Preparations for Passover with mom

30 years since she left

30 years after my mother left us at the age of 57, I am recreating her unique dishes in the kitchen.

Coiled flesh snakes danced toward the bowl   

These are not the foods she brought from my grandmother's house, the Bukovina kitchen. But foods she prepared here in Israel, as part of the creativity and innovation that characterized her in many fields.

I remember her sitting in the kitchen, after she assembled her silver meat grinder, clamped it tightly to the Formica table and turned and turned and turned until she ground all the meat. 

All the ingredients are arranged in front of her - one bowl with dry ingredients that she moistened and in a second bowl, the meat. 

The colorful pyrex bowls, which were very expensive and rare in the early sixties, are with me and are still used today for preparation and serving. A gift that my grandmother bought for my mother at the "Naa" utensil store, next to the Great Synagogue on Herzl Street in Haifa.

The pyrex bowls that grandma bought for mom

I see her in front of my eyes rolling balls in her hands something like a dumpling. Something like a kneidella. She pulls out her thumb and levels a place for meat with it and fills and fills. 
This is her kosher for Pesach.

A long table is about to be opened in the small house, grandma and the uncles will arrive, the holiday gifts are already placed on the sideboard and mom is busy with a variety of dishes that grandma didn't prepare in Chernowitz nor here, in the tiny kitchen on Sokolov Street.

The recipe for Cuba

Happily, like at my parents' house, we toast around a full table on Seder night, so the recipe here is for 40 koba.

For the dough:

• 1 kg matzah flour
• 2 liters of boiling water
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• 1 tablespoon of paprika 

Preparation of the dough:

Into the matzah flour mixed with salt and paprika, slowly add 2 liters of boiling water while stirring. If the paste is too thick, you can add a little water and cool the paste.

Filling:

• 1 kg of ground meat
• 3 large onions
• 4 crushed garlic cloves 
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• ½ teaspoon pepper
•  1 tablespoon of salt 
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Preparation of the filling:

• Fry the onion in olive oil
• Add meat and spices
• Fry until the meat is browned
• Remove from heat, add pine nuts and cool
• Fill a small bowl of water to dip your fingers in while rolling the dough that wraps the meat
• Make a ball from the dough
• With the help of the thumb, create a place to insert the meat
• Try to reach a thin side of the shell

• Add meat and spices and fry until the meat is browned
• Remove from heat, add pine nuts and cool
• fill with meat. Pin the sides of the dough
• You can help by wetting your fingers with water from the bowl
• After frying in deep oil, remove to a strainer

• Cool the cube. You can freeze until the eve of the holiday
• I recommend reheating after defrosting, in a preheated oven, for ten minutes

May we know days of peace and freedom.