It seems that we’ve encountered some wonderful bagel stories in our travels.

When Marilynn worked at Honeywell-Bull, in Brighton, Massachusetts in the 1980s, one of her co-workers talked glowingly about his childhood memories of riding with his father when he delivered newspapers early in the mornings to drugstores and variety stores. The two would end their “night” stopping off for freshly baked bagels and eat them in the truck. It was a treasured moment of father-son bonding.

Recently we met a man with a sweetly resonant voice. In his Irish accent he told us about his memories of the Jewish Mayor of Dublin, Robert Briscoe and of his growing up in the Jewish neighborhood in Dublin. Although he wasn’t Jewish, himself, he loved going to the bakeries for fresh bagels, and it was then and there that he learned to eat his bagels with lox and cream cheese.

When we were researching and writing Heirloom Cooking, we spoke with Sara Bazer, the daughter of one of the founders of the Arfa family bakery in Chicago. Founded in 1948, by Leon Arfa and his brother, Leon ran it with his wife, Dina, until 1974. Sara shared the recipe for bagels baked by the Arfa Brothers, but we had to break down the commercial recipe to bake 12 bagels.

Our father, Harry, was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and he was familiar with Katz’s Bagels, a tiny bakery in a brick building in Chelsea. One day, in the 1950s, as we were driving by Katz’s, Daddy said that he knew one of the bakers. We stopped and we went in. The baker, a tiny little man, still worked there, and he and Daddy had a reunion. Katz’s bagels was sold, and we’ve tasted the bagels made by the new owners, and they are very good.

We can’t forget the bagel shops in Brookline, Massachusetts. We barely avoided an argument with a female customer who thought we weren’t effusive enough about the quality of the bagels we had just purchased.

We’re not big fans of “Everything” bagels or bagels baked with blueberries, or Pizza Bagels, but we admit to liking raisin bagels or bagels with sesame or poppy seeds.

We know that many of you swear by bagels with cream cheese and lox, but we think there is nothing like a freshly-toasted bagel with chunky peanut butter.

We know there are more bagel stories out there, and we want to hear about them.

Leslie Gaydos, Marilynn, and Sheila in Our Kitchen with Fresh Cherry Pie

We will be appearing on New England Cable News’ The Morning Show, Channel 6, in Boston, with Leslie Gaydos, on her Emmy-nominated segment, Celebrity Does It Work, on Wednesday, May 15, at 8:15 AM, EST.

We will be testing a cherry pitter that claims it is capable of pitting four cherries at a time.  We can’t let you know if the cherry pitter worked until the segment is aired, but we confess that we both hand-pitted four pounds of fresh cherries before we were able to test the cherry pitter.

It took almost forever to hand-pit the cherries, and pitting the cherries left us with purple stained fingers and fingernails.  We went the way of hand-pitting because we had to bake two Fresh Cherry Pies ahead of time for the segment.

This is the recipe for the Fresh Cherry Pie we baked in our home kitchen in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

MARILYNN’S FRESH CHERRY PIE

When we were faced with the challenge of baking a cherry pie made with fresh pitted cherries, we decided to try a variation of the One, Two, Three Open-Faced Blueberry Pie that appears on page 224, of Heirloom Baking With The Brass Sisters.  We’ve tasted cherry pie only once, and it turned out to be a gluey slice loaded with bright pink cherries.  This cherry pie is something else.  It has the perfect balance of sweet and sour because of the addition of lemon zest and lemon juice.  The touch of cinnamon gives it some complexity, and the flakey crust is just firm enough to support the wealth of fresh cherries within.   The only thing better than Fresh Cherry Pie is Fresh Cherry Pie with whipped cream.

We found the recipe for One, Two, Three Open-Faced Blueberry Pie handwritten in a copy of Laboratory Recipes owned by Rachel W. Banks.

For Glaze:

2 oz./1-8 cup seedless raspberry jam

For Crust:

Prebaked pie shell

For Filling:

4 cups pitted fresh cherries, divided

½ cup plus 2 ½ tablespoons water, divided

2 ½ tablespoons cornstarch

½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon lemon juice

2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon salt

For Whipped Cream:

1 cup heavy cream

2 teaspoons confectioners’ sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1. To make the glaze:  Cook raspberry jam in metal saucepan on low heat until bubbles form around the edges or heat jam in glass bowl in the microwave for 25 seconds on low.  Brush bottom and sides of cooled pie shell with glaze and let cool.

1. To make the filling:  Place a cup of the cherries and ½ cup of the water in metal saucepan.  Bring to a boil over medium heat.  Boil gently 3 to 4 minutes and remove from heat.  Add cornstarch to remaining 2 ½ tablespoons water and whisk to dissolve.  Add cornstarch mixture, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt to cooked cherries.  Bring to a boil over low heat, and stir for about 1 minute, or until cherries have the consistency of jam.

1. Transfer cooked cherry mixture to a 6-cup bowl.  Fold in remaining 3 cups of cherries.  Add filling to pie shell and let cool for at least 2 hours.  After pie has cooled, and just before serving, pipe whipped cream around edge of pie.  This pie is best served the day it is made, but it will still be good the next day if loosely wrapped in wax paper or placed in a covered container and refrigerated.

1. For the whipped cream:  Beat heavy cream to stiff peaks and add confectioners’ sugar and then vanilla to whipped cream.  Place whipped cream in piping bag or plastic bag with one corner snipped off and pipe around edge of pie.  Extra whipped cream can be stored in a covered glass or plastic container in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

Yield:  8 slices

Sweet Tips:  • Pitted fresh cherries for the “cherry jam” should be coarsely chopped. • The raw pitted cherries to be added to the “cherry jam” should be cut in half.

Sweet Touches:  • After the pie shell is filled with the cherry filling, you can carefully flip cherry halves so that the skin sides of the cherries are on top, but be careful, filling will be hot.

Adapted from Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters, published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2006 Marilynn Brass and Sheila Brass.

My mother, Dorothy Katziff Brass, has been gone 51 years.  She died in April 1962, two weeks after her 60^th birthday.  She had been ill for two years with kidney disease, a result of the diabetes that had been passed down through her family through three generations.  I was 20, and my sister, Sheila, was 25.

When I learned that she was sick, rather than pretending it wasn’t so, I did what had to be done.  She raised me that way.  She never liked shielding me from life because she wanted me to be independent and strong.  That was her legacy.  She never bragged about me, saying that people would tell her of my achievements.  She liked it that way, and I came to like it that way, too.  One of her favorite expressions was, “What would you do if I weren’t here?”  I cried myself to sleep for six months after she died.

I came to realize that when you are young and lose your mother, she isn’t there to acknowledge you as an adult, and compensation has to be made.  Her goal was to raise an educated woman who knew the difference between right and wrong and who would never let anyone rob her of her creativity. My mother never went to college.  Girls didn’t need college educations in the early part of the 20^th century, or so she was told.  Instead, she helped both of her brothers obtain degrees in Chemical Engineering.

I remember the kitchen and pantry where she performed miracles or so it seemed when she produced individual lemon meringue pies in Pyrex custard cups and made her own Chinese Beef and Peppers with assistance from Kitchen Bouquet and La Choy noodles.

I remember the fruit punch she made for us to take to the beach on hot summer days, and the blueberry pies she set on the kitchen windowsill to cool and how wonderful it was to open the screen door off the back porch and walk into a kitchen that smelled of baking challah.

I remember my mother wearing her black Persian lamb coat, smelling of Coty’s Lilly of the Valley eau de toilette when she bent down to kiss me goodnight before leaving for a relative’s wedding and how I played with the curly fur the way I played with her dark curls. She always wore ruby-colored lipstick that came in black plastic tubes and smelled of raspberries.  She saved my life numerous times when croup attacked me and she slept in her clothes in case she had to run into the hospital in the middle of the night.

What happened to me?  I grew up, and found out some very important truths – you don’t have to give birth to be a mother, and you don’t have to be biologically related to mother someone.

The times in my life when I felt I needed a mother or didn’t even realize I needed a mother, I was fortunate to know some women who came to my rescue.  They nurtured me, and they encouraged me, and they criticized me when I needed it.  Because they were human, they weren’t always right, but the very fact that they were willing to spend the time to interact with me was invaluable.

When I ran away from home at the age of 26, Dorothy Ladd, the woman I worked for at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, took me in for the night until I could move to the Cambridge YWCA.  She threw a crocheted afghan over me and comforted me with ice cream and chocolate cake. She remained a good friend and mentor.

Ilene Beyer, who was the Residence Director at the YWCA, helped me make the transition from leaving home to living in a communal atmosphere.  I experienced the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, often stopping in her office for a chat and advice.  We went to Weight Watchers together.

Aunt Dee Dee, my father’s sister, who had been a concert violinist as a child and was a lawyer for more than 50 years, never had children, but she brought up three generations of her nieces and nephews, giving advice, teaching us to type, and telling us that when people said good things about us it was like “vitamins for the soul.”  She wasn’t a cook, didn’t like keeping house, took care of her elderly mother for years, and sent me off to Nantucket Island for a seminar with a bag of Fig Newtons and a paperback copy of the The Greatest English Poets.

We spent our Friday evenings with Aunt Ida for 15 years while Uncle Julius did his charity work.  Along with the turkey sandwiches on the bagels she warmed in her toaster oven, and the home-baked “something sweet” she defrosted for dessert, we shared job fears, boyfriend woes, and weight-gain worries.  She was particular about wanting her coffee hot and wouldn’t hesitate to grasp the wrist of a waiter to question the temperature of her cup.  She thought every dress should have a belt, and she loved triple markdowns from Filene’s Basement.

I still remember the telephone conversations we had, and the time we took her to The Four Seasons Hotel for tea to celebrate her 80^th birthday.  We did a side trip to the newly opened Hermes store in Boston where she told an understanding saleswoman that she already had a drawer full of scarves.

I’ve never had a child, and there was a time when I felt disappointed until I realized that I could help other people’s children.  Once I understood my role, I was comfortable with it, and I’ve never let a child miss lunch, or act irresponsibly, even children I don’t know.  There have been many times a parent has asked me to watch out for a son or daughter, even a grown-up son or daughter, and I do.  It’s my job.  I learned from the best.

This was a challenging week for everyone in the Boston area. Thank you to all of our family and friends who contacted us to see how we were.

Friday was a beautiful day, but we stayed in “sheltering in place.” We looked out the window at the beautiful flowers in our yard, and we regretted that we couldn’t go out the front door to pick some. In the great scheme of things, it wasn’t so bad for us personally, but we have become more pensive about what freedom means, even if it means just being able to go into our garden and pick some tulips.

We weren’t surprised by the acts of heroism we heard about and viewed on television. We have a great deal of faith in the ability of people to rise to the occasion. You do what you have to do. That’s the way our parents raised us, and we are the product of an Old New England school system.

Aside from the residue of anger, frustration, and sorrow, we are healing, and we hope that you all have begun to heal, too.

Someone once said that if we heard the world was coming to an end, we’d all run to a phone to tell family and friends we love them. Maybe, that’s the appeal of the cell phone – the ability to connect with someone within seconds.

The evening of 9/11 we stood in the twilight on Walden Street, in North Cambridge, with our neighbors. We held the brass candlesticks that had come over on the Holland America Line with Grandma Katziff in the early 1900s. We lit the candles and realized that the candlesticks had survived the pogroms of Russia, World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, the Korean War, Viet Nam and the Gulf War. Cars passed us, and passengers saluted us. We made our way through the neighborhood park across the street and joined others holding glowing candles. We came together and wondered how we would survive this terrible event.

We survived, hopefully older and wiser, but last week hurt a lot, and it will continue to hurt for a long time. One of our professors at Northeastern University, Frederick Holmes, asked us almost 50 years ago, “If you went to another culture, could you tell who the good people are?” We believe you could. To put last week with its horror and hurt and challenges in a food-related perspective, cream rises to the top.

• 

  The Late Ann Kemelman

  ANN KEMELMAN THE ARTIST WHO SOLVED THE MYSTERY OF THE LEMON CHICKEN RECIPE PASSES AWAY

• Ann Kemelman, the last member of the Railroad Club, that group of women who commuted daily from the North Shore of Massachusetts to their jobs in Boston in the 1950s and 1960s died on January 7 while watching Downton Abbey on television. She was 103, 8 months old.We so enjoyed talking with Ann and solving the mystery of Anna Morse’s Lemon Chicken. We were delighted to hear the story of the Railroad Club and its companionable commute from the North Shore to Boston. How like Ann Kemelman to be sure that Anna Morse received credit for the Lemon Chicken recipe. For more than 50 years we had been referring to it as Ann Kemelman’s Lemon Chicken.

  We recorded a segment on the Railroad Club and the Lemon Chicken recipe for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered – Found Recipes. It has not yet been aired, but we will let you know when it does air. Our publisher, Black Dog and Leventhal chose the Lemon Chicken Recipe to appear on the back of the promotional card for our book, Heirloom Cooking With The Brass Sisters. Every time we give out that card, the recipient is excited about receiving the recipe and tells us that he or she plans to make Lemon Chicken for family and friends. The legacy of the Railroad Club continues.

  We know that the people who learned about Ann and the Railroad Club will be saddened to learn of her passing, but it will be a comfort to them to know that she died as she lived, creative, elegant, and current.

  Every time we prepare and serve Lemon Chicken we mention Ann Kemelman and the Railroad Club and think fondly of our conversations with her and how excited we were to have her help in learning the story behind the recipe.

  How moving it is to know that those conversations about a scrap of paper with a handwritten recipe brought us all together and helped us illustrate how important it is to listen to the story and save the recipe. We are certain that home cooks all over the country will think of Ann Kemelman when they prepare and serve Lemon Chicken — a modest, but fitting tribute to a great lady.

  Ann Kemelman was born in Denmark and came to this country at the age of 2. She was married to Harry Kemelman, the author of the Rabbi David Small mysteries. She began her career as an artist at the age of 88. She was affiliated with the Acorn Gallery. She was a resident of Salem, Massachusetts at the time of her passing.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
FEBRUARY 2013
24+ INCHES OF SNOW

It’s hard to believe that it is 35 years since the Disaster of 1978. Our father, Harry, had died six months before after a courageous confrontation with colon cancer.

Our house on Sea Foam Avenue, in Winthrop, MA, was just five minutes from the ocean. We had four and a half feet of water in the cellar for four days. The three furnaces dissolved. The pipes froze. Water came down through the ceilings of the three-decker house that had been in the family since 1919. There was no electricity.

We had decided to stay with friends the night before, and for some reason, Marilynn suggested that we take with us the brass candlesticks that three generations of women in our family had used for lighting candles to celebrate the Sabbath.

When we finally were able to approach the house after the disaster struck, it looked dark, chilly, and deserted. When we went in, we realized just how much work we would have to do. Our father’s birthday was on February 9th, and it was the first one we hadn’t been able to celebrate together.

Neighbors helped neighbors. Families supported families emotionally. We went to Cousin Flo’s house and stayed with her for a while. We remember placing our bedding and pillows in the bottom of a shopping cart and rolling it to her house. We ate cold cuts from wax paper on her kitchen table and tried to plan the next step.

We learned how to fill out forms for HUD. We wrote a 32-page proposal for a grant on the kitchen table. Insurance barely covered the damage.

We were spending $1000 every five minutes and went through all of the hard-earned, hard-saved money our father had left us. Replacing furnaces and re-wiring cost money.

We learned how to deal with tenants, contractors, and the very few who tried to take advantage of two young women who had just lost their father. More than one contractor tried to buy the house at a bargain price or suggested outrageously expensive improvements. We found new contractors and didn’t sell.

Marilynn ruptured a disc and broke her coccyx carrying mattresses filled with water out of the cellar. Sheila broke her ankle carrying boxes down flights of stairs. We ate 20-cent cans of mackerel because we had no money, and when the oil spilled on the linoleum, we had to boil hot water on the gas stove to wash the kitchen floor.

We came to know every inch of that house, and we savored the memories associated with it. We remember the time our mother broke a bottle of sauerkraut in the hall near the den where we ate meals in hot summer months and listened to television .

We thought fondly of the apple tree Grandpa Katziff planted in the front yard, and the apples we gave to everyone on the street every August, and the subsequent smell of applesauce and apple pies that arose from the houses on Sea Foam Avenue.

There were the graduation photos taken on the front steps and near the lilac bush that grew two-stories high.

Marilynn remembers her first kiss on the front steps after she baked a green apple pie for a swain. Sheila remembers baking her first cake at the age of eleven, and how proud of her everyone was.

There were the summers with our cousins and daily visits to the beach when tanned and crusted with salt from the Atlantic, we returned for homemade fruit punch and slices of our mother’s Chocolate Velvet Cake in the second-floor kitchen.

We can’t forget wet bathing suits hanging on the line on the back porch and Daddy making fudge. We still have the square metal pan he used.

We remember the teapot without a cover, which held the household money that Mama kept on the shelf in the pantry.

All of the Friday night dinners, the birthday parties, the funerals with their shivas with the men drinking an ounce of apricot brandy that had been in the china cabinet for 20 years and the boxes of chocolate piled on the sideboard.

We restored the house and held on to it for 17 years, and owning and running it was an education. When it had been in the family for 75 years, we decided it was time to sell it. Our job was finished.

Two years after we sold the house, Marilynn was hired by This Old House, the TV Program on WGBH, the Public Television Station, in Boston.

We each carried one of the candlesticks that had survived the Disaster to the park near where we lived in Cambridge. We each lit a candle and stood tall the evening of September 11, 2001. Those candlesticks had been with us through the voyage from the old world to the new, through Depressions, World Wars, Military Conflicts, Hurricane’s and the Disaster of 1978, and they gave off a lovely light.

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We hope you all had a good holiday season.  One of the highlights of our holiday was the airing of a segment we did for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered – Found Recipes.  The segment was on the Portuguese Sweet Bread that was baked by Mrs. Virginia Lima, of Rhode Island.  We thought you might like to see the entry from the NPR blog, The Salt.  We’ve included the transcript of the segment, too.

For the holidays, why not give a gift that tastes like a cloud? Portuguese Sweet Bread may be as close as you can get.

Marilynn and her sister Sheila — co-authors of Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters — collect stories as well as recipes. On Thursday’s All Things Considered, they explain that the story that goes with this airy treat, recounted to them by their friend David Lima, is a keeper.

Mrs. Lima 1937

Photo by Andy Ryan

Mrs. Lima’s Portuguese Sweet Bread

Like all the girls in her family, Virginia Lima, born on one of Portugal’s Azores islands in the early part of the 20th century, was taught how to make bread. As a wife and working mother living in Providence, R.I., in the 1950s, she kept the tradition alive every holiday by making loaves of her Portuguese Sweet Bread.

Lima’s youngest child, David, liked to keep her company in the kitchen. He offers the following details about her technique: Mrs. Lima would take a large, enamel basin — big enough to wash a small child in — and tie it to a red metal step stool with a rope. That’s where she’d mix her dough by hand. No electric mixer.

She’d activate the yeast in a separate bowl, then measure out her flour into the basin. As she mixed the liquid into the dough, she’d add an interesting ingredient — two teaspoons of whiskey. She’d then cross herself and say a prayer that the bread would come out right and nourish all who ate it. She’d knead and pound for a long time, then take a break and pour a little whiskey into a shot glass to reward herself.

Once the bread was baked, she’d give the loaves to family and friends as an act of love and remembrance for the souls of the departed.

Sometimes David would get her to make dinner rolls shaped like doughnuts or tied in knots. They’d always eat the bread just as it was, David told the Brass Sisters. He never tried toasting it until he was an adult.

Eventually, the Brass Sisters tried Virginia Lima’s recipe for themselves. “The scent was heavenly,” Sheila recalls, “and the taste was like the best French brioche, with sugar added.”

Mrs. Lima would make up to seven loaves in her huge washbasin, but the Brass Sisters have adapted her recipe for a smaller yield. And, in a touch that’s sure to please many, they also increased the amount of whiskey.

Recipe: Virginia Lima’s Portuguese Sweet Bread

3/4 cup milk
2 packages (4 1/2 teaspoons) quick-rising yeast
1/2 cup water, warmed to 110 degrees
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
5 1/2 to 6 cups flour
1/2 cup butter
2 teaspoons salt
3 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons whiskey or 1 teaspoon lemon extract
1 egg, beaten, for glaze

Set the oven rack in the middle position. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat two 9-inch cake pans with vegetable spray or butter.

Warm milk in microwave for 40 seconds on low. Set aside.

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Add 1 tablespoon of the sugar and set in a warm place to proof, about 10 minutes. Mixture will bubble when yeast is proofed.

Mix 5 1/2 cups of the flour, 1 cup of the sugar and the butter and salt in the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add eggs. Add yeast mixture and whiskey or lemon extract. Add up to 3/4 cup milk gradually, continuing to work the dough. If dough continues to be sticky, add remaining 1/2 cup flour until dough firms up. Change to the dough hook and continue to knead for 5 minutes at medium speed.

Butter a large bowl. Place dough in bowl and turn it so that all surfaces have a film of butter. Put in a warm place and allow to rise until double in size, about one hour.

Punch down dough and divide in half. Shape into 2 rounds, using a little flour if necessary. Place in cake pans and let rise for 30 minutes. Make slit on top. Brush with beaten egg. Bake 40 to 45 minutes, or until crust is golden brown. Cool on rack. Slice bread with a serrated knife. Store in a plastic bag when completely cool.

Recipe excerpted from Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters: More than 100 Years of Recipes Discovered and Collected by the Queens of Comfort Food, by Marilynn and Sheila Brass. Copyright 2006 by Marilynn and Sheila Brass. Excerpted by permission of Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Time now for a found recipe.

MARILYN BRASS: I’m Marilynn.

SHEILA BRASS: And I’m Sheila.

BRASS: We’re the Brass sisters and we love Portuguese sweet bread.

SIEGEL: The Brass sisters of Cambridge, Massachusetts are back by popular demand. And today, they want to share a recipe with us that a friend and co-worker once shared with them. David Lima said his mother’s Portuguese sweet bread was a holiday fixture when he grew up during the 1950s in Providence, Rhode Island. And the Brass sisters, curators of Heirloom Recipes, couldn’t wait to try it themselves.

BRASS: The scent was heavenly. The taste was like the best French brioche with sugar added.

BRASS: But it had a Portuguese accent.

BRASS: It’s like biting into a cloud or eating a cloud.

BRASS: Celestial.

BRASS: Celestial. And I asked David what he put on it and he said, we just ate it as is. Virginia Lima was a really special person. She was married for more than 50 years. She had three children.

BRASS: David was the youngest and he used that to his advantage because…

BRASS: Just like you did.

BRASS: All right, we won’t get personal, Sheila. He loved spending time with his mother in the kitchen. One of the things that David did was to give us a description of how she prepared his Portuguese sweet bread.

BRASS: It was obviously a traditional recipe.

BRASS: Almost a ritual.

BRASS: Right. Mrs. Lima used a red metal step stool. She used an enamel basin with two handles, a large one.

BRASS: It was sort of something that you would wash things in, but she was scrupulously clean about washing it before she used it for baking.

BRASS: She used rope to tie the basin onto the step stool.

BRASS: You know, with the two handles.

BRASS: She cracked open her eggs and she made a depression in the middle of the flour. Then, she added an unusual ingredient for bread. She added two teaspoons of whiskey to a shot glass and she just flipped that into the dough. And then, she rewarded herself, as the baker, by allowing herself to also have two teaspoons of whisky in the shot glass.

BRASS: And then she made the sign of the cross over the bread and she said a prayer and that prayer was that the bread would come out right and that it would nourish the people who ate it. Mrs. Lima would give most of the loaves away to family and friends in remembrance of those who had left, in remembrance and with love.

BRASS: When you think about some of the terms about bread, you think of the word companion, somebody that you break bread with together. And when you think about the prayers that are said over bread, bread is the staff of life and Virginia Lima knew how to sustain life for her family in Providence, Rhode Island.

BRASS: And we hope you’ll get a chance to try to make this bread yourself and we hope you have a wonderful holiday.

SIEGEL: Sheila and Marilynn Brass, the Brass sisters, authors of “Heirloom Baking.” And you can find the recipe for Portuguese sweet bread at our website, NPR.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

TWO JEWISH LADIES BAKE A HOLIDAY MEMORY

With all of the holiday preparations going on, we are reminded of an event that occurred some 63 years ago when Marilynn was eight years old and a student in Miss Auger’s third-grade class at the Shirley Street School.  Our mother shared a secret with us that year.  She loved Christmas.

This may not seem particularly shocking to anyone today, but in 1949 our family were residents of the predominantly Jewish Beach Section of  Winthrop, Massachusetts.  Both of our parents were deeply involved in the activities of Temple Tifereth Abraham.  They were devout in their faith, conservative in their outlook, and on most holidays celebrated with their own traditions.

Our parents, like the rest of the country, could sense the changes that were occurring.  Not only were we approaching the half-century mark, but the country had just come out of a major foreign war and was beginning to be involved in the Korean Conflict.  Many of  Winthrop’s young citizens who had fought in World War II had never been away from home and for some this had been their first exposure to brutality, death, and suffering.  Along with this loss of innocence had come the opportunity to experience other cultures for the first time.

Our parents understood that it was necessary to be flexible in their approach to child rearing because they knew that their children would be going into a world more diverse than one they had known.  Our mother was fond of saying, “You will find yourselves rubbing shoulders with all kinds of people.”

Our mother viewed Chanukah and Christmas as a time for the celebration of family and of the renewal of life.

Our mother’s strong point was baking cakes.  She had been featured in the Winthrop Transcript’s “Hash and Homecraft” column, and every Christmas she baked fourteen cakes decorated with Christmas trees and holly with red, green, and white frosting.  Each cake was beautifully boxed and beribboned and presented to neighbors and to business associates of our father.

Another resident of Winthrop ,whose cooking ability equaled our mother’s, was Dorothy Sullivan, whose area of expertise was cookies, especially Christmas cookies.  Every Christmas we would celebrate the holiday together at the Sullivans’ house on Washington Avenue.  Our family had done business with the Sullivans, who owned an insurance agency, for two generations and would continue into a third, although we did not know it at the time.  They were always the last stop on our cake run.

We always admired the Sullivans and thought they were rather glamorous because Dorothy had attended Drama School before she married Arthur.  They were both active in town politics with Arthur winning his bid for Town Assessor, and Dorothy becoming a Republican Committee woman.

Dorothy and Arthur lived in an historic house that had the distinction of once having been moved from down the street to its present location.  It was a wooden house painted white with a staircase leading up to the bedrooms on the second floor.  It was the type of house that could have been featured in that popular, but unrealistic television show of the 1950s, Father Knows Best.  The furniture was highly polished, and there was a place for everything.  The house also had a cozy home kitchen.

Celebrating at the Sullivans’ was always thankfully the same.  Arthur would help us off with our coats and offer my father something to drink, and my father would graciously decline since drinking an alcoholic beverage meant a small glass of Manichewitz Concord grape wine at the Jewish New Year or Passover.

The women would head to the kitchen where Dorothy would prepare a platter of beautifully decorated Christmas cookies and white sugar wreaths with red frosting holly berries and green frosting leaves.  We were fascinated by those wreaths which were peppermint-flavored and which Dorothy purchased at S.S. Pierce, a well-known grocery store located in Boston, Belmont, and Brookline, Massachusetts.  The stores all boasted a fake Tudor architectural façade, and were the Formaggio Kitchen, Dean & DeLuca’s and Zingerman’s of their time.
Our mother helped by slicing the cake she had baked for the Sullivans.  Some years, instead of the decorated Fluffy White Cake, she baked them one of her famous Fruited Tea Breads.

One year Dorothy and Arthur asked us to help them trim their Christmas tree and told us the story of how they had acquired many of their ornaments.

They also told us how, newly married, they had decorated their first tree together.  Since they hadn’t been able to agree on how to place the tinsel on the tree – Dorothy thought each strand should be placed individually, while Arthur thought the strands should be “tossed” indiscriminately onto the branches.  They had divided the tree in half, and each decorated it according to his or her own wishes.  Dorothy’s mother who had been staying with them for the holiday, came downstairs to breakfast and saw the decorated tree.  She couldn’t imagine what had gotten into the young couple the night before.

It was at one of these gatherings at the Sullivans’ home that we first tasted shortbread and loved it.  We are ashamed to admit that we two young girls finished every piece on the plate savoring the rich amalgam of butter and sugar.  Dorothy generously presented us with the recipe.  We can never taste shortbread without thinking of her.

As things sometimes go, the handwritten “living recipe” which we were gifted with almost 60 years ago, had been tucked away in a safe place, a place so safe, we lost track of where we had put it.

When researching handwritten recipes and family stories for Heirloom Baking, we were given the recipe for Aunt Liz O’Neill’s Shortbread by our good friends Danese and Barbara Carey.  Danese still talks about their great-aunt Liz, who was married to their great-uncle Mike.  A native of Glasgow and a superb shortbread maker, she emigrated to the United States as a young woman.  The Carey sisters remember sitting at Aunt Liz’s table taking notes while watching her bake.  When we baked Aunt Liz’s shortbread, we were thrilled!  It was identical to Dorothy Sullivan’s shortbread.  We had rediscovered the recipe lost for more than 50 years.

In honor of Christmas 2012, we have made a variation of the O’Neill-Sullivan shortbread that we first tasted as young girls in 1950s Winthrop, Massachusetts.

We’ve used a standing mixer instead of making the shortbread by hand.  The recipe does not suffer for this alteration.  We also made it as Orange Shortbread.  The recipe follows with our wishes for a very Happy Holiday Season.

ORANGE SHORTBREAD

Based on Dorothy Sullivan and Aunt Liz O’Neill’s Shortbread
1930s

1 cup butter (2 sticks)

1/2 cup sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 cups flour

Grated Zest of 1 orange

1 teaspoon orange extract or ½ teaspoon orange oil

1.  Set oven rack in the middle position.  Preheat the oven to 350ºF.  Line the bottom and sides of a 9-inch by 9-inch by 2-inch pan with foil.  Grease the foil with butter or coat with vegetable spray.

2. Add flour and salt to a mixing bowl, whisk to combine, and set aside.

3. Cream butter and sugar in the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add orange zest.  Add orange extract or orange oil and combine.  Add dry ingredients, ½ cup at a time, beating until completely absorbed and dough comes together.  Do not overbeat or shortbread will be tough.

4. Gently pat dough into prepared pan.  (Press down the edges with tines of fork.)  Prick top of dough evenly about 20 to 25 times.

5. Bake shortbread 35 minutes.  Cool on rack to for about 20-25 minutes, or until slightly warm.  Score shortbread with a knife into 1-inch by 2-inch pieces, but do not cut through entirely.  When completely cool, cut into pieces along scored lines.  The texture should be sandy and crumbly.  Store Orange Shortbread in a covered tin between sheets of wax paper, at room temperature.

Yield:  32 1-inch by 2-inch pieces

Sweet Tip:  • Shortbread will firm up as it cools.  • Placing shortbread in the refrigerator will help it firm up.  • If shortbread is pale, continue baking another 5 minutes, watching carefully to be sure it is not browning too quickly.

Sweet Touch:  • Orange Shortbread is wonderful crumbled on top of vanilla ice cream.

AN EXCITING HOLIDAY SEASON FOR THE BRASS SISTERS

This has been an exciting holiday season for us.  We’ve been quoted in the NY Times Dining Out section, and we’ve had a chance to share our Aunt Ida Tucker Katziff’s recipe for Poppy Seed Cookies with NPR listeners all over the country.

We are almost settled into our new home in Cambridge.  It has taken us a year to unpack all of the boxes, and we’re still finding things we were looking for.

Tomorrow is Marilynn’s birthday, and we are celebrating it quietly.  We had some botanical prints framed, and our dear friend and honorary sister, Danese, is giving Marilynn something she wanted for her birthday, a new sponge mop and a container for Murphy’s Oil Soap.  We’re a practical family.

We are also going to breakfast with Danese next week at The Neighborhood, a local institution that serves breakfast all day long, as well as lunch, in Somerville, Massachusetts.  We might still be able to eat on the patio if the weather holds out.  We’ll probably order their outstanding waffles with fruit and a little whipped cream on the side.  They are also known for their farina, which is very much like Cream of Wheat, but with lots of butter and cream and some cinnamon on the top.

This Sunday, we are joining the whole Carey Family to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Dad Carey (Daniel Carey’s) passing.  He died in his 93 year, and had enjoyed a trip to Ireland with the whole family last summer.

We are all bringing something to the brunch.  We are making the quick breads – Coconut Banana Bread, Pumpkin Tea Cake with Brown Sugar and Walnut Topping, and Mary Frances’s Tea Cake.

Everyone will be bringing gloves and scarves for donation to a local branch of the charity, Cradles to Crayons, rather than giving each other small gifts.

Thank you for your kind comments and your encouragement and support.  We’re testing recipes for our next book; Marilynn is working on a memoir about growing up in the 1940s and 1950s on the North Shore of Massachusetts; and there just might be a culinary mystery from the Brass Sisters.

We love hearing from you, and we reply to every email we receive.

We hope you’ll think of Aunt Ida when you bake her Poppy Seed Cookies.

STUFFING SET FREE FROM TURKEY

JULIA MOSKIN QUOTES US IN NY TIMES

This has been an exciting time for us.  We met Julia Moskin and Kim Severson when they did a demonstration and book signing at the Xhibition Kitchen at Northeastern University, Marilynn’s Alma Mater.  Julia and Kim were in Boston to celebrate the release of their new book, Cook Fight.  It’s a great book because it engages the reader with stories and doable recipes.

Julia interviewed us for her article on Stuffing Set Free From Turkey which appeared in the Dining Out section of the New York Times.

To view Julia’s article on the NY Times blog please go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/dining/stuffing-deserves-more-days-on-the-table.html?ref=dining&_r=0

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO’S ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

FOUND RECIPES  – AUNT IDA’S POPPY SEED COOKIES

National Public Radio aired a segment on our Aunt Ida’s Poppy Seed Cookies, which we had recorded the week before.  It was part of their All Things Considered – Found Recipes program.

We enjoyed working with Melissa Gray, who did a superb job in helping us celebrate Auntie Ida and her Poppy Seed Cookies.

To listen to the segment, please go to:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/11/08/164682760/j-r-ewing-and-a-found-recipe-for-poppy-seed-cookies

Special thanks to April Fulton and the crew at the NPR blog, The Salt.

From:  The Salt

J.R. Ewing And A Found Recipe For Poppy Seed Cookies

by MELISSA GRAY

November 08, 2012 3:00 PM

All Things Considered

During the holidays, family kitchens are ground zero for intense craziness: mixers whirling, timers buzzing, knives flying. So yes, it’s understandable that many of us just stay out of way of the experienced cook. Especially when the knives come out and Mama is talking under her breath.

But by staying out, you’re missing out.

As part of All Things Considered‘s Found Recipes series, we asked the Cambridge-based Brass Sisters, the so-called Queens of Comfort Food, about collecting family recipes.

And they say, don’t shy away from that holiday kitchen!
Instead, they urge you to gently interrogate your elders about their favorite dishes, and write down those family recipes, before it’s too late.

That’s what they did to get the recipe for their Aunt, Ida Tucker Katziff’s Poppy Seed Cookies, and though Aunt Ida could be grumpy and intimidating, they’re glad they did.

“We used to spend every Friday night with Aunt Ida,” says Marilynn Brass. For nearly 15 years, they’d chit chat, watch the prime-time soap opera Dallas (the original, when J.R. got shot) and eat.

“We would have a bagel and we’d have turkey,” Brass says, “but the best part was when she’d go to her postage-stamp-sized freezer and brought something out and heated it up in her trusty toaster oven.”

Ida was a self-taught baker. “She had what we call goldeneh hendts. That’s Yiddish for golden hands,” Brass says. “Whatever she baked, whatever she cooked came out superb. And I have to tell you, her poppy seed cookies were like manna from heaven.”

The cookies were crunchy, with toasty-tasting poppy seeds and a sandy texture, and the Brass Sisters say you couldn’t eat just one.

After many years of Friday evenings, Marilynn’s sister, Sheila, got up the courage to ask Aunt Ida for the recipe. Not only did she get it, but Ida gave her nieces two special instructions — keep the poppy seeds in the freezer to keep them fresh, and don’t overwork the dough.

When Aunt Ida died, the Brass Sisters arranged a special tribute to her: They made copies of the recipe and baked the cookies and shared both with friends and relatives at Ida’s funeral.

“It turned out the family and friends sat around talking about Ida during [her] memorial week, reading her recipe for poppy seed cookies and crunching those wonderful cookies!” says Marilynn Brass.

And now you can, too. Here’s the recipe from Heirloom Baking With The Brass Sisters.

Aunt Ida’s Poppy Seed Cookies

Our Aunt Ida baked this cookie for more than 60 years, to the delight of four generations of our family, transporting them to parties in covered tins. We baked these cookies and served them at Aunt Ida’s memorial gathering after her funeral since this recipe is part of her legacy. She always stored her poppy seeds in the freezer to keep them fresh.

Poppy seed cookies bring back memories of watching Dallas with Aunt Ida, the Brass Sisters say.

AUNT IDA’S POPPY SEED COOKIES

3 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup poppy seeds

1 cup peanut oil

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

Set the oven rack in the middle position. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Cover a 14 X 16-inch baking sheet with foil, shiny side up. Coat the foil with vegetable spray or use a silicone liner.

Sift together flour and baking powder; add poppy seeds.

Separately, whisk peanut oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in a medium bowl. Add sifted dry ingredients and mix to combine. Chill the dough in the refrigerator one hour, or until firm enough to handle.

With floured hands or wearing disposable gloves, break off teaspoon-size pieces of dough and roll into small balls. Place dough balls on baking sheet about 2 inches apart, or 12 cookies per sheet. Pat into circles with your fingers (rather than rolling or stamping). Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until lightly browned around edges. Let cookies cool 1 minute on baking sheet on rack and then transfer cookies to a rack. Cookies will become crisp as they cool.

Store between sheets of wax paper in a covered tin or freeze in a tightly sealed plastic bag or container.

Yield:  60 cookies

Our father was a quiet man.  He didn’t often share his feelings.  We knew he loved us, and that was enough.  Because he always worked for hospitals and not-for-profits, money was tight, and Mama had to watch the pennies.  Someone once told us that our father was one of the top three graduates of Massachusetts College of Pharmacy.  He’d joined the Beth Israel Hospital, as Chief Pharmacist, six weeks before he married our mother on June 9, 1936.  He later became Director of Pharmacy at the New England Medical Center, in Boston, a position he held for 23 years.

Daddy was on-call 24-hours-a-day, and the phone rang frequently after June 30^th when the new crew of residents came on-board.  There were always questions about medications, dosages, and side effects.  Nurses couldn’t read the new doctors’ handwriting on their prescriptions, and residents hadn’t yet learned how to communicate with the nurses.  Eventually Daddy taught a course in prescription writing at Tufts Medical School, and things became a little less hectic at the beginning of July.  After a while, the operators didn’t have to break into conversations we were having with friends on the family phone.

We always knew that Daddy had an important job, and that it took most of his time.  He loved his job, and that was fine with us.  He was always at home for dinner or “supper,” as we called it, at 6:00 PM every night.

We were a family that loved greeting cards.  We kept Hallmark in business with birthday, anniversary, Chanukah, Christmas, Jewish New Year, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Passover, Father’s Day, and Graduation cards.  When we were feeling particularly creative, we often made our own cards.

It wasn’t enough for us to send just a card.  We always wrote “something personal” in every card.  We rarely sent sympathy cards as young girls because almost all of our friends survived the vagaries of the 1940s and 1950s.  Sympathy cards were for adults to send, and most of the time our family sent brief heart-felt handwritten notes.

Because Daddy was so busy with his job, he rarely had time to purchase cards, so Mama did it for him, and he would usually sign his cards to us, “Love, Daddy.”  That was good enough for us.  There was a simple economy of words, no economy of feelings.

It’s hard for us to believe that Daddy will have been gone 35 years next September 10.  We both left our jobs in 1975 when Daddy was diagnosed with colon cancer because we wanted to spend time with him.  Mama had been gone since 1962.  During those two years, we started our antiques business, and with thanks to call forwarding, we could involve Daddy in the buying and selling of the antiques we found at yard sales and flea markets.  Daddy had worked in Grandfather Brass’s junk shop as a young boy, and he still maintained his interest in all things old, valuable, and decorative.  We had two wonderful years with Daddy, and we believe that his involvement in the antiques business kept him going.  He spent only two weeks in the hospital and was watching a Red Sox game and eating chocolate ice cream shortly before he died, even though he hadn’t eaten ice cream for 20 years because he always said it didn’t agree with him.  The Red Sox won.

Daddy had kept his personal records up-to-date until the two weeks before he entered the hospital.  We found a list of all the bills he’d paid.  We didn’t say anything, but we knew Daddy wanted to put his house in order.

In going through his personal papers, we found almost 30 years of birthday and father’s day cards in the top drawer of his dresser.  He’d saved them, and in going through them, we could see how greeting card styles had changed over the years, and how our handwriting and our written sentiments had changed, too, as we grew from grammar school students to the “sweet young things” of the 1960s and 1970s, so convinced of our own sophistication.  We even found two dollar bills we’d tucked into one of the cards, money we’d saved from our allowance.

Recently, Marilynn came across some letters that Daddy sent her in 1968 and 1975, and two that she’d sent him in 1971 and 1972.

We’d like to share them with you, and the circumstances that surrounded them.  We still maintain that every family has a story, and our family was no exception.  These are five letters from a father who was very reserved and careful with his words and a daughter who was so like her father that sparks sometimes flew between them.

In 1968, Marilynn was working at a Research and Development Laboratory, at MIT as a secretary.  She had been told that she would be promoted to Technical Editor if she participated in a three-week course in technical writing that was being taught by the University of Massachusetts at Peabody House, on Nantucket Island.  Marilynn was living at the Cambridge YWCA at the time.  At the Research Center, the living arrangements were going to be nine to a room, dorm style with bunk beds.  Daddy had accompanied Marilynn to catch a bus to Woods Hole where she would catch the steamer to Nantucket.  Meaning well, he’d discovered that an acquaintance of his was taking the same bus.  This was in 1968 during the Civil Rights Movement, and Marilynn had just helped produce a Racism Workshop for local leaders at the YWCA.  Unfortunately, the acquaintance, an older man who’d grown up in a different time, decided to air his views on Civil Rights, and they were the opposite of Marilynn’s.  Marilynn was so embarrassed that she spent the 2-hour bus ride hiding behind a newspaper, relieved when he finally left the bus before it reached Woods Hole.

The steamer trip was cold and rough, and Marilynn spent the voyage huddled in her khaki raincoat wondering if she would have to sleep in an upper bunk in Peabody House, how she was going to share a bathroom with nine people, and how she was going to learn to be a Technical Editor in three weeks.

FROM: DADDY:  July 1, 1968

Letterhead

From the desk of

Harry Brass

Director of Pharmacy

New England Medical Center Hospitals

TO: MARILYNN on Nantucket Island

University of Massachusetts Research Center

Dear Marilynn,

Well, it’s Monday — another week of ups and downs at the Hospital.

Hope your trip was not too bad.  It was a very hot day in Winthrop, 92º — I went to the beach for an hour and a half – got a little sunburn.

Please take care of your self – It was wonderful speaking to you on the phone.  Call whenever you feel like it.  Reverse the charges.  I’m sure you can take care of yourself.  Eat well and try to rest.

Love,

Daddy

XXXXXX

FROM DADDY:  July 2, 1968

Letterhead

From the desk of

Harry Brass

Director of Pharmacy

New England Medical Center Hospitals

TO:  MARILYNN on Nantucket Island

University of Massachusetts Research Center

Dear Marilynn,

Well, here it is Tuesday – Temperature 94º.

It’s been very busy – Nothing much new  — Miss calling you on the phone – hope you are well.  Please write if you have the time.  I know Sheila and I would like to know how things are with you.  Why don’t you call us?  Reverse the charges.  If you need anything sent down, let me know.

Love,

Daddy

XXXXXX

FROM DADDY:  October 5, 1975

Letterhead

From the desk of

Harry Brass

Director of Pharmacy

New England Medical Center Hospitals

TO:  MARILYNN

Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, MA

Dear Marilynn,

Thank for doing so much for me during my hospitalization and at home.  It makes you feel so good to get so much love and devotion.  I know how much of an effort it took after a hard day’s work to make the visits to the hospital, especially with the goings on at work.  Thank you for the gifts that you brought to the hospital and to Winthrop.  You always bring something nice when you come to Winthrop.

Again, thank you for your devotion, care, and love.

Love,

Daddy

Daddy retired from the hospital when he reached 65.  He didn’t want to retire because he didn’t know what it was like not to work.  He first started working at six years old, packing cones in an ice cream cone factory, making five cents a day.  After a brief trip to Miami with Sheila, he taught a course in pharmacology at Northeastern University, and took courses in woodworking and photography.  Marilynn and Sheila still use the butcher-block dining room table he made.

Marilynn often wrote notes to Daddy encouraging him to try new things and reminding him that he had so much to offer others.

FROM:  MARILYNN, September 22, 1971

Concord Avenue

Cambridge, MA

TO:  DADDY,

Sea Foam Avenue

Winthrop, MA

Dear Daddy,

I just wanted you to know that although the days seem hurried and too brief, so often things you’ve said come back to me.  Sometimes, it’s as simple as “pay your bills” – or “don’t talk about other people.”

Often, there are moments of frustration.  Someone tries to put one over on me.  I keep trying to control my temper.  However, I find that the petty annoyances can be overcome.  Today I met a girl with whom I went to high school.  She was short and heavy.  Her teeth were badly in need of a dentist.  Her husband was a PhD. Candidate at MIT.  She thought I looked good.  It brought back the times I was bullied in school because of the extra weight I carried.  Somewhere she took turn in the road, one I almost turned down, too.  I’m glad I didn’t, and I wish I knew how I could make life better for her.

Do you remember the Pieta, that beautiful statue of Mary holding Jesus, at the World’s Fair?  We stood on a revolving rubber tread, and had one brief moment to look at it.  It was a masterpiece made from one piece of marble by one man.  What if he’d never tried?

Love,

Matsy

FROM:  MARILYNN, February 28, 1971

Concord Avenue

Cambridge, MA

TO:  DADDY

Sea Foam Avenue

Winthrop, MA

Dear Daddy,

This is just a note to tell you that I love you very much.  I guess I’m just a note person.  My job ties me up a lot, and I’m really a loner at heart.  I don’t know why I’m the way I am – part of it is the way I look at things, part of it is my upbringing (heredity plus environment).  You and I are very much alike in some ways.  You always brought me up to be independent.  So much of my life has been spent trying to help other people over bumps that sometimes I wonder what I’ll be doing with the rest of my life.  There’s so much in life if people would just take advantage of it.  I’m a goer and a doer, but even I forget, sometimes that there are other paths I can take, other things I can try.

I think of you often and hope you’re well.

Love,

Matsy

Every family has a story.  For us, it’s the story of the moral legacy our parents left us.  Mama taught us to cook when we could just reach the kitchen table.  Daddy taught us to be independent and do the best we could in everything we did.  We still remember waiting for him every evening, on the front porch on Sea Foam Avenue, the whoosh of the brakes as the bus driver dropped him off in front of Monty’s Dry Cleaning on Shirley Street, the sound of his footsteps coming up the stairs, and our shouts of “Daddy’s home for supper.”