If this is not the type jokes you were looking for,
check out our past weekly jokes In our Archives
Jokes for the week of 11/29/2004
Jewish cooking. (The good old days?)
sent in from cousin Gene!
I'm talking about the lack of good old, down-home Jewish cooking in our
homes. I am taking it upon myself to help out all you frantic
housewives out there, with wonderful menus that will lead your children
to a healthy, happy, and loving family unit as I knew it in my childhood.
First, go down to Filene's basement, buy a housecoat (shmata), and
wear it all day, every day. Then go out and buy a live chicken, carry it
wrapped in a newspaper to the Shoichet (slaughterer) who will ritually
slaughter it before your very eyes. When you get it home, flick your
chicken and make sure you don't leave in any pinchus (feather ends).
Next, go out and buy a four-foot-long carp with huge whiskers. Fill
your bathtub with water and let the fish swim in it for several days.
In the meantime, roll up your Burbur broadloom, and remove it from the
living room, polish the hardwood floors, cover them in newspaper,
cover your couch in clear plastic, or floral slip covers, and don't let
anyone in your living room again, unless they are 'company.'
Now you're a real "BALABUSTA," which is a term of respect used for
an efficient Jewish housewife, and the essence of your universe is in
the kitchen. So get out your wooden matches, light the pilot light, get
out the volgar holtz (wooden bowl), hock the tzibbeles (onions) and
knubble (garlic), and we're Jewish again.
Before we start, however, there are some variations in ingredients
because of the various types of Jewish taste (Polack, Litvack and
Gallicianer). Just as we Jews have six seasons of the year (winter,
spring, summer, fall, the slack season, and the busy season), we all
focus on a main ingredient which unfortunately, and undeservedly, has
disappeared from our diet.
I'm talking, of course, about SCHMALTZ (Chicken fat.) SCHMALTZ
has for centuries been the prime ingredient in almost every Jewish
dish, and I feel it's time to revive it to its rightful place in our homes. (I
have plans to distribute it in a green glass Gucci bottle with a label
clearly saying:...low fat, no cholesterol, Newman's Choice, extra virgin
SCHMALTZ. [It can't miss!)
Let's start, of course, with the "forshpeiz" (appetizer). Gehockteh
leiber (chopped liver) with SCHMALTZ is always good, but how about
something more exotic for your dear ones, like boiled whitefish in
yoyech (soup) which sets into a jelly form, or "gefilteh miltz" (stuffed
spleen), in which the veins are removed, thank God, and it is fried in,
you guessed it, SCHMALTZ, bread crumbs, eggs, onions, salt and
pepper.
Love it! How about stewed lingen (lungs) - very chewy, or gehenen
(brains) - very slimy. Am I making your mouth water yet? Then there
are greenness - pieces of chicken skin, deep fried in SCHMALTZ,
onions and salt until crispy brown (Jewish bacon ). This makes a
great appetizer for the next cardiologist's convention.
Another favorite, and I'm sure your children will love it, is pe'tcha (jellied
calves feet). Simply chop up some cows' feet with your hockmesser
[handl-chopper), add some meat, onions, lots of garlic, SCHMALTZ
again, salt and pepper, cook for five hours and let it sit overnight. You
might want to serve it with oat bran and bananas for an interesting
breakfast (just joking ).
There's also a nice chicken fricassee (stew) using the heart, gorgle
(neck), pipick (a great delicacy, given to the favorite child, usually me),
a fleegle (wing) or two, some ayelech (little premature eggs) and other
various chicken innards, in a broth of SCHMALTZ, water, paprika, etc.
We also have knishes (filled dough) and the eternal question "Will that
be liver, beef or potatoes or all three?".
Other time-tested favorites are kishkeh, and its poor cousin, helzel
(chicken or goose necks). Kishkeh is the gut of the cow, bought by the
foot at the Kosher butcher. It is turned inside out, scalded and
scraped.
One end is sewn up and a mixture of flour, SCHMALTZ, onions, eggs,
salt, pepper, etc., is spooned into the open end and squished down until
it is full, the other end is sewn and the whole thing is boiled. Yummy!
My personal all-time favorite is watching my Zaidie (grandpa) munch on
boiled chicken feet. Try that on the kinderlach (children) tomorrow.
For our next course we always had chicken soup with pieces of
yellow-white, rubbery chicken skin floating in a greasy sea of lokshen
(noodles), farfel (broken bits of matzah), arbiss (chickpeas), lima
beans, pietrishkeh, tzibbeles (onions), mondlech (soup nuts), kneidlach
(dumplings), kasha, (groats) kliskelech and marech (marrow bones).
The main course, as I recall, was either boiled chicken, flanken,
kackletten
(hockfleish-chopped meat), and sometimes rib steaks which were
served either
well done, burned or cremated. Occasionally we had barbecued liver
done to a burned and hardened perfection in our own coal furnace.
Since we couldn't have milk with our meat meals, beverages consisted
of cheap pop (Kik, Dominion Dry, seltzer in the spritz bottles) or a
glezel tay (glass of hot tea) served in a yohrtzeit (memorial candle)
glass and sucked through a sugar cube held between the incisors.
Desserts were probably the only things not made with SCHMALTZ, so
we never had any. Momma never learned how to make Schmaltz
Jello.
Well, now you know the secret of how I've grown up to be so tall,
sinewy, slim and trim, energetic, extremely clever and modest, and if
you want your children to grow up to be like me, you're in gohnseh
meshuggah! (completely nuts)!
ZEI MIR GEZUNT. (go in good health)...and order out Chinese.
Check out our past Jokes and Humor In our Archives
You don't like these jokes? Then you take the blame!
Send us some funny ones! We will make sure to give you full credit! :-) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
