My Mother's Kitchen

by Peter Gethers

  Because Hy and his brood were so generous, he said that he wanted to give my mom more than the building was really worth—five thousand dollars for her 10 percent share of the property. My mom called to ask me what I thought. I said, “Well … I don’t really know much about commercial real estate on the Lower East Side, but I would guess two things. One: Any property of that size anywhere in Manhattan can’t be worth less than a million dollars and it’s probably worth a lot more than that. Two: If Hy says it’s not valuable and he’s offering you five grand, it must be worth a ton more than what he’s offering. Oh, and guess what—he’s probably already got an offer for it!”

  My mother—having long discarded those rose-colored glasses—called her brother back to say she wasn’t interested in selling to her nephews; she would take a chance and see what price they could get if and when they sold it as a group to an outsider. Hy instantly raised his offer to ten thousand dollars. My mother, with no need now to ask my advice, said no.

  I can skip the many details. But, of course, there was indeed an offer already on the table. And after nearly three years, Hy’s death, a lot of sneaky backroom maneuverings, some breathtaking lies and duplicity by various cousins, and a lot of my screaming incredibly rude insults and profanities at those cousins and their various lawyers, my mother’s 10 percent share turned out to be worth six hundred thousand dollars.

  She put some of that money into a good investment, courtesy of her protective and wise accountant and financial manager. But she also put a good chunk of it into a fund that her sister Belle had gotten her into nearly twenty years before—Bernie Madoff’s fund. That money—and the money she’d had in there for years—disappeared, along with tens of billions of other people’s dollars, a few years later when Madoff turned out to be the biggest crook since Ponzi.

  Madoff had come into Ratner’s to eat a couple of times, so I’d been told, pre-scandal. A nice guy, everyone said. Down to earth. Friendly. No airs. But ate like a bird.

  My mother was right. You can’t trust anyone who is so disdainful of the quality of food.

  MATZO BREI

  This is not a food that most people are even aware exists. And just to be clear for any food snobs, don’t pronounce this “bree” as in brie cheese; it’s not nearly that sophisticated. It’s pronounced “bry” as in “bribe” or, more relevantly, “fry.” Think of it as a kind of Hebraic French toast. Now remove the toast and the maple syrup. My mom ate this as a child; it was a specialty at Ratner’s, but she also made it for me when I was a little boy and I loved it. We used to eat it together on weekends. She liked it with apple sauce on the side. And sometimes a dollop of sour cream. She also sometimes ate it with a small helping of jam, which she often made herself, from scratch. I usually preferred my fried matzo salty rather than sweet.

  Matzo brei is the first thing I tried making for my mother once I began my search for the meaning of food, family, and life. It did not require a lot of training or preparation. To be honest, a reasonably intelligent monkey could make a decent matzo brei. But during my cooking process, I proudly went where no simian had gone before.

  Before cooking, I did learn a tiny bit about the dish. And that’s all there really is to learn about this particular repast. Matzo brei, in Hebrew and in Yiddish, literally means “fried matzo,” which gives you some indication of its subtlety and complexity. It is of Ashkenazi Jewish origin and although various sources say that it can either be formed into a cake, like a frittata, or broken up and cooked like scrambled eggs, my mother’s version in her Ratner’s cookbook disagrees. There, she has one recipe for “fried matzo,” which is stirred in the pan and thus scrambled, and one recipe for “matzo brei,” which is served pancake-style. I made brei.

  Wikipedia points out that, in accordance with Jewish dietary laws, if matzo brei is prepared with any dairy product (e.g., butter), it should not be eaten with meat, nor should it be eaten with dairy if cooked in schmaltz (chicken fat). It is, of course, on the weird side that people follow dietary laws that were dictated by sanitary conditions from thousands of years ago. To make it even weirder, matzo brei is commonly eaten as a breakfast food during Passover, when, according to Jewish law, only unleavened bread is permitted. However, Wikipedia also points out that some Jews refuse to eat matzo brei during Passover because they do not eat gebrochts, matzo that has come into contact with water. In case you don’t think that religious instruction is insane, please read that last line again. It is against Jewish law to eat a piece of dry, unleavened bread if it touches water. If need be, read the line aloud. At some point it’ll sink in.

  The Matzo Brei recipe from The World Famous Ratner’s Meatless Cookbook

  INGREDIENTS:

  3 matzohs (NOTE FROM AUTHOR: NO PERSON OR BOOK EVER SPELLS MATZO THE SAME WAY; IT IS OFTEN SPELLED “MATZOH,” “MATZO,” OR “MATZAH.” I DON’T KNOW WHY THIS IS SO; PERHAPS NO ONE BOTHERED TO TRANSCRIBE RECIPES WHILE WANDERING IN THE DESERT FOR FORTY YEARS; PERSONALLY, I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED A TABLET WITH THIS RECIPE CARVED INTO IT TO ONE WITH THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, BUT TO EACH HIS OWN.)

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ¼ teaspoon pepper

  2 eggs, well beaten

  2 tablespoons butter

  Jam, applesauce, or sour cream (optional)

  DIRECTIONS:

  1. Soak the matzohs in lukewarm water until soft (AUTHOR’S NOTE: UNLESS YOU’RE ONE OF THE AFOREMENTIONED ANTI-WATER/MATZOH COMBO LUNATICS). Drain thoroughly. The matzohs will be crumbly.

  2. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in the eggs.

  3. Heat the butter in an 8-inch skillet. Add the matzoh mixture and cook without stirring. Brown on one side, turn carefully with two pancake turners, and brown on the other side.

  4. Serve hot with jam, applesauce, or sour cream.

  Serves 2

  I felt no need to master this simple dish before attempting to make it. I just decided to take the plunge, so I called my mom on a Saturday and told her I wanted to come over the next day to prepare her a surprise breakfast. The first and only real stumbling block in my plan was, on Sunday morning, finding a market that carried matzo. Apparently, a lot of stores only carry this product during Jewish holidays (and I guess only in places where they can shelve it so it doesn’t touch water; I can’t bear to think about the matzo that must have been discarded after Hurricane Katrina). But, happily, I live in New York City, so it was easier finding a box of matzo than it might have been if I were searching in, say, Huntsville, Alabama. It was a no go at the high-end Citarella store, and I struck out at my local Korean bodega, but the Gristedes supermarket a few blocks from my apartment had a whole shelf of the stuff, and two kinds at that: plain and onion. Not one to mess with tradition, I went with the plain.

  My mother was quite pleased when I outlined my plan. She hadn’t tasted matzo brei in years. I asked her if she’d help, or at least oversee my attempt to re-create such an iconic dish from both of our youths, so her home companion pushed her wheelchair into the doorway of the kitchen as I began.

  I started by putting everything I needed on the kitchen counter and realized my mom was watching me like a hawk. Suddenly my nerves kicked in. No matter how simple the recipe, I really wanted this to work.

  The first step was easy enough—I took a few matzos out of the box and put them in a bowl of water. Done and done.

  When the matzos looked appropriately soggy to me, I was about to drain them but my mother commanded me to stop. Her voice contained a note of surprise as well as disapproval. I’d go so far as to say she was aghast. She said, “Give it to me.” I held the bowl out in front of me and she reached out, stuck her left hand in the bowl, picked up a chunk of the matzo, and rubbed it between her fingers.

  My mother loves manicures—she gets one once a week. It is one of her rare vanities in her nineties and she preens for several days each time she goes to the manicurist, holding up her nails for all to admire. This particular morning, I wasn’t paying attention to her perfect nails, though. I was
noticing how old her fingers looked. How thin. Her skin seemed to be wrapped tightly around each digit, formfitting and deeply wrinkled. Nonetheless, they plunged strongly into the bowl and rubbed the mushy texture expertly. Those fingers suddenly became sixty years younger. My mother knew how drowning matzos were supposed to feel and it only took her a second or two to nod her head in satisfaction. The nod said: Now you can proceed.

  No monkey I ever heard of absorbed this kind of knowledge in a kitchen: Sometimes your food needs to feel right before you can go ahead and cook it. Texture counts. Don’t be afraid to plunge your hands right in.

  Now I drained the bowl, getting out the excess water, and added some salt and pepper; less salt than I normally would use because my mom’s on a low-salt diet. I love sweets—almost anything that tastes sugary—but I love salt even more. If forced to choose, I’d go with a heavily salted fried egg over even the most delectable chocolate brownie. If it were up to me, I would have sprinkled that salt for another ten seconds or so, but out of consideration, I just flicked in a drop of sea salt and mixed it around. Possibly the first selfless food act of my life.

  Next: time for the eggs. I cracked the first of four eggs into the blue plastic bowl containing the soggy matzos. Immediately, a bit of shell fell in the bowl and I stabbed at it with my finger to try to remove it. Before I even managed to touch anything, I heard the words: “You don’t crack them over the same bowl.”

  In all the years I’d been cooking, this is something that had never occurred to me. My modus operandi was always to crack my eggs on the inside rim of the bowl I was working with, then, annoyed, pick out any pieces of shell that had fallen into whatever mixture was already there.

  I went, “Really?” and my mother said, “Of course not.” She said it rather sternly, too. I told her that I’d always done it this way and she gave me a look that said she was seriously considering the possibility that her younger son was a borderline idiot.

  I got a second bowl out, cracked the remaining three eggs into it, picked out the one or two pieces of shell that did indeed drop in, and, when all was clean, dumped the shell-less eggs into the larger bowl with the matzo. My mother looked at me proudly, as if I’d just performed my first successful brain surgery.

  I heated the skillet, then added the butter. Even though I’d normally use olive oil, I decided to go with the recipe as printed. Why screw around?

  When the pan—on medium heat—was sizzling with the melted butter, I poured the matzo mix in and spread it evenly so it was pancake-like. I turned the heat up just a bit and waited.

  One of my many flaws in the kitchen and out is that I’m impatient. At the stove, I always turn things over too quickly, trying to will my food to cook faster. I also want the people I work with to talk faster and the guys I play poker with to deal faster. I’m impatient to get to the point as well as to things I want to enjoy. But I forced myself to wait until I was fairly certain the matzos were properly brown on one side. It wasn’t easy but I held firm. I poked at the stuff with a spatula, trying to get a sense of where things stood and when the timing seemed right, I flipped the pancake, exactly as instructed.

  Perfection.

  The cooked side was a lovely, evenly spread brown. I’d say it looked professional, if there was such a thing as professional-looking matzo brei, which I doubt. I took the pan off the heat for a moment to show my mom. She looked impressed. Avoiding too much hubris, I made sure it went quickly back on the fire.

  A couple of minutes later, the B side was also done and we were ready to eat.

  I asked my mom if she preferred applesauce, sour cream, or jam. She chose jam, saying that this was always her favorite combination. She had a fancy raspberry jam in her fridge, as well as an equally fancy cherry, so I put both out. We both used the cherry and it was the right call.

  As we ate this perfect combination of savory and sweet, I could tell that my mother was delighted. Since her stroke, she has had to learn to eat mostly with her left hand—she is naturally right-handed—so she eats slowly and deliberately, as it’s difficult to maneuver a knife and fork. She will rarely ask for help, though, even when cutting a tough steak, and she does way better than I ever could as a lefty. This breakfast required no cutting, however, so she ate heartily and, for her, quickly. Her delight ultimately overcame her decorum and she pretty much wound up skipping the fork completely to just go with the thumb and forefinger of her left hand.

  “As good as I remember,” she said when we’d both finished. “It felt authentic.”

  Watching her lick the last remaining bit of cherry preserve off a knuckle on her left hand, I must admit I felt authentic, too.

  EGGS BENEDICT

  Real chefs have lots of help. Take a peek into the kitchen of a first-class restaurant—not a family-style eatery like Ratner’s or your local Italian joint but a place owned by Daniel Boulud or Thomas Keller—and you’ll see a line of people preparing nothing but salads. And another line tucking, folding, and spooning out appetizers. There will be a line of people working on meat and one fussing over nothing but fish. And another for sauces. It’s not just that they are preparing meals for hundreds of people, it’s that all these cooks are preparing meals for hundreds of people where every part of the meal has to come out at the exact right time. You can’t serve a steak to someone and then, ten minutes later, come out with the potatoes and, five minutes after that, shove the spinach onto the table. You don’t want someone finishing a main course and ordering dessert while someone else at the same table is still halfway through the meal. It’s not all that hard preparing good meals for a group of people—I’ll bet a top-notch chef could make dinner for a hundred people all by himself. It’s getting the timing of those meals right that can make a strong man or woman weak-kneed.

  I didn’t want help on this particular Sunday morning. I wanted to do this on my own. But even cooking for just two people—me and my mom—getting absolutely perfect eggs Benedict on the plate at the exact same time almost did me in.

  I think my mom put eggs Benedict on her list—and wanted me to try cooking it—not because she loved it but because I’d loved it as a boy and she could never get over the fact that I craved such an exotic food at such a young age. I discovered the dish when I was eight years old and my whole family was staying in a hotel in Los Angeles for an entire summer. We were still based in New York but my dad’s work was in L.A.—he was writing and producing a TV sitcom and had to spend six months a year there. He had the tough job of being separated from the family for half a year, but my mom had the tougher job of raising two sons and holding her marriage together during those periods. This arrangement went on for almost three years. We’d get to spend the summers together out in L.A. and the second summer we stayed in the Beverly Hilton Hotel. This was the early ’60s and it was Beverly Hills, so it was perfectly safe to leave me alone to roam the grounds, which my parents did on quite a few occasions. I was like the boy version of Eloise in the Plaza—I got to know all the hotel staff, so basically had about twenty-five friendly babysitters at all times. I learned many things over that summer—how to swim and how to play tennis, among others—but the most amazing step forward in my education was when I found out that in a hotel, with one phone call, it was possible to get food sent directly to your room. So, in the mornings when my dad would go to his office at the studio and my mom would go do whatever she was doing—it was a well-deserved vacation for her—I would dial the number for the miracle known as room service.

  There were two things on the menu that astonished me. One was something called eggs Benedict. I’d never tasted anything like it. Never seen anything like it. The second thing I discovered was that you could eat steak for breakfast in a dish simply called steak and eggs. Steak for breakfast! It was like being able to order up an oil well! So I alternated: one day eggs Benedict, one day steak and eggs. Sometimes—remember, I was a kid—I ordered both. It never occurred to me that all of this cost money; I thought it was just part of th
e whole living-at-a-hotel fantasy. I remember very distinctly when my dad’s bill was delivered after the first two weeks of our stay. My guess is that there were many people on our floor, possibly even on other floors, and possibly even in other cities, who also remember it quite distinctly. I was in my room but I could hear him through the wall wondering, rather loudly, “Who the fuck’s been ordering steak and eggs Benedict every day?” It wasn’t pretty when the culprit was tracked down.

  When I was eleven, we moved to L.A. full-time and in the fall my father would often take me to Rams football games at the Memorial Coliseum on Sundays. The games started at one p.m., so we’d go to a family brunch first, dining, almost always, at a restaurant called Cock’n Bull. I had gotten over my steak-for-breakfast addiction and my dad had recovered from his shock at the bill I’d run up, so whenever we’d go there, I would order eggs Benedict. I loved the hollandaise sauce, I loved the shape of the arrangement on the plate, and I loved Canadian bacon, the name of which seemed as exotic and foreign as the taste and the thickness of the cut. Forever after, whenever my mother asked me what I wanted for a special-occasion breakfast, I always said eggs Benedict. And she always made it for me. I never knew anyone else’s mother who would or could make eggs Benedict.

  To prepare it for the first time, I went with a recipe from an excellent food website, SeriousEats.com. They titled it “Foolproof Eggs Benedict.” I liked the sound of that. I also liked that they said the prep time for the hollandaise sauce, which is the key to a great eggs Benedict, was all of two minutes. I figured how hard could the timing be if the hardest part took two minutes?

  Hmmm … let’s see …

  There’s one thing I probably should mention at this point in the food trajectory: I hate following recipes. Even worse, I’m almost incapable of doing so. It’s not that I don’t have the attention span to do it; my problem is that I hate being told exactly what to do: it goes against my creative—or just plain stubborn—grain. I like to get a vague sense of how to get someplace and then I like to get there on my own. I never liked school for this exact reason. I appreciated it when a teacher would open an intellectual door, but I always insisted on going through that door by myself. I fought vigorously against music lessons and language lessons when I was young (for which I’m still kicking myself repeatedly), and I never successfully built a model plane in my life because I couldn’t read a set of instructions all the way through, much less obey them. I don’t read reviews of movies, books, or plays because I don’t want to know what a critic thinks of anything. Get the picture? I am not the ideal person to follow a complicated recipe that demands, above all, precision.