I had hand surgery this week and won't be cooking for a bit - but there's still a lot to talk about regarding Jewish cooking. Here's a piece from the Jerusalem Post featuring chef and food historian Gil Marks:
October 25, 2011 Tuesday 27 Tishri 5772 21:26 IST
Jews and Food: from Yogurt to Chile Con Carne
By LOREN MINSKY/ITRAVELJERUSALEM.COM TEAM
25/10/2011
International chef and food historian, Gil Marks, shares secrets of delicious dishes and the unsung Jewish heroes of world cuisine.
On Sunday evening, Gil Marks spoke on the topic of “Jews and Food” to a mainly Anglo audience at Tmol Shilshom, a rustic coffee-shop bookstore in Jerusalem. Cited as one of the fifty most influential American Jews in 2010 in the Forward’s annual “Forward 50”, Marks is the author of the award-winning Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities around the World and more recently, the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food.
“This guy knows everything about anything,” says David Ehrlich, manager of Tmol Shilshom. “He was funny and quick to answer any question.” The talk was filled with surprising anecdotes on how culinary history has been influenced by Jewish traditions and wanderings in the diaspora.
Marks was in Israel visiting family over the holidays. Loren Minsky caught up with him.
Q: How did you come to combine your love of food with your love and knowledge of Judaism?
A: My mother takes full credit for my career. She tells everyone that when I was young, I would complain about her food and she would tell me to make my own – and I did. Once you feel comfortable in the kitchen (overcome the intimidation of the unknown) and have a basic understanding, it is easy to progress.
In my previous incarnation, I ran a guidance department and taught history at a yeshiva high school. I would invite friends and guests over for Shabbat and they would ooh and ah about the food. Each time, I would try to outdo myself. I am a self-taught chef. I have never taken a cooking class in my life.
Things are different now. An increasing number of middle class Jews go to cooking schools. It has become an acceptable profession. At a certain point, I told myself that life to too short and what I like is writing and cooking, so in 1986 I started Kosher Gourmet magazine, to reflect that kosher food could be quality fare. We lasted for seven years until Papa Bush’s ‘non-recession’ eliminated advertising and I segued to books.
Q: How do you differ to other Jewish cookbook authors?
A: I believe that I emphasize the historical and cultural aspects of Jewish food (where it came from, how it got there, and where it might be going) more than other Jewish cookbook authors.
Q: Are you vegetarian? Is vegetarian Jewish food your speciality?
A: I am not a vegetarian, but most of the time I eat vegetarian. If done right, vegetarian food can be incredibly flavorful and exciting. My previous book, Olive Trees and Honey, about traditional Jewish vegetarian fare, sells very well among non-Jews who are looking for those types of dishes. Jewish vegetarian food, as part of the wider umbrella of Jewish food, is one of my specialties.
Q: Tell me more about the James Beard Foundation award? How was it to be voted one of the most influential Jews in America?
A: I’ve written five books, three of them were nominated for a James Beard Award and Olive Trees & Honey won. It’s a tremendous sense of accomplishment when experts and those outside the Jewish community acknowledge the value of my work. I think my parents, who live in Israel, were most proud when the Jewish Forward included me in last year’s Forward Fifty.
Q: What is your connection to Israel?
A: I’ve been visiting Israel since my bar mitzvah when I spent the summer in Israel. During and after college, I spent two years studying in yeshivas here. My parents, one of my sisters, six nieces and nephews, and 14 great nieces and nephews live in Israel. I spend most of the holidays here. I usually come for two or three months at a time about twice a year. With an internet connection, I can work from anywhere. A good part of Encyclopedia of Jewish Food was written in Israel. I wanted the book to also include the Israeli food culture, not just American and European.
Q: What is the best part of being here?
A: My nieces and nephews! I also love to see how Israel has changed over the years and the degree of ethnic diversity. I enjoy seeing the Ethiopians and Asians and many others and thinking, “these are Jews.” I love Mahane Yehudah and other venues where Jewish food from around the world is on display. This is what Klal Yisrael is all about.
Q: What are your thoughts on Israeli raw materials and food?
A: The raw materials in Israel are tremendous. Israeli fruits and vegetables are generally far superior to American variations, which are grown for shipping and storage purposes and what they look like, not for the innate flavor. Israeli olive oil herbs, cheeses and wines are superb, although people don’t always make the best use of them. That’s been changing lately with more and more Israeli chefs realizing that they don’t have to be an imitation of the French kitchen, but a synthesis of the best, utilizing the local produce. CSAs (Community Sponsored Agriculture) provide incredible organic produce.
Q: How is your new book different to past books?
Encyclopedia of Jewish Food is the most comprehensive, accurate, and readable compilation of Jewish food ever with over 655 entries and 300 recipes about Jewish foods from across the globe. Much of what is commonly assumed about food is mistaken or simply wrong. For example, matzah was not always hard and cracker-like. The potato latke (and other prominent Ashkenazic potato dishes) only emerged in the mid-19th century. Food carries history and culture and I attempted to show the interconnection to Jews. How did the Jaffa Orange and Gevina Levanah (white cheese) come to Israel? How did Jews impact chocolate, bananas, and yogurt?
Q: How was the idea born for the book?
A: After the success of Olive Trees and Honey, I was discussing potential future books with my editor at Wiley Publishing, and she said, “You’re a walking encyclopedia of food, so why not write a Jewish encyclopedia of food?” I’ve been trying and collecting recipes and storing them along with food information in my computers for 25 years. It took me nearly five years to pull my research together, to check and double check my information and to make it as readable as possible.
Q: Are you planning on giving any other talks during the remainder of your stay in Israel?
A: I have one more presentation during this trip to Israel, a cooking demonstration for the Senior Citizen group of Gush Etzion and Efrat in Alon Shvut.
November and December are my busy months, so I am returning for a series of presentations there. I fly from Israel to Denver, Colorado for a talk and then spend weeks giving talks and cooking demos. It beats working for a living. Meanwhile, I work on my website (gilmarks.com), blog (gilmarks.com/wordpress) and updating my Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Gil Marks’ books are available on Amazon and other internet sources.
iTravelJerusalem.com is a new online international travel portal offering all the latest information on things to do , places to eat and places to stay.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Sliding into Sukkot! Safe!
I always feel a little like a dog chasing its tail during the Yom Tovim - I never feel like I've completely caught up with myself before the next hag begins. and so it is today - just began defrosting chicken and, of all things, a chicken breast "pastrami" style. The butcher said it's delicious. The breast has been rolled into a roast, pickled and coated with pastrami seasoning. I bought it partly out of nostalgia for the seasoning, as I gave up red meat more than 25 years ago. I'm planning to roast it with potatoes and carrots. What could be bad?
Also on tap, a colorful vegetable tagine with sweet and regular potatoes,carrots, parsnips, dried fruits, barley and again, delicious evocative seasonings - this time, cardamon, cumin and cinnamon. I can't wait to smell the kitchen once this gets cooking!
Finally, with just 2 of us at home (miss you, pook) we have a lot of leftover challah. That will be transformed magically into a challah kugel, much like a delicious sweet bread pudding. (So good, hot or cold!) This week, I think I'll serve it with a warm blueberry sauce from Trader Joe's. Add to that a simply fabulous - and simple - pareve chocolate cake with powdered sugar, and voila! A great Sukkot dinner.
Hag Sameach, and keep cooking.
Also on tap, a colorful vegetable tagine with sweet and regular potatoes,carrots, parsnips, dried fruits, barley and again, delicious evocative seasonings - this time, cardamon, cumin and cinnamon. I can't wait to smell the kitchen once this gets cooking!
Finally, with just 2 of us at home (miss you, pook) we have a lot of leftover challah. That will be transformed magically into a challah kugel, much like a delicious sweet bread pudding. (So good, hot or cold!) This week, I think I'll serve it with a warm blueberry sauce from Trader Joe's. Add to that a simply fabulous - and simple - pareve chocolate cake with powdered sugar, and voila! A great Sukkot dinner.
Hag Sameach, and keep cooking.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Nothing Succeeds Like Ethnic Succession
I came across an amusing and fascinating article about the new Moroccan-born owners of that old stalwart, Manischewitz Foods. They, like me, agree that gefilte fish is definitely an acquired taste. I'll wince and eat it twice a year if necessary - and we're not talking about the jar stuff here. I'll only eat the Sandra Lee-ish semi-home-made buy the frozen block and boil it yourself version. So enjoy this article from the Wall st Journal:
With Some Passing on Gefilte Fish, A New Lure: Fish 'Meatballs'
Manischewitz Takes Mediterranean Turn, Hoping to Spice Up Fare; 'What Is Cumin?'
By LUCETTE LAGNADO
For years, gefilte fish—plump little patties of minced fish—has been the Jewish holiday treat that some Jews love to hate.
Enlarge Image
Manischewitz
Manischewitz has traditionally made Jewish foods like matzoh-ball soup.
These days, some say they've moved on. "Tradition is important but it needs updating—it doesn't have to be only about gefilte fish anymore," says Chany Konikov, a rabbi's wife in Southampton, N.Y., who also likes poached salmon and sushi.
Even Paul Bensabat wasn't that impressed when he tried it. "Boring," he says. "Pretty bland." And he's co-CEO of Manischewitz Co., one of the largest producers of gefilte fish. When Mr. Bensabat and partners took over the 123-year-old company, they decided to spice things up. One idea: Moroccan fish balls.
Manischewitz, founded by a rabbi, has been steeped in the traditions of Russian and Eastern European Jewry, producing matzoh, chicken soup and jars of gefilte fish—patties of carp, mullet, pike and whitefish in various combinations—which are a fixture on the holidays among Ashkenazi, or Eastern European, Jews. The Jewish High Holidays began last week with the Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashana, and culminate with Yom Kippur, which starts Friday night.
Mr. Bensabat, a Moroccan Jew born in Casablanca, had never tasted gefilte fish when he and his partner joined an investor who had acquired the company. Some Manischewitz fare hadn't been a part of his upbringing. "I never grew up eating matzoh-ball soup," he says. His childhood memories were of couscous and other dishes of the Mediterranean.
Enlarge Image
Manischewitz
Manischewitz makes more than 50 different kinds of gefilte fish.
He started sampling jars of gefilte fish. Manischewitz makes more than 50 different kinds—sweet and not sweet, in jelly and in broth, to name a few.
His partner and co-CEO Alain Bankier, also Moroccan-Jewish and also from Casablanca, is more diplomatic. "It is an acquired taste," he says.
They agreed Manischewitz needed to go beyond gefilte fish—and quickly. Sales of traditional gefilte fish in a jar were still a pillar of the business, but were steadily going down. Younger consumers favored other foods or brands. The company hadn't produced new products in years when Messrs. Bensabat and Bankier joined it in 2008.
"All ethnic foods decline over time," says Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, who recalls how his mother and other women of past generations would keep live fish in their bathtubs and make gefilte fish from scratch. Gefilte fish, he says, "didn't go mainstream" the way, for example, bagels did.
Mr. Bensabat's prescription was to branch out to Mediterranean fare—starting with his mother's Moroccan fish balls.
The company's food technologists at its headquarters in Newark, N.J., were mystified: They hadn't a clue how to make Moroccan fish balls.
The solution: a cross-cultural, trans-Atlantic cuisine transplant, in which Mr. Bensabat would get the family recipe from his 83-year-old maman and Manischewitz's cooks would translate it for large-scale production.
Mrs. Claire Bensabat's Festive Sweet Couscous Recipe
Sweet couscous is a specialty of Mrs. Claire Bensabat, Paul Bensabat's mother, that she loves to make; since she cooks by instinct, it was hard for her to come up with exact measures, but through the efforts of working together with her son, she produced the following recipe for The Journal
Makes 5 servings
1. Preparing the couscous
Ingredients:
1 10-oz box semolina
2 cups water
½ tsp salt and pepper
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Wash the semolina 2 times then add the water, oil, salt and pepper and roll it by hand in a large bowl.
Place the semolina in the steamer and evaporate it 3 times in a row. In between each process of evaporation, place the semolina in a bowl and keep spraying it with water and rolling it at the same time to avoid lumps.
When the semolina looks fluffy, it is ready to be served with the prunes, raisins and almonds, prepared as described.
2. Preparing the prunes, raisins and almonds:
Ingredients :
2 large onions
1 lb dried sweet pitted prunes
½ lb raisins
7 oz minced almonds
½ teaspoon cinnamon
4 tablespoons sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
½ teaspoon of chicken powder
1 ½ glasses of water
½ cup powered sugar
In a pan, fry the minced onions until they are golden brown.
In a pot, pour 1½ glass of water and add half of the golden brown onions, the dried pitted prunes, the cinnamon and sugar. Simmer for 5 minutes over medium heat.
In a separate pan, add the rest of the minced onions, 1 glass of water, the chicken powder and the raisins. Simmer for 5 minutes over medium heat.
When both prunes and raisins are cooked, combine in the pot and cook for 5 minutes over low heat.
Separately, pan fry the minced almonds until they are golden brown and crunchy.
On a round plate, place the semolina in a volcano shape and put the minced almonds on top of the cone. The raisins and prunes should be displayed in "strings" or lines falling from the top of the cone to the base, alternating with the powdered sugar "strings", to get that festive sweet couscous nicely decorated.
* * *
Celine Bankier's Meat Pastelles (Moroccan Meat Patties)
Pastelles are the Moroccan-Sephardic variation of knishes. These are fried potato patties, stuffed with meat. The recipe is "a vue d'oeil" or "measure by eye," in other words an instinctive approach, therefore the indicated amounts are approximate. It is translated from French as given by Celine Bankier to her son, Alain.
Makes approximately 30 pastelles
The potatoes:
You can make about 2 lbs of your favorite potato puree, or you can use potato flakes, directions below. Use only the potato flakes and not the spice mix that may come with the flakes.
Boil together 3¼ cups of water, 5 tablespoons of margarine and 1 teaspoon of salt. After the water boils, remove from heat, and add ½ cup cold water, 5 cups of potato flakes, three eggs, a pinch of salt, ½ tablespoon of pepper and a little bit of nutmeg (¼ teaspoon?).
Mix contents until it is a consistent puree. Add a little more salt or nutmeg as needed.
The meat:
Take about 2 lbs of ground beef, add ½ cup of water, ½ teaspoon of pepper, and cook until the water is evaporated. Remove meat from the heat and add the juice of one lemon, 1 tablespoon vinegar, and 2 tablespoons of very finely chopped parsley and blend together. Re-grind cooked meat to a very fine consistency.
Form little round flat meat balls ("boulettes"), which are thin and approximately 3-4 centimeters in diameter. Cover your palms with oil, and take some of the potato puree, form a patty and envelop the flat meat "boulette" in the puree, roll it your hand to make a flat potato patty and make sure the meat is well covered by the potato puree.
Dip potato patty in cake meal and then in egg batter (beat the whole eggs into a consistent liquid) and fry quickly in hot oil until lightly golden on both sides. Take out and gently pat down in absorbent paper to take off the oil and serve warm.
There were a few obstacles, starting with the fact that his mother, Claire Bensabat, lives 4,000 miles away in Nice. She speaks French and doesn't use recipes or follow a cookbook to prepare her delicacies.
Her recipe for fish balls: Take a fish, and "add a little bit of cumin."
When Mr. Bensabat pressed for exact measures, his mother said she had none.
"It was a nightmare," he says.
Mrs. Bensabat agreed to go to her kitchen the next day, prepare a batch of her fish balls from scratch, and jot down every step.
After some back and forth, Mr. Bensabat handed over the instructions.
This settled nothing.
"I told them they are off the wall," Ely Fink, a regional sales manager, says. He wondered how he was going to get such an exotic product into supermarkets used to stocking traditional Manischewitz fare.
Then there was the Cumin Crisis. Manischewitz had no cumin. The industrial kitchen had "salt, pepper, garlic, onion—nothing exciting," says Inna Rabinovich, the Russian-born food technologist charged with reproducing the Moroccan fish balls. She struggled to produce a version for mass production, summoning the boss each time she prepared a new batch, hoping he'd like it. "Sometimes it wasn't very good—but he was very polite," she says.
They turned to Manischewitz's longtime chief of procurement, Yossi Ostreicher, to procure the large quantities of cumin required.
"What is cumin?" he said.
Manischewitz couldn't buy just any cumin. It needed to be both kosher and kosher for Passover. Mr. Ostreicher found one firm in Israel able to furnish it.
There remained the question of how to present the product to the public.
"It is not like you go to the Mediterranean fish ball section of your local supermarket," says David Rossi, the company's marketing chief.
Executives debated whether to label the fish balls "Mediterranean" or "Moroccan." Should they name the product "fish bites" or "fish balls"? There was even a suggestion to use the French name, "boulettes de poisson."
The consensus was to go with "fish meatballs." The name is "very descriptive and appetizing," Mr. Bensabat says. To avoid confusion, the company's marketers put quotes around "meatballs."
The product made it to stores this past spring. Mr. Bensabat says it's doing "quite nicely, but a new product takes time." And the company says sales of gefilte fish are stabilizing, which they attribute to a longing for "comfort food."
The partners aren't done. They're trying to make oregano-flavored matzoh, and "Mediterranean gefilte fish," adding rosemary and other spices.
Mrs. Bensabat has been offering suggestions to her son of other dishes the company could make, such as her lemon caper sauce and a Moroccan dish known as chouchouka, made of red, orange and green peppers and tomatoes.
The recipe the partners want most is for the couscous they loved as children, smothered in a meat or chicken sauce.
Mrs. Bensabat is busy in her kitchen tryin enjoy this article from the Wall Street Journal:
With Some Passing on Gefilte Fish, A New Lure: Fish 'Meatballs'
Manischewitz Takes Mediterranean Turn, Hoping to Spice Up Fare; 'What Is Cumin?'
By LUCETTE LAGNADO
For years, gefilte fish—plump little patties of minced fish—has been the Jewish holiday treat that some Jews love to hate.
Enlarge Image
Manischewitz
Manischewitz has traditionally made Jewish foods like matzoh-ball soup.
These days, some say they've moved on. "Tradition is important but it needs updating—it doesn't have to be only about gefilte fish anymore," says Chany Konikov, a rabbi's wife in Southampton, N.Y., who also likes poached salmon and sushi.
Even Paul Bensabat wasn't that impressed when he tried it. "Boring," he says. "Pretty bland." And he's co-CEO of Manischewitz Co., one of the largest producers of gefilte fish. When Mr. Bensabat and partners took over the 123-year-old company, they decided to spice things up. One idea: Moroccan fish balls.
Manischewitz, founded by a rabbi, has been steeped in the traditions of Russian and Eastern European Jewry, producing matzoh, chicken soup and jars of gefilte fish—patties of carp, mullet, pike and whitefish in various combinations—which are a fixture on the holidays among Ashkenazi, or Eastern European, Jews. The Jewish High Holidays began last week with the Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashana, and culminate with Yom Kippur, which starts Friday night.
Mr. Bensabat, a Moroccan Jew born in Casablanca, had never tasted gefilte fish when he and his partner joined an investor who had acquired the company. Some Manischewitz fare hadn't been a part of his upbringing. "I never grew up eating matzoh-ball soup," he says. His childhood memories were of couscous and other dishes of the Mediterranean.
Enlarge Image
Manischewitz
Manischewitz makes more than 50 different kinds of gefilte fish.
He started sampling jars of gefilte fish. Manischewitz makes more than 50 different kinds—sweet and not sweet, in jelly and in broth, to name a few.
His partner and co-CEO Alain Bankier, also Moroccan-Jewish and also from Casablanca, is more diplomatic. "It is an acquired taste," he says.
They agreed Manischewitz needed to go beyond gefilte fish—and quickly. Sales of traditional gefilte fish in a jar were still a pillar of the business, but were steadily going down. Younger consumers favored other foods or brands. The company hadn't produced new products in years when Messrs. Bensabat and Bankier joined it in 2008.
"All ethnic foods decline over time," says Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, who recalls how his mother and other women of past generations would keep live fish in their bathtubs and make gefilte fish from scratch. Gefilte fish, he says, "didn't go mainstream" the way, for example, bagels did.
Mr. Bensabat's prescription was to branch out to Mediterranean fare—starting with his mother's Moroccan fish balls.
The company's food technologists at its headquarters in Newark, N.J., were mystified: They hadn't a clue how to make Moroccan fish balls.
The solution: a cross-cultural, trans-Atlantic cuisine transplant, in which Mr. Bensabat would get the family recipe from his 83-year-old maman and Manischewitz's cooks would translate it for large-scale production.
Mrs. Claire Bensabat's Festive Sweet Couscous Recipe
Sweet couscous is a specialty of Mrs. Claire Bensabat, Paul Bensabat's mother, that she loves to make; since she cooks by instinct, it was hard for her to come up with exact measures, but through the efforts of working together with her son, she produced the following recipe for The Journal
Makes 5 servings
1. Preparing the couscous
Ingredients:
1 10-oz box semolina
2 cups water
½ tsp salt and pepper
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Wash the semolina 2 times then add the water, oil, salt and pepper and roll it by hand in a large bowl.
Place the semolina in the steamer and evaporate it 3 times in a row. In between each process of evaporation, place the semolina in a bowl and keep spraying it with water and rolling it at the same time to avoid lumps.
When the semolina looks fluffy, it is ready to be served with the prunes, raisins and almonds, prepared as described.
2. Preparing the prunes, raisins and almonds:
Ingredients :
2 large onions
1 lb dried sweet pitted prunes
½ lb raisins
7 oz minced almonds
½ teaspoon cinnamon
4 tablespoons sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
½ teaspoon of chicken powder
1 ½ glasses of water
½ cup powered sugar
In a pan, fry the minced onions until they are golden brown.
In a pot, pour 1½ glass of water and add half of the golden brown onions, the dried pitted prunes, the cinnamon and sugar. Simmer for 5 minutes over medium heat.
In a separate pan, add the rest of the minced onions, 1 glass of water, the chicken powder and the raisins. Simmer for 5 minutes over medium heat.
When both prunes and raisins are cooked, combine in the pot and cook for 5 minutes over low heat.
Separately, pan fry the minced almonds until they are golden brown and crunchy.
On a round plate, place the semolina in a volcano shape and put the minced almonds on top of the cone. The raisins and prunes should be displayed in "strings" or lines falling from the top of the cone to the base, alternating with the powdered sugar "strings", to get that festive sweet couscous nicely decorated.
* * *
Celine Bankier's Meat Pastelles (Moroccan Meat Patties)
Pastelles are the Moroccan-Sephardic variation of knishes. These are fried potato patties, stuffed with meat. The recipe is "a vue d'oeil" or "measure by eye," in other words an instinctive approach, therefore the indicated amounts are approximate. It is translated from French as given by Celine Bankier to her son, Alain.
Makes approximately 30 pastelles
The potatoes:
You can make about 2 lbs of your favorite potato puree, or you can use potato flakes, directions below. Use only the potato flakes and not the spice mix that may come with the flakes.
Boil together 3¼ cups of water, 5 tablespoons of margarine and 1 teaspoon of salt. After the water boils, remove from heat, and add ½ cup cold water, 5 cups of potato flakes, three eggs, a pinch of salt, ½ tablespoon of pepper and a little bit of nutmeg (¼ teaspoon?).
Mix contents until it is a consistent puree. Add a little more salt or nutmeg as needed.
The meat:
Take about 2 lbs of ground beef, add ½ cup of water, ½ teaspoon of pepper, and cook until the water is evaporated. Remove meat from the heat and add the juice of one lemon, 1 tablespoon vinegar, and 2 tablespoons of very finely chopped parsley and blend together. Re-grind cooked meat to a very fine consistency.
Form little round flat meat balls ("boulettes"), which are thin and approximately 3-4 centimeters in diameter. Cover your palms with oil, and take some of the potato puree, form a patty and envelop the flat meat "boulette" in the puree, roll it your hand to make a flat potato patty and make sure the meat is well covered by the potato puree.
Dip potato patty in cake meal and then in egg batter (beat the whole eggs into a consistent liquid) and fry quickly in hot oil until lightly golden on both sides. Take out and gently pat down in absorbent paper to take off the oil and serve warm.
There were a few obstacles, starting with the fact that his mother, Claire Bensabat, lives 4,000 miles away in Nice. She speaks French and doesn't use recipes or follow a cookbook to prepare her delicacies.
Her recipe for fish balls: Take a fish, and "add a little bit of cumin."
When Mr. Bensabat pressed for exact measures, his mother said she had none.
"It was a nightmare," he says.
Mrs. Bensabat agreed to go to her kitchen the next day, prepare a batch of her fish balls from scratch, and jot down every step.
After some back and forth, Mr. Bensabat handed over the instructions.
This settled nothing.
"I told them they are off the wall," Ely Fink, a regional sales manager, says. He wondered how he was going to get such an exotic product into supermarkets used to stocking traditional Manischewitz fare.
Then there was the Cumin Crisis. Manischewitz had no cumin. The industrial kitchen had "salt, pepper, garlic, onion—nothing exciting," says Inna Rabinovich, the Russian-born food technologist charged with reproducing the Moroccan fish balls. She struggled to produce a version for mass production, summoning the boss each time she prepared a new batch, hoping he'd like it. "Sometimes it wasn't very good—but he was very polite," she says.
They turned to Manischewitz's longtime chief of procurement, Yossi Ostreicher, to procure the large quantities of cumin required.
"What is cumin?" he said.
Manischewitz couldn't buy just any cumin. It needed to be both kosher and kosher for Passover. Mr. Ostreicher found one firm in Israel able to furnish it.
There remained the question of how to present the product to the public.
"It is not like you go to the Mediterranean fish ball section of your local supermarket," says David Rossi, the company's marketing chief.
Executives debated whether to label the fish balls "Mediterranean" or "Moroccan." Should they name the product "fish bites" or "fish balls"? There was even a suggestion to use the French name, "boulettes de poisson."
The consensus was to go with "fish meatballs." The name is "very descriptive and appetizing," Mr. Bensabat says. To avoid confusion, the company's marketers put quotes around "meatballs."
The product made it to stores this past spring. Mr. Bensabat says it's doing "quite nicely, but a new product takes time." And the company says sales of gefilte fish are stabilizing, which they attribute to a longing for "comfort food."
The partners aren't done. They're trying to make oregano-flavored matzoh, and "Mediterranean gefilte fish," adding rosemary and other spices.
Mrs. Bensabat has been offering suggestions to her son of other dishes the company could make, such as her lemon caper sauce and a Moroccan dish known as chouchouka, made of red, orange and green peppers and tomatoes.
The recipe the partners want most is for the couscous they loved as children, smothered in a meat or chicken sauce.
Mrs. Bensabat is busy in her kitchen tryin enjoy this article from the Wall Street Journal:
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