My friend Rosie asked if my husband and I would like to invest in a plot of land atop a hill or a mountain with a dedicated water source, preferably from a spring.
And what are we going to do in that remote area, atop a mountain, I responded. I love nature, but I have to live in the city. I need to see people around me when I walk out of my apartment building. I need to be able to walk to the museum to see an exhibit, to the Chrysler Hall to see a show, to the library to borrow a book.
Rosie told me that we needed to be self-sufficient, growing our own vegetables, canning and drying them, knowing how to preserve food for winter.
My family had fruit trees and a vegetable patch in my childhood home in Shiraz. We preserved lemons, dried tomatoes and eggplants in the hot desert summers of Iran. We labored for days to cut and juice mounds of limes and sour oranges and bottle them for winter and passover.
My father bought tens of watermelons in the summer and stored them in the cool dark pantry. The flesh became a bit mushy, but it was still good months later.
Preserving food was a never-ending arduous task. Was all that enough to feed us? No! Of course not!
And Rosie is vegetarian, and no vegetable garden will be big enough to sustain us on top of a remote mountain.
Rosie and her husband François Holder have made their vast front yard into an edible garden with many varieties of greens, tomatoes, blueberries, figs, and cherries. Rosie cans, preserves, and freezes the produce all summer long! Is it enough? NO!
I told her that we were better off buying cases of canned food from Costco if she was worried about armageddon.
Even if Rosie and François succeed in growing enough food, a man with a gun could take them all away. We are not violent people. We won’t be able to survive, I told her.
Then I wondered if her quest for an idyllic piece of land was not just out of the fear of social unrest, but maybe the fear of food scarcity.
We, her friends, have teased her for licking her plate clean every time. Once she picked a raspberry that a guest had discarded in the sink, washed and ate it.
What is going on with my friend? I had to know. Rosie agreed to an interview as she tried to teach me how to make her mother’s rugelach. I don’t bake, I told her. Baking is a science; it’s chemistry. I am not an exact person. I prefer throwing the ingredients together without measuring or following a recipe.
She spoke fast and went back and forth in time, making it difficult for me to absorb the entire story. By the third interview, I had such a wealth of information that it was hard to distill from it the main story—that of Rosie and her mother.
Rosie grew up in the Catskills, in Livingston Manor. Her father, Robby Newman was gifted at math and had two degrees in accounting and business, but he lasted just one day at his accounting job. He chose to work as an apprentice with a tile man because he preferred manual labor over a desk job that required wearing a suit and a tie. He probably should have chosen an engineering degree over accounting, Rosie said, but he was misguided by a guidance counselor.
All the tile work in Rosie’s house, the kitchen, the foyer, and the bathrooms were done by her father. He worked mostly for Jewish people. Those days, Jewish hotels hired Jewish workers; non-Jewish businesses preferred non-Jews.
This must have been hard on Rosie’s mother, Shirley Fisher, who although didn’t grow up in a wealthy family, was exposed to the high culture of New York City.
Rosie’s grandfather, Eugene Fisher was the superintendent of a building in the upper east side of New York City that housed wealthy and well-known residents, such as Fiorello La Guardia. Eugene and his family lived in its French basement.
Rosie’s grandmother, Helen Silver Fisher found ways to send Rosie’s mother, Shirley for horseback riding lessons in Central Park. By the time Shirley met her future husband, she was an independent woman, a fashionable secretary, and had her own apartment. She dyed her hair platinum blond. She wore hats, gloves, and always, always red lipstick.
Shirley was all dressed up to visit friends in the Catskills when she met Robby. Rosie’s father was selling bus tickets as a side job for his father. He offered Shirley a ride—much faster than a bus! He told her. Shirley accepted! And that’s the way the sophisticated stylish New Yorker married a “country bumpkin” and left the city for the country, where she was a stranger in a strange place.
Shirley worked odd jobs in hotels in the Catskills. In their little synagogue, Congregation Agudas Achim in Livingston Manor, Shirley ran to the kitchen mid-services on Shabbat mornings to prepare food for kiddush, the luncheon after services. Her girls, Rosie and her three sisters, were to follow and help prepare the food.
Shirley dreamed of opening her own restaurant, but the family didn’t have enough money to invest in such an uncertain business. All the girls helped out by working in local restaurants, but they had just enough money to survive.
Rosie chose to be a nurse because it could give her a livelihood without the years and the cost of medical school. She would later secure a scholarship to study medicine in Israel. Shirley asked her for a portion of that scholarship to help her finance her restaurant. Rosie agreed even though she would have to be even more frugal with her own expenses.
Shirley opened The Oak Table in 1979. In many ways, Shirley was ahead of her time, owning her own business when women were expected to be homemakers.
Shirley bought antique oak tables and chairs in auctions. Her husband refinished them to be used at the restaurant. Those pieces of furniture are at Rosie’s house now, conjuring the memory of a strong woman who chose to use her culinary artistry as her profession.
With its sophisticated menu,Chicken Kiev,Roasted Duck with a Raspberry sauce and wild rice, Chicken and Shrimp Piccata, and Veal Gruyere, the restaurant became popular. Customers raved about the food and the generous portions the offered. The tables filled quickly and customers with no reservations had to sit outside and have a drink as they enjoyed the magnificent views of the mountains and a creek.
It’s not lost on me that Rosie is still searching for a house on a mountain with a creek!
Rosie said that everything in her mother’s restaurant was homemade: the soup, the carrot muffins, pumpkin bread and the Parker House rolls served warm underneath a cloth napkin.
Customers were served numerous salads with homemade croutons and buttermilk dressing. The produce was local. The girls were sent to collect wild blueberries for cakes and pies, made fresh every day.
Shirley fed the staff before the customers came in. They all gathered around a family table at the restaurant.
Shirley and her helper, Birdy made all the sweets. Rugelah which is a favorite of Rosie and her grandchildren, was never made for the restaurant, but for weddings, funerals, birthdays, neighbors, family.
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients for the pastry dough:
1 egg yolk
1/2 C sour cream
2 sticks of butter
2 C flour
In a large bowl mix 1 egg yolk, 1/2 cup sour cream, 2 soft sticks of butter, and 2 cups flour. Use a pastry knife or dough blender to mix the ingredients. It could probably be mixed using a mixer or even food processor just never did it that way. Save the egg white to brush on the rugelach before baking. Once the dough is mixed well, form it into a ball, wrap it with wax paper, and put it in a plastic bag. Refrigerate it for at least several hours, up to 2 days.
Ingredients for the filling:
1 C sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 C walnuts or pecans
1 C raisins, black or gold
1/2 C apricot jam
1/2 C berry jam
Prepare the filling: mix 1 cup sugar and 1tsp cinnamon, then add chopped walnuts or pecans or both . You may add 1 cup raisins.
Assembly:
Take the dough ball from the fridge. Cut it into 4 equal slabs; put one slab onto a floured surface—you can use a solid surface countertop or a large silpat—put the remaining dough back in the fridge.
Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough. Turn dough over frequently, adding flour to keep it from sticking and make it as thin as possible without making it too apt to tear. Once a large circle or oval shape is achieved, take an icing spatula to cut triangles-size pieces. I make them small to end up with 1-2 bite rugelah, but it could be bigger.
Each triangle gets a smear of jam. Then at the base of each triangle add a tsp of sugar/nut mix, then raisins. If you make big triangles you have to put more filling.
Once rolled up, put them on a cookie sheet. I use a silpat and then I don’t need oil spray. If you prefer parchment paper that’s fine too.
Heat oven to 350. Once the tray is filled— they should not touch each other— brush the top of each pastry with the beaten egg white.
Bake for 20 minutes or until the tops are golden. Pull out of the oven and remove to a cooling rack.
If jam leaks out you can try to use a spatula to pull it up and leave it attached, or pull it off and eat it like candy.
Once completely cool, store them in a container. I like to line it first with wax paper. They will freeze well for a long time. If left out they will disappear.
A side note: Rosie takes the frozen rugelach to her daughter’s house. The grandchildren can’t wait for the yummy pastry to thaw out. They now prefer to eat them frozen.
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