Enjoying the comfort foods passed down through the generations
Open any Yom Tov recipe supplement, and you’d think the Jewish community feasts only on the trendiest, most upscale dishes the culinary world has to offer.
The truth, however, is that when it comes to Yom Tov, many families prefer to follow family traditions and enjoy the comfort foods passed down through the generations. How does this culinary mesorah get passed down? Our mothers, of course, learned from their mothers.
Sometimes the cooking skips a generation: Granddaughters who spent time in their grandmothers’ kitchens were privileged to learn recipes their mothers didn’t have the time for, recipes that may have originated in different countries and/or centuries. We asked a few granddaughters from various backgrounds what they learned in their grandmothers’ kitchens. While the dishes may vary, one theme ties them together: Each and every one remembers those dishes as being heavily seasoned with love.
Riki Besser’s great-grandparents arrived in the U.S. from Poland in the early 20th century, and her grandmother, Faigie Morgenstern, learned to cook from her mother. “When my Bubby cooks her mother’s recipes, she feels it keeps her mother close to her,” Riki says. “My great-grandmother was quite a cook. She passed away suddenly, and when the family came to the house they found an apple cake cooling on the windowsill and a fridge full of food she’d prepared.
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