fbpx

Meme’s in the kitchen, making memories

I remember the moment well. I had just picked up my 74-year-old mother at LAX, and as we entered my new house in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, I proudly showed her the new kitchen.\n
[additional-authors]
September 9, 2007

I remember the moment well. I had just picked up my 75-year-old mother at LAX, and as we entered my new house in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, I proudly showed her the new kitchen. 

Compared to her kitchen in Montreal, this one was the size of the Roman Coliseum. It took her about an hour to fully inspect it. I think she opened every drawer and cabinet. She was so impressed she muttered a few words in Arabic I had never heard before. She got a kick out of those little transparent decal stickers on the cabinets—which I got at Schmulie’s on Pico— that delineate milk and meat dishes.

But what I think really moved her—what got those 20/20 eyes of hers to open just a little wider—was the potential. The potential for some very serious cooking.

I’ve never seen Bob Dylan in a recording studio. But I can just imagine. He probably knows just what he wants. He can speak the engineer’s language, tell the base player how to improve a rhythm, make changes on the fly, fix a lyric, add some harmonica when he feels like it. He’s in creative heaven. Within a few hours, a “Blowin’ in the Wind” or “Dirt Road Blues” is born.

That’s sort of my mother in the kitchen. The difference is she weighs more, she doesn’t sing, she doesn’t wear sunglasses, she has no angst, she doesn’t smoke or drink, she has no help, and, once she’s done creating her art, it immediately gets consumed.

What remains from her creations is not a lifetime of playing and listening, but a lifetime of memories.

But oh, what memories.

It didn’t take long for my mother (we call her by the French “Meme”, which sounds like “meh meh”) to create memories on her first trip to the hood. 

Within a week, her anisette-flavored galettes—flat, crunchy cakes, which she served my father every morning for 49 years along with his Turkish coffee—were politely interfering with Rabbi Abner Weiss’s Torah salon. I distinctly recall Rabbi Weiss taking a break from his lecture on Islam as he saw a tray of Meme’s galettes approaching– the man wanted one. No one seemed to mind.

She used a special pastry roller for those galettes. I’m sure you could find one like it at the Pottery Barn. Hers came from her grandmother, who used it to make the same galettes in a Jewish neighborhood of Casablanca. The roller has that worn-out look, but you can see the kind of sturdy construction that suggests it could probably crank out galettes for two more generations.

As the weeks of her visit here went by, and her rule over my kitchen became complete; the household began to revolve not just around her food, but around her.

Grouchy kids getting ready for school in the morning? Nothing like the aroma of a few moufletas (Moroccan crepes), with Meme in her bathrobe spreading some melted butter and honey, to lighten the stress of an upcoming Algebra test.

Playdates coming over after school? How about an elaborate fruit platter and marzipan cookies for a little snack to tide you over until Meme’s juicy Keftas (spiced up burgers) for dinner?

For several months, in addition to the weekday surprises she would prepare every night for the kids, a parade of Shabbat guests feasted on Meme’s delights: spicy Moroccan fish, truffle and meatball tagine, an array of delicate Mediterranean salads, and, for Shabbat lunch, her signature, unmistakable Dafina, the Moroccan cholent.

Put it this way: By the second month here, she was on a first-name basis with at least one meat-cutter at Pico Glatt, and she was beginning to pick up Spanish.

All this, however, seemed to be a build-up to the meal that will go down in family lore. If you should ever come across any of the 20 or so guests who came to Meme’s second Passover seder– created during an intense 10-hour burst of activity in her new kitchen— ask them about that meal.

For about four hours, a group of sophisticated and happy grown-ups were engaged in lively conversation– and kept getting interrupted. As soon as Bob Ore, a French playwright, would go off on one of his wild, comedic riffs, something would come to interrupt. When the editor of Moment magazine tried to explain a new piece she was planning on Norman Mailer to a movie producer sitting next to her, something would interrupt. When the creator of Harissa.com tried to tell us about the different kinds of Sephardic around the world who had taken to his site, or when Louie Kemp tried to enlighten us with a story on the Lubavitcher Rebbe, something again would interrupt.

All night long, something would come to interrupt.

These glorious interruptions were Meme’s creations, one sensuous platter at a time. If a Hollywood cinematographer could have filmed the evening, it would have rivaled the food scenes in “Like Water for Chocolate”. To this day, when I meet someone who was there, the conversation invariably comes back to that night of a thousand delights. By the time the meal was over, we had all surrendered. The conversation had clearly shifted to the food. Meme had won, hands down.

After four months of living in this culinary heaven, Meme had to return home. The relatives there was clearly getting impatient with our monopolizing of the family treasure. We had no choice. We gave Meme back her passport. But not before she made Moufletas, with a big smile on her face, for about two hundred guests at the traditional Mimouna party celebrating the end of Passover.

Which brings me to a few weeks ago, when I got an email from the Jewish Journal, asking me if I would write about my mother’s cooking for the Rosh Hashanna food issue, accompanied by color photos, recipes, the works. Now I’m thinking: the editors there probably don’t know that Meme’s been back in Montreal for a while. That big kitchen she took over during those memorable months, well, it hasn’t been the same without her. How can I do a Meme food story without Meme? 

As luck would have it, my kids and I were about to go to Montreal for a big family wedding. Would Meme be up to preparing a full Rosh Hashanna feast in the middle of all the festivities, in her tiny kitchen? 

And where would I find a professional photographer on such short notice?

It’s great when God smiles on your projects. My sister Sandra ran around town getting the special ingredients— including pomegranates and dates on leaves– for the traditional blessings Sephardim do at the Rosh Hashanna table. My other sister Kathy got the rest—meat, fish, couscous, vegetables, etc. And my third sister, Judy, did the real heavy lifting: she took a group of hyperactive kids on an outing—any outing, we told her– very far away from Meme’s tiny kitchen. 

This was serious business. The photographer was coming over in a few hours, and a complete Rosh Hashanna table had to be laid out, in all its glory.

That same morning, the photographer called to cancel—she said her flash blew out. But get this: Our original Number 1 choice, a star photographer who is a friend of the family, Raphael Ohayon, had just become available because the wedding he was supposed to shoot that night… got canceled! I can’t tell you how guilty I felt that I was grateful for the cancellation.

I was also grateful for my brother-in-law, Paul Starr, who’s got this talent for fixing broken circuits on kitchen stoves very early on Sunday mornings.

So now we had all the ingredients, and in the middle of the tiny kitchen was Meme, with my sister Kathy assisting, doing her usual dance between frying bastillas, caramelizing onions, roasting lamb, steaming couscous, chopping up vegetables and mixing them with dried fruit and nuts, simmering pumpkin soup, and taking mazal tov calls from overseas. 

As I absorbed the scene from a distance, my childhood memories returned. It must have been the tiny kitchen, which is all I saw growing up. 

When Meme cooked in the big kitchen back in Los Angeles, she created a whole new set of childhood memories– for my kids. But here in her tiny kitchen in Montreal, my childhood memories came back to life. Memories of a small apartment kitchen where Meme cooked for a hundred people who came for my brother Samy’s bar mitzvah, in 1967. Memories of seders, Shabbat meals, hot soups on winter nights, summer picnics, afternoon snacks — big meals, small meals or spectacular meals, always coming out of tiny kitchens.

I wondered: Can our children’s memories have the same meaning today when so many of them see only spaciousness, abundance and luxury? Can you feel love as deeply when it emanates from a large modern kitchen, as when it comes from a tiny kitchen?

If I asked my mother those questions, I’m sure she’d tell me to stop getting so schmaltzy and to send her a plane ticket pronto, so she can get back to that big, spacious, luxurious, sun-drenched kitchen right here in the hood—where more than a few people with sharp memories are awaiting her return engagement. 

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

Print Issue: Got College? | Mar 29, 2024

With the alarming rise in antisemitism across many college campuses, choosing where to apply has become more complicated for Jewish high school seniors. Some are even looking at Israel.

More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.