Nostalgia of the palate: The importance of cheesecake on Shavuot

Nothing is more nostalgic than the palate.

We can forget what someone or something looks like, the color of the hair or eyes of a childhood friend, but we never forget the taste of favorite foods lovingly prepared by mothers and grandmothers.

More often than not, they cooked by instinct and never wrote down their recipes. If they shared them at all, they used expressions like a pinch of salt, a dab of butter, a cup of flour – never saying how much a pinch might be, how large a dab, or the size of the cup. But they always seemed to get it right when they cooked.

My mother was a fantastic cook – although the kitchen was not a place with which she was familiar. A rich man’s daughter, who grew up with servants performing all the menial tasks, she barely knew how to boil a kettle of water when she arrived in Australia.

She had been preceded there by a maternal uncle who did well for himself in the lucky country and had suggested that his sisters and their families follow. Three of them did, but my grandmother, who was more affluent than all three put together, was reluctant to give up her lifestyle. It was taken from her, along with her life, in the Treblinka death camp.

My great-aunts were also great cooks and all lived in the same neighborhood, some distance from each other. My great-aunt Henna was arguably the best of them all, and it was she who had the patience to teach my mother the secrets of the stove. She lived only a few minutes’ walk away from our home, and when I was very young I always popped into her house on my way home from Yiddish school.

She invariably knew when I was coming and always greeted me with the instructions to wash my hands and sit down for a piece of cake. Every cake she offered over the years was delicious, but the two best were apple cake and cheesecake, which probably were adapted from traditional Polish recipes.

The apple cake, for instance, was never made with chopped or sliced apples but with grated apples mixed with a sprinkling of flour, a teaspoon or two of cinnamon, a dusting of sugar, a few drops of vanilla, and a handful of raisins.

But her cheesecake was her the pièce de résistance, and she faithfully taught my mother how to make it to ensure a velvety smooth texture and a distinctly sweet taste.

Before coming to Israel for the first time as a tourist, I had eaten similar cheesecakes, some dryer, some a little more moist, some slightly less sweet – but all variations on the same theme – possibly because some 90% of the Jews in Melbourne, which was my home town, were immigrants, and most of them came from Poland.

To be honest, I’m a cheesecake addict, and on my initial visit to Israel in the 1960s I was thrilled to see cheesecake in every pastry shop – until I took my first bite. Oh, what a disappointment, even though a large ratio of the Ashkenazi population at the time originated from Poland. The cake crumbled on the fork. It was not sufficiently sweet, and it was insufficiently solid for the taste to linger in my mouth.

That awful cheesecake is still being sold in pastry shops in Israel, so for some it must have something going for it.

Shavuot: A time for cheesecake and blintzes

SHAVUOT WAS always a happy time because in addition to cheesecake, we had blintzes. Admittedly, we also had them at other times of the year but not in such profusion, and somehow on Shavuot there was a slight difference in the taste.

I still have visions of my mother standing by the stove and frying paper-thin crepes to wrap the cheese. Try as I might, I could never get the crepes as thin as hers. Although she sometimes used cream cheese for the filling, her preference was cottage cheese, to which she added half a teaspoon of sugar and a drop of vanilla essence.

Although it wasn’t Shavuot but closer to Hanukkah, I remember spending my 15th birthday in the hospital with peritonitis. My mother arrived with a huge cheesecake in one hand and a large container of blintzes in the other. The other patients in the ward and I had a magnificent midnight feast that night.

Even though the blintzes I made were quite tasty, they could not compare to my mother’s, and preparing them was also time-consuming.

I found some commercial ones in the religious Jerusalem neighborhood of Geula. They were quite good, but the crepes were much too thick. Finally, in my local supermarket I came across blintzes produced under the label of Brunch and Crunch, which are the closest in taste and texture to my mother’s.

Through trial and error, I discovered that while they were okay when taken straight from the freezer to the frying pan, they taste a lot better when left to thaw first. I serve them with the contents of a small container of sour cream, over which I drizzle honey. Yum!

When my husband was alive, I baked cheesecake for Shavuot and he devoured it, which always surprised me because on Passover we could not agree on the matzah brei. Danny was of Romanian background, and the matzah brei his mother made was savory instead of sweet, with lots of black pepper, and made in the form of a pancake. Mine was loose, with sugar and cinnamon.

What I could not emulate was the crisscross pastry topping of my mother’s cheesecake. No matter how hard I tried, my crisscrossed or lace pastry always sank into the cheese mixture, whereas it looked so nice on an apple cake.

I still make a point of eating cheesecake on Shavuot, but now I buy it ready-made and have come across some really good ones in various cake stores in and around Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda. The largest variety can be found in a store near the Jaffa Road entrance to the open market, where a couple of haredim have a store in which the main focus is cheesecakes – mostly baked, but also a few refrigerator cheesecakes that are made with gelatin. In either case, whether the ingredients are baked or not, the cake should be made at least a day before being eaten.

Cream cheese and cottage cheese also make for a great base for sweet and savory dishes.

One of my former employers, when hosting a reception, drained cans of yellow cling peaches, filled the brightly hued peach halves with swirls of cream cheese studded with chopped dates, and topped them with a strawberry, a cherry, or some crushed walnuts.

This really goes down well, but to make life easier, instead of chopping dates, I use date spread, which I mix into the cheese with a drop of vanilla or some liqueur.

For a savory mix, take a tub or two of cottage cheese and add finely chopped shallots, green and red peppers, and grated or finely chopped radish, plus salt and pepper. Mix well and refrigerate.

BUT BACK to cheesecake. The easiest, of course, is a refrigerator cheesecake, which requires neither eggs nor flour. The flavor can be enhanced by adding a tub or two of fruit yogurt to the mixture, which is fairly easy. The only difficult part is making sure that there are no lumps in the gelatin when it is mixed with the cheese. It’s also important to keep stirring the gelatin in hot water until it cools, but not until it sets because if it sets, it can’t be properly integrated with the cheese.

A cream cheese, gelatin, sugar, and vanilla mixture can be used on its own as the mainstay of a refrigerator cheesecake. A portion of it can also be set aside and mixed with cocoa, coffee, or crushed berries to create a topping to pour over the white base.

For a really strong color contrast, use coffee or cocoa. For a more interesting taste, use finely chopped pieces of fruit. It doesn’t have to be fresh fruit. You can also drain a can of mixed fruits.

Technological advances can make life a lot easier for those who want to boast that they made the cake themselves. Preparing the base for a baked cheesecake no longer involves measuring out flour, butter, and sugar for the shortcrust pastry base. A variety of frozen ready-made doughs can be purchased at most supermarkets. The real trick is getting the oven temperature just right.

Another advantage, or possibly disadvantage, of technological advancements is easy access via the Internet to a multitude of recipes in almost any language. There is no longer any need to buy cookbooks, which take up a lot of shelf space. Now, anyone seeking a recipe merely has to press a button, which is why my great-aunt Henna’s cheesecake recipe is not published on this page.

Just Google “cheesecake” or “Shavuot,” and you will quickly discover scores of tried and tested options. The same goes for blintzes and umpteen other dairy dishes. Enjoy! ■