Lunch Box Chronicles: Day One-Hundred Forty-Five (Breaking the Fast for Yom Kippur)

This is a guest post by my very dear friend, Anna Collins.

The Perfect Meal to Break the Fast

 This year on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in the Jewish calendar, I fasted as required by tradition.  Then, I broke my fast with spelt.  Let me be more exact --  I broke my fast with the most delicious slice of Spelt Right pizza one could imagine -- a slice filled with the flavors of mushrooms, garlic, three types of cheese, and fresh basil.  


It was also a slice filled with something more -- something that cannot be easily described.

I do not find fasting to be an easy task, but it is something I look forward to because it is transformative.  Modern life is a rushed enterprise, even if one fails to embrace its speed and works to rebel against its multi-tasking nature.  Fasting forces one to observe one's struggle with modernity from the outside, looking in.  As I fast, I becomes aware of my humanity, my frailty, and my dependence on the things that are easy to take for granted in a society still far more privileged than most.  

This year on Yom Kippur, when it was time to break the fast, I found myself with a slice of spelt pizza in my hands.  This was not just any slice.  This was a slice made by a dear friend, someone who has treated me and my family as extended family.  As I ate that slice of pizza, I thought about our friendship -- its history, its dynamics, its future.  I also thought about how fortunate I am to know my friend.  We may have our differences, but we care for each other.  That is something I will not take for granted.

Today, as I consider the moment I broke the fast, I realize something else.  In some parts of the world, my friend and I would not be able to easily share a meal.  Some would consider our cultural heritage too conflicting.  My friend is of Christian Middle-Eastern decent, and I am native Russian Jewish.  The fact that I broke the fast with food she made is powerful, perhaps even transformative.  It is hard to name the key ingredient in that slice -- words are not enough to describe it.  Perhaps the word "humanity" is a good start. 


Here is recipe for humanity.


One Spelt Right Pizza Dough Fully Thawed and Risen
Extra virgin olive oil
4-5 cloves of fresh garlic
8-12 ounces mushrooms (sliced)
2 ounces chevre soft goat cheese
12-16 ounces mozzarella cheese (shredded)
2 ounces grated fresh parmesan cheese
8-10 leaves fresh basil
Sea Salt


Pre-heat oven to 450 F.


Lightly oil pizza pan with EVOO.  Stretch Spelt Right Pizza Dough over pan.  Drizzle dough with EVOO and garlic ground with salt (I do this with a mortar and pestle).  Spread with hands.  Put in oven for about 5 minutes just firm up the crust.   In the meantime, saute sliced mushrooms and more garlic and salt in EVOO until browned.  Set aside.   Take crust out of oven and top with shredded mozzarella, grated parmesan, and small dollops of goat cheese.  Next add the mushrooms spreading evenly.   Top with with 6-10 leaves of fresh chopped (not too fine) basil.   Bake for 15-20 minutes until crust is light brown on the bottom.


Remove from oven.  Slice for family.  Tempt friend who is fasting and save extra large piece for her.   Place extra large piece in aluminum foil, wrap carefully, and give to Anna with a kind admonition not to eat until sundown.

Lunch Box Chronicles: Day Seventy-Four (Flayir bil-Flayfli - The Universal Language of Food)

I am so attached to food and eating and feeding anyone who crosses my path.   Food is the one link to my ancestoral past.  Imagine escaping your home, leaving all behind, and having family members scatter.  The images are lost, there are no papers, just memories.  But, when the memories fade, the languages are forgotten, and the generation who braved the escape is gone, those born into new generations have lost the links.  We are orphans longing for that connection.  But out of the gardens and bowls and ovens arise certain textures, aromas, and tastes that are like the spirits of our grandparents.  They linger; they evoke emotion and bring about comfort.

So it is.  My grandparents immigrated to the US around 1912 from the Middle East, leaving all behind, venturing into a new land.   Their children were taught to be "American" and to look whiter and dress cleaner, to lose the accent, and forget the language.   Their grandchildren so blended in the New World that there was barely a vestige of the past, except, that is for the flavors.

And, it is with these flavors, and the careful hand making of food that I channel my grandparents, thanking them for making the hard journey, for leaving their families, and for holding out hope for generations to come.   And, it is with these flavors that I feel so at home, so grounded and so connected to that lost world that I may never see and the language I will never learn.  And, it is with these flavors that I will pass on family history with tastes that no one will forget.

And, here I offer one of my situ's favorite recipes - yes, I know that I have posted this before, but good history should repeat itself.

And thanks to my cousin Donna who I saw at the Shogry Family reunion, I have found out the Arabic Name for these!!! Flayir bil-Flayfli

Two Spelt Right Pizza Doughs, fully thawed, double in size (we'll give you a picture this time)
Two cups walnuts (measure and then chop finely)
Two medium red peppers
One onion finely chopped
Juice from two whole lemons
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Mix all ingredients (except dough) in medium bowl
Cut 12-16 even dough balls (from two doughs)
Stretch or roll the dough to about 1/4 inch thick (more or less) rounds, place on oiled baking sheet
Place about 2 TBL of pepper, walnut mixture on rounds
Bake at 40-450 for 15-20 minutes or until dough is golden brown.

These are great hot or cold for breakfast, snacks, lunch, dinner, or after dinner. Yum, yum, and yum. Always a two thumbs up.