Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-19
Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...
I wake up late. It takes me a while to get out of the house. I'm lucky: the bus arrives at my stop right when I do. I'm on a mission: overnight, I will cook a cholent.
A lot of different cultures have dishes like cholent. It's basically a cut-up relatively cheap chunk of beef, along with potatoes, beans, and grains, cooked low and slow, ideally overnight. That's the Ashkenazi1 version. Some Sefardim2 make it with rice rather than potatoes and a few other differences, and call it hamin. Some of my family make vegetarian versions. There are endless variations. Everyone has a secret to making it. Most consider anyone else's to be an inferior version of their own.
It's hard to ruin a cholent. The only person who I'm told had ever done it was my mother. She was a good person, but not a great cook. When I got to college, I thought the cafeteria food was, by comparison, fantastic. When a relative was cooking one in a pressure cooker, without the weight on top, my mother, trying to be helpful, put the weight on it. The cholent burned. Oh, well.
At the mall, I eat lunch more quickly than usual at their branch of the usual café. Still, I'm surprised when, glancing at the time on my phone, I see that the supermarket is going to close its doors in two minutes. I gulp down my coffee and get into the store as quickly as I can.
There are still a lot of customers. I know that it won't shut down for a while, as we finish shopping. I head straight for the butcher counter.
Only a few packages remain in the fresh meat case. The frozen case has more, but I won't have time for the meat to thaw.
I ask the butcher, in my halting Hebrew, if they have meat for cholent. He says that I should get the ossobuco.3 I look at the packages. Almost everything is entrecôte. I ask him which package it is. He points. Both the words "entrecôte" and "ossobuco" begin with the same letter and are about eight letters long, so I couldn't tell them apart through the foggy glass. I don't know how much of it is in the package, but I go for it.
I get it. He wraps it up. I thank him and say "Shabbat shalom." He says "Hey, no problem," in English, in what may be a New York accent, then smiles. I guess I passed the test.
I zoom around and get what other ingredients I can find: pearl barley, white beans, red beans, onions, potatoes, and smoked paprika. I have the few other ingredients at home. I also pick up eggs, pita, red peppers, coffee, and clementines. I'm low on them, too.
The line at what is supposed to be the "ten items or fewer" checkout is short. I quickly realize, though, that it will take a while. The man two people in front of me seems unsure of what he is doing. He is getting too many items, and keeps changing his mind about them. A manager has to come by twice to cancel things. His son, who is almost as tall as I am, is acting out and seems to be heading for a full meltdown. The man is also unsure about the money. He puts a lot of it on the counter and asks the cashier to take what is needed.
The woman behind me asks me if the woman behind her can jump the line. She only has two items, which look heavy. Sure. She scurries in front of me. I pull my items back on the counter to make room for hers. She seems startled and pleased that someone would think to do that.
The man manages to finish checking out. His son holds it together, at least until they are out of earshot. The woman ahead of me checks out. I check out. Everything fits in the one shopping bag that I have brought. It's a good, strong bag. It's a shame that the chain from which I got it just went out of business. That was the only place that I knew that I could find date spread without added sugar and Dr. Bronner's soap.
I catch a bus home pretty readily, check my messages, then get ready to cook. I haven't used the slow cooker for a couple of years. It's still good, and covered by its lid. Nothing has accumulated or grown inside. I wipe it down anyway.
I4 have5 done6 my7 research8 and accumulated9 a whole10 lot11 of links12 to recipes.13
I go for what may be the lowest common denominator. I dice the onions and set them to brown in oil in a pan. I cube the potatoes, then put them and the onions at the bottom of the crock pot.
I slice the ossobuco off the bones and cut it into one inch cubes, then put it on top of what's there, with the bones. I need about a kilogram of meat. The package has 0.888 kilograms, counting the bones, which are relatively light. Good enough.
Next: a cup of pearl barley, and about a half cup each of white beans and kidney beans. Since I will be letting them cook overnight, I don't need to soak them first.
Then seasonings. I use some salt, pepper, smoked paprika, cumin, and baharat14. I'm out of turmeric and chili powder. To account for the latter, I drizzle some sriracha15 on top, as well as some honey.
I add enough water to reach the top of the beans, then turn the slow cooker to low. Half an hour later, I remember to plug it in. That's OK. It doesn't have to be ready for about another eighteen hours.
There's little I can do to mess with it. I can add a bit of water, but not too much. It's supposed to devolve into a single, slightly gooey mass, not a stew. And there's a rule against stirring it, since that breaks some aspect of Shabbat. I did so once, and my Orthodox lunch guests wouldn't eat it.
I leave it to cook, and get ready for Shabbat supper. Almost all the clothes that I put on are new: the shirt and underwear from my family's friends' shop, the trousers and belt from the big man's shop two doors down, and new sneakers that I inherited a couple of years ago along with my sandals when a man at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers passed away without heirs who had feet his size.
Kiddush at the House sounds good, if a bit more muted than in recent weeks. A few new evacuees have moved in, including a man from a kibbutz near the border to the south of us and a woman, with her caregiver, from a city to the north.
I get home and decide to relax before writing this. I've been trying to watch the Director's Commentary for Wings of Desire all week. I make some tea, sit down in my big chair, and grab the remote. It's time.
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You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.
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L'hitraot.