The memory of lemons

I had a whole chicken in the freezer so decided to make shorbat tarbiya, chicken-lemon soup. It's one of a family of Syrian soup recipes with a lemony flavour, depending on how much you kick up the lemon juice it can range from a hint of lemon to lip puckering. I'm a big fan of the latter but I tone it down for my other half who is less fond of sour flavours.

My mother picked up these recipes from a Halebi neighbour. Shorbat tarbiya is a soup enjoyed by Syrians of all ethnicities, but its origins go back to the Sefardic Jews who found refuge in the lands of the Ottoman Empire when they fled the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century.

The historic Syrian city of Haleb (Aleppo, Aram Tzova) already had an ancient Jewish community so it was a natural choice for these Sefardic refugees who over time were absorbed in to the Halebi community, along with traditions and recipes they brought with them from the Spanish Sefardi community, including sopa de huevos y limon, an eggy lemon chicken soup, thought to be the origin of the Syrian shorbat tarbiya and the Greek avgolemono. Greece at that time was also part of the Ottoman Empire and also home to ancient Jewish communities who welcomed those fleeing Inquisition era Spain and Portugal.

Which I guess a lot of geography and history to pack in to a simple and delicious soup. I learnt much of this story from esteemed cookbook writer and food historian Claudia Roden, who's many books brought the wonders of Middle Eastern food to a Western audience going back to the 1970s. She herself was born and raised in Egypt, but her parents were Syrian, I think from Haleb.

My mother learnt a lot of recipes from her Syrian Jewish neighbour, and this soup became a favourite. It's especially interesting considering that my mother's family were originally Sefardic Jews from the Balkans who went north during the instability of the 19th century Ottoman Empire. Perhaps the lemon rich recipes she learned from her neighbour unlocked some latent taste memory from her great-grandparents?

So how to make the soup:

Cook a whole chicken in a pot with a few bay leaves, a few whole cloves, a whole cinnamon stick, a couple of balls of allspice, a few cloves of garlic. Cover the chicken with water and cook covered in the pot for about an hour, or under the chicken is cooked through.

Then take out the chicken and shred it with two forks, set aside. Then mix up the juice of about 3-6 lemons (depending on size and how sour or lemony you want the soup) with 2 tbsp of corn or potato starch and one egg, beat until smooth then beat in to the soup with a whisk while bringing the soup to a boil. When the soup has started to thicken season to taste with salt and a little granulated/dried garlic, pepper. To serve add some of the shredded chicken to each bowl, and many people add some rice or orzo too.

Cherry wisniak days

My great-grandmother lived with my grandparents in her old age. It was the first time since childhood she'd had a garden and she insisted on planting plum and cherry trees. Every spring and summer the whole family harvested the fruit and my great-grandmother set to work making fluden and assorted fruit pies, cherry and plum tzimmes and wisniak, with everyone else assigned jobs ranging from pitting the fruit to clean up duty.

She died before my time but my grandmother continued the tradition. I remember summers with my grandmother listening to the stories while we harvested the fruit and made my great-grandmother's recipes.

All except the fluden. That was more fiddly work, so she generally did that alone and I never did quite learn how my grandmother made it. Classic fluden recipes, are with apple, but in my grandmother's family they were always with plums and cherries.

For years after my grandmother passed I have tried to recreate her cherry and plum fluden, but never quite figured it out. The only one I ever found that came close was this cake made by a bakery at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market. Whenever I would walk past I'd think of my grandmother, buy a few pieces from this stall and try to work once again on reconstructing.

The version from the market was known locally as "Smadar cake", famous for being sold at the old Smadar cinema as a snack.

Last time I walked by was just before covid shut everything down I was sad to see that the elderly man who usually worked there was gone and so were the pies that reminded me of my grandmother's fluden. The young man behind the counter didn't recall the cakes I was talking about, pointing out instead a whole bunch of other fruit pastries the bakery still made.

I do however make tzimmes every year starting with strawberries in late winter, then spring cherries and apricots, summer plums, peaches and nectarines, just like my grandmother used to. Some flavoured with vanilla, some just with a stick of cinnamon.

I always put some away in the freezer to enjoy during the autumn festive season just like my grandmother did, bringing back the fond memories of coming home Rosh Hashana afternoon after a long morning of services at the synagogue to big cold glass beer mugs full of chilled tzimmes topped with a little cream. My grandmother had horrific arthritis in her later decades and could barely walk as far as her garden gate let alone get to shul even for the High Holy Days so she prayed at home. 

I wish now that I would have taken the huge clay jars used to make wisniak that were originally my great-grandmother's. I'm not sure where I'd have space for them but maybe they'd inspire me to try to reconstruct that recipe too. At the very least they'd be special reminders of those distant childhood summers.