh Hashanah dessert among early Ashkenazim was cheese fluden, which they happily enjoyed shortly after their meat meal. Other Ashkenazim began to wait one hour, which was believed to be the amount of time before digestion begins. These lenient practices were generally maintained up to the time of Rabbi Moses Isserles (d. 1572), whose annotations on Joseph Caro's Shulchan Arukh were accepted throughout eastern Europe and, thereafter, constituted the codification of Ashkenazic practice. Afterwards, eastern Europeans generally followed Isserles' opinion that it was necessary to wait six hours. Germans never adopted this stringent practice and generally wait only three hours. Dutch and Italian Jews, however, maintain the custom of waiting one hour between eating meat and dairy.

  The Sages considered the prohibition of meat and milk to be a chiddush (sui generis), distinct and without the rationales attributed to other dietary laws. Ibn Ezra maintained that "the reason of this prohibition is concealed from the eyes of even the wise," although he then proceeded to suggest a reason, as did most commentators.

  A widespread viewpoint—first recorded by Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE—50 CE) and subsequently voiced by Nachmanides, Abravanel, Rashbam, and Kimchi—is that the purpose of this prohibition is to avoid the manifest insensitivity of cooking a baby goat in its mother's milk. The third repetition follows a prohibition against pagan mourning rites and precedes the commandment of ma'aser (tithes); the adjoining texts connote charity as being the opposite of cruelty and infliction of pain. Part and parcel of the commandments is the building of empathy, which is not innate in humans. Similar prohibitions in this category include the requirement of chasing away a mother bird when taking eggs from the nest and not slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day. All these cases involve a mother and her youngster, a relationship that overcomes an animal's innate egocentric nature.

  There is also a philosophical explanation for this taboo, involving a reverence for life—meat being death, while milk represents existence. The contrast of this particular yin and yang of life and death is echoed in many biblical laws, most notably those involving tumah and taharha (impurity and purity) and kodesh (holy) and kadesh (profane). Indeed, the third instance of the meat and milk passage follows "you shall not eat of neveilah [anything that dies of itself]." This passage involves death, while the earlier passage pertaining to first fruits involves life. The laws of cooking meat and milk, as well as tumah and taharha (impurity and purity), apply only to Jews as a matter of kedusha (holiness).

  Maimonides advanced the theory that the taboo sprang from a revulsion to an idolatrous Canaanite practice.

  Abarbanel rejected a health reason for any of the dietary laws, viewing them as a spiritual and moral matter.

  Milk

  Milk, chalav in Hebrew, the word being a construct of chalev (fat), is the fluid secreted by the mammary glands of female mammals for the nourishment of their young. It is a natural emulsion consisting of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, salts, and water; the amounts vary among different species. Goat's milk lacks the carotenoid pigments characteristic of bovine milk and, as a result, goat's milk is stark white in color as is goat cream, cheese, and butter. Cow's milk, on the other hand, yields butter and cheeses of varying shades of yellow.

  Goat's and cow's milk have nearly identical levels of protein, but their composition is somewhat different, resulting in distinctions in the characteristics of the curd and in digestibility by humans.

  Goat's milk is not normally more strongly flavored than cow's milk, although the fatty acids account for the distinctive flavor of goat's milk products. Goat's milk products are more digestible than those from cows. Hence the Talmud reflected a belief that goat's milk was better for people than that of other animals.

  The chalav served in biblical times was certainly not the same as that found in cartons on modern grocery store shelves, as there was no pasteurization or homogenization. Nomads, who did not grow produce and were frequently out of reach of safe drinking water, relied heavily on milk, taken directly from the animal, as an integral part of their diet. However, most people settled in urban areas had no direct access to animals and fresh milk, which spoils rather quickly without refrigeration. Indeed, the Greeks, although they loved cheese, considered drinking fresh milk to be the exemplification of barbarian behavior. Turks called fresh milk saba sut (morning milk), meaning that it came directly from the cow. Milk would generally sour in a matter of hours, unless exposed to specific enzymes or bacteria that transformed its nature. Early in history, people learned to extend the life of milk by allowing it to become fermented by acid-producing bacteria, resulting in some of our favorite foods, including buttermilk, cheese, sour cream, yogurt, and kefir.

  Buttermilk (rivion in modern Hebrew) was originally a by-product of churning sweet cream—the motion caused the butterfat to separate from the liquid. When the liquid was contaminated by airborne bacteria, it was transformed into a tangy, creamy drink. Today, this type of buttermilk is rare. Most groceries offer only cultured buttermilk—pasteurized milk to which a bacterial culture (usually streptococcus lactis) similar to those in yogurt has been added to produce acid and a tart flavor. Among Algerians, buttermilk customarily accompanies couscous au beurre, couscous topped with butter, sugar, cinnamon, raisins, and blanched almonds, a popular Purim dish.

  asteurizati
on destroys the natural bacteria that produce fermentation. In the 1890s, pasteurization gradually emerged as a common practice in the United States, and Americans began to consume a larger amount of milk, much of it fresh. Hanky-panky by some dairymen and retailers necessitated the adoption of laws regulating dairy sanitation, which only further spurred milk consumption. The milk bottle was patented in 1894 and it soon became a ubiquitous sight in American homes until the advent of the milk carton in the 1930s. America became the world's leading producer and consumer of dairy products. As fresh milk grew more accessible, canned milk lost much of its market and today is only occasionally utilized in American cooking.

  In 1966, Israel shifted from glass bottles for milk to one-liter plastic bags; the milk was initially not homogenized and required intense shaking before using. More recently, waxed cardboard, plastic, and aseptic containers have become available as well.

  (See also Almond Milk, Butter, Cheese, and Coconut)

  Millet

  Millet is a collective term for a group of similar small-seeded grasses; they are among the world's oldest cultivated grains, with only barley and einkorn rivaling them in terms of possible antiquity. There are four major types of millet, of which pearl (also called bulrush and spiked millet) is the most commonly consumed by humans, followed by foxtail, proso (common millet), and finger (African millet). All of these have been cultivated since before the dawn of history. Some authorities categorize sorghum and teff as types of millet, while others consider them relatives.

  Today, unhulled millet is most commonly used in the West as birdseed, but for much of history it was one of the most important grains (and in some times and places it was the most important grain). Millet has the shortest growing season of any grain, as little as sixty-five days. It also thrives in deficient soils and harsh climates and stores well. Consequently, it has long served as the grain of the poor and remains to this day a staple for nearly a third of humankind, in impoverished areas of Africa and India. While millet (dochan in Hebrew) was a mainstay of ancient Egypt, it was a lesser crop in ancient Israel, superseded by barley and wheat. The Bible, at the most, mentions it only once, as one of the ingredients of the prophet Ezekiel's bread. (Other scholars contend that biblical dochan refers to sorghum and millet is the Talmudic peragim.) Beginning in the Roman period, millet was largely supplanted by wheat in Europe. It regained its importance following the collapse of the empire, but then, in the seventeenth century, it was replaced by cornmeal. In the West, millet is available today primarily in health food and Asian stores.

  Millet is not only a highly nutritious food, but also the least allergenic grain. It is boiled, steamed, or ground into flour. Since millet contains no gluten, it makes poor breads. A venerable steaming method for cooking millet gave rise to the Maghrebi couscous. Millet is frequently soaked or toasted before cooking to remove a slightly bitter taste and reduce what would otherwise be a long cooking time. Millet can also first be ground into a powder, then used as a porridge (congee); the porridge can be eaten plain, flavored, or it can be cooled, cut, and fried like mamaliga. Bajray ki roti is an Indian bread made from ground millet.

  (See also Injera and Mamaliga)

  Miltz

  The spleen, miltz in Yiddish, is part of a vertebrate's lymphatic system. This organ is responsible for re- moving old and damaged red blood cells and producing lymphocytes. The medieval European theory of humors considered ill temper to be the result of too much bile from the spleen, the seat of passions. Some people believed that eating the long, narrow beef spleen could enhance potency. Nonetheless, the spleen, as with many other organs, was typically neglected or outright scorned by most people when it came to food. Among eastern European Jews, on the contrary, it was roasted or braised, usually after being stuffing with bread crumbs, and transformed into a beloved appetizer for the Sabbath or festival meal. Generations of Ashkenazim viewed roasted cow's miltz as a delicacy, a dish that evoked childhood memories of a mother or grandmother's love and culinary skills. Italians preferred veal or lamb spleen.

  Spleen has a texture akin to that of liver, though it is more fibrous, and a beefy flavor that is more delicate than that of liver. The otherwise chewy veins should be removed. Today, miltz is difficult to come by in America; it is a rarity and is only treasured by the few who remember it and can obtain it. On the other hand, the spleen (tchol in Hebrew) is occasionally available stuffed in the Ashkenazic tradition in certain restaurants in Israel and is typically part of me'orav yerushalmi (Jerusalem mixed grill).

  The spleen is not the same as milt (milch), sometimes also called miltz (as in miltz herring), a long pinkish gray organ in fish filled with sperm and seminal fluid.

  Mimouna

  "Sweet gateau, La Mimouna." (From The First Man, published posthumously in 1995, an unfinished autobiographical novel by Nobel Prize—winning writer Albert Camus; Camus is referring to a cake made by his Sephardic Algerian grandmother.)

  In the face of incessant Arab hostility toward the state of Israel and Jews, it is often rather difficult to remember that relations between Jews and some Arabs were not always so tragically strained. Nothing better exemplifies the potential amiability of human beings than Mimouna, a unique Moroccan holiday of brotherhood and peace celebrated at the conclusion of Passover. The holiday and its customs were first recorded in 1787 by an Italian Jewish poet and traveler, Samuel Romanelli. A variation of La Mimouna is celebrated by some Algerians.

  There are several suggested sources for the name of this distinctive holiday. The day following Passover is traditionally considered the anniversary of the death of Moses Maimonides' father, Rav Maimon. Mimouna, an Arabic variation of the Hebrew word emunah (faith), means "good fortune," an appropriate notion for the onset of spring. Some scholars contend that Mimouna was also the name of a medieval North African female demon or goddess, who was considered Lady Luck and was married to another demon, Mimoun. Whatever the origin of its name, Mimouna offers Moroccan Jews, who have just celebrated the deliverance from bondage in Egypt, an opportunity to express their faith in the ultimate redemption.

  Following the afternoon service on the last day of Passover, Moroccans would go to an orchard or vineyard to recite the yearly Benediction of the Trees. Upon returning, they conducted the evening service followed by a number of verses from Proverbs and Psalms reflecting the spirit of the Mimouna. Soon after sunset, the men returned home singing in Arabic, "Oh Lady Mimouna, the blessed and happy, oh may you merit success." The Jews would visit a Muslim neighbor, offering a basket of favorite Passover foods, including a meat pie, hard-boiled egg, salads, and matza, whereupon the Muslim offered a basket of fruit, milk (most Moroccans do not eat dairy products on Passover), butter, flour, and starter dough. The Jews traditionally dressed in their holiday finest, threw open their doors, and held a community-wide open house—without the need for invitations—throughout the evening, their Jewish and Arab neighbors joining in.

  The color white appeared in foods and table settings (e.g., milk, wheat flour, tablecloths, and candles) because it represented purity. The numbers five and seven, considered good omens, predominated the dishes and symbols. In addition to the edible treats, a variety of symbolic foods signifying renewal, fertility, abundance, blessings, and prosperity were displayed on the table, including a large fish on a bed of lettuce or, if possible, a live small fish in a bowl of water; a plate (taifur del Mimouna) filled with flour and topped with five or seven pea pods or green beans, dates, and coins; and green stalks of wheat. Since Mimouna was a celebration of spring and hope, only sweet, light, nonspicy foods and drinks were served—fresh and dried fruits, nuts, dates stuffed with nuts, candied citrus peels, jams, honey, almendra (almond paste), raricha del kokous (flourless coconut cookies), zaban/jabane (nougat with almonds), meringue cookies, pitchers of milk, and naa-naa (mint tea). Housewives would then use their gift of flour and starter dough to prepare their first post-Passover chametz in the form of freshly cooked yeast pancakes called mufleta. With t
he exception of mufleta and Arab cakes, the foods contain no chametz due to its proximity to Passover. Jews from Marrakesh had a unique custom of saving the wine from Elijah's cup at the Seder to make some dishes for Mimouna.

  Crowds of men, both Jews and Arabs, then roamed from house to house wishing each other the Arabic blessing "terb'hou u'tsa'adu" (may you be successful and have good luck) and sampling from the tables laden with goodies. There was an unofficial order to the visitations: first the rabbi, then parents, then the important figures of the community, and finally, ordinary neighbors. Well into the night, Moroccan homes remained open to all. The evening was also considered an auspicious time to set up matches between young men and prospective brides.

  The next day was celebrated with family picnics. Tents were pitched in recognition of the biblical phrase, "How goodly are thy tents O Jacob." Those near the ocean went to the beach, as this was the day after the anniversary (on the last day of Passover) of the splitting of the sea when the Israelites left Egypt. Strangers were invited to join families in eating and drinking. Special piyutim (poems of prayer and redemption) called shirei yedidut (songs of unity) were sung.