My Bubby’s Magic
Everything about my Bubby was magical
Everything about Bubby was magical. She worked for her nephew, Paul, who owned a “magic factory” where her job was to put little plastic magic trinkets (like the kind you might find in a kid’s birthday goodie bag) into cellophane wrappers, which were then bulk-packaged and shipped to novelty shops. Sometimes she would bring us Chinese finger traps, the disappearing ball trick or locking rings and show us how to make the magic.
Another feat of magic was the “magic coffee” she made for my brother, Peter, and me whenever she stayed at our house. It was nothing more than a cup of warm milk with a spoonful of instant coffee flakes and sugar stirred in. I’m not sure why she called it magic coffee — but it was a magical way to get us to drink our milk! We only got it when Grandma slept over on the weekends — I always thought that it was so magical that Mommy couldn’t learn to make it.
But, perhaps the most magical thing about my Bubby was how she could produce feasts out of her tiny kitchen. When I was little, Bubby lived on New Lots Avenue in a rather large apartment. Her kitchen, while not modern even by the standard of the day, was big enough to create meals suitable for feeding a lot of company. But, there were no counters in her kitchen, except for a metal cover over half of a very big double sink, so most of her preparation was done on the kitchen table. Chopping and working with raw meat was done at the sink but all the mixing and prep was done at the table. I remember standing at the table helping Grandma prepare for Passover and using a manual egg beater to whip all the egg whites needed for a sponge cake. And Bubby would chop the chicken livers and hard boiled eggs for chopped liver using a wooden chopping bowl and hand chopper.
When I was about 15, Bubby moved from her large apartment to a much smaller one. This one had a bedroom, bathroom and a living room. A tiny stove and sink were in a corner of the living room. The pantry and refrigerator were in the foyer near the front door. She bought a little metal cabinet so she had a place for her silverware and some other little kitchen essentials. But out of this “kitchen” she would make sumptuous Passover dinners — course after course would come from that little stove. As our family grew she fed more and more people from almost no space at all. And amazingly, because she kept kosher her entire life, she magically stored four sets of dishes, silverware and pots and pans in her little space (meat and dairy for every day and the same for Passover).
When I think of Bubby’s food, it’s true Jewish comfort food — nothing fancy but we could feel the love in every bite. Golden chicken soup with matzo balls, kasha varnishkes, gefilte fish, split pea soup with hot dogs, sweet noodle kugel and savory potato kugel — all heaven!
Eating Bubby’s chicken soup was a treat because not only was it delicious but the preparation was so much fun. We would walk to Blake Avenue to the poultry shop and, while she picked out the chicken she wanted, I would watch the chickens being plucked and the pin feathers singed off. The floor of the shop was thickly covered with saw dust and feathers. The odor wasn’t terrific and I was always nervous that Bubby’s soup would taste like dead chicken smell. But I needn’t have worried! Once home, she would use a feather flicker to remove the smallest of the feathers, a task which sometimes took over an hour (even though it had been cleaned at the shop).
She pulled out the chicken’s innards and then the bird went into the pot with vegetables and the “gaugel” (neck) and all the organs she had just removed (except the liver, which, because of the amount of blood in liver, isn’t kosher if boiled, even when from a kosher chicken). The best (and most magical) part of the chicken soup to me was the chicken feet, which Bubby used to enhance the chicken flavor and golden color, and which I got to suck on! I was always disappointed that there were only two feet and six toes, especially when I had to share them with my grandmother! And, if I was really lucky, the chicken would have held one or, luckier yet, two secret “ayerlech” or unborn chicken eggs. These are yolks which have not matured yet and have not yet developed the white or a shell. These eggs were dropped into the soup after it had cooked a while and then eaten as soon as they had “hard boiled.” The texture was silkier than what we eat now as hard boiled yolks and to find one was good luck (and, of course, magical.)
In a kosher home milk and meat are not eaten at the same meal, so dairy meals can be quite extravagant (for comfort food). Most beloved to me of my grandma’s dairy staples was her luckshen kugel (noodle pudding). Similar to a bread pudding, noodle kugel is made with broad egg noodles, eggs, sour cream and cottage cheese. Bubby’s were always sweetened with crushed pineapple or raisins — or sometimes both — and her magical ingredient, the juice of a small jar of maraschino cherries! Sweet, soft in the middle and crunchy on top, this was the perfect complement to a lunch of flaky, cold, fried flounder! Of all the things I wanted to learn to cook from Bubby, this was my first priority.
Bubby would never have thought of herself as magical — to herself she was just an old, uneducated Jewish lady. But, everything she did was done with love — and isn’t that magical?
