Noah Bernamoff - The Mile End Cookbook

Copyright 2012 Mile End Delicatessen | All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. in New York. section constitutes an extension of the copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data | Bernamoff, Noah. | The Mile End cookbook : redefining Jewish comfort food, from hash to hamantaschen / Noah and Rae Bernamoff; with Michael Stokes & Richard Maggi. 1st ed. | p. cm. | Includes index. | eISBN: 978-0-307-95449-7 | 1. Jewish cooking. 2. Comfort food. I. Bernamoff, Rae. II. Stokes, Michael. III. Maggi, Richard. IV. Title. | TX724.B4646 2012 | 641.5676dc23 | 2012013467

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FOR NANA LEE & GRANDMA BEA-OUR ENDURING SOURCES OF WISDOM AND INSPIRATION

PREFACE
BY RAE BERNAMOFF

INTRODUCTION
BY NOAH BERNAMOFF

I DIDNT KNOW IT AT THE TIME, but the night I met Noahin the spring of 2003, seven years before we opened our Brooklyn restaurant, Mile Endhe was wearing his grandfathers shirt. That should have told me a lot. All I was aware of at that moment, though, was that the shirt in question was kind of loud, and the guy wearing it was making a very convincing argument against the existence of God. Not a particularly radical point of view in a dorm room at McGill University in Montreal, except that this was a Shabbat dinner, where we were supposed to be getting back in touch with our spirituality.

What I soon realized about Noah, and what made me feel connected to him right away, was that spirituality for him had little to do with doctrine and devout belief and everything to do with history, ritual, tradition, and familyand also a fierce intellectual curiosity. All are qualities that put him in good company with other notable self-questioning Jews through the ages, and with me. Wed both grown up in somewhat lapsed kosher householdshe in Montreal and I in New York City and northern New Jerseyand had loving parents whod sent us to parochial school in hopes of putting us right with the Torah and traditional teachings. For both me and Noah, all that strict schooling had backfired slightly, awakening in us a restless and skeptical spirit.

Suffice it to say that Noah and I hit it off. Before long, I was making regular trips with him to his parents house in the suburbs of Montreal, where his family was never not eating. A pickle plate was always out, and salami and sausages and steaks were on the grill more often than not, no matter the weather. Between meals, the fridge door opened and closed with a metronomic regularity. And then there were his Nana Lees prodigious Friday-night dinnersmore about her on the following pages, and pretty much everywhere else in this bookand also trips to the most storied Jewish restaurants in the city: Wilenskys Light Lunch, Beautys Luncheonette, Schwartzs Deli.

Here was a delicatessen culture that was almost exactly like what Id grown up with in New York, but with some subtle differences. There was salt-cured lox like what Id get at Russ & Daughters on the Lower East Side, but the bagel it was served on, from a place called St-Viateur, was much smaller than the ones Id get in New York, with a real hole in the middle and a crisp, fire-burnished skin. At Schwartzs wed order delicious cured brisket, sold under the name smoked meat and served on crusty rye bread, that was much like my beloved New York pastrami, but bettermore luscious, smokier, all-around tastier. And of course there was poutine, that Quebecois late-night specialty of gravy-slathered cheese curds atop a bed of French fries. Its not a Jewish thing, per se, but it was an essential part of my Montreal education.

All those foods, the smoked meat especially, became a touchstone of our courtship. When we moved to Brooklyn in 2007Noah to start law school and I to start a job at the Metropolitan Museum of Artwe brought our shared love of Montreal-style deli with us. What we didnt realize back then was that smoked meat was a food that almost everyone, Montrealers or not, could connect to in a very deep way. And little did we know that if you put it in the bigger context of handmade Jewish deli and home-style dishes, and you elevated those with better ingredients and innovative entres and good wine and craft beers, something on the order of a runaway chemical reaction would occur. People were longing for this food, even if they didnt know it.

BUT IM GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF. By the end of Noahs first year of law school, he knew he wasnt happy, and by the start of the second year, he was looking for anything that could distract him from it. So, in a pique of nostalgia, he started trying to make smoked meat. He got very into making smoked meat. One thing led to another, and, well, things got a little crazy after that. He tells the story better than I can, but the short version is this: By May of 2009 Noah had dropped out of law school. By June wed signed a lease on a tiny storefront space on Hoyt Street in Boerum Hill. Just after that Noahs Nana Lee died. By October Noah and I were married. By November Id lost my job at the Met. And then, on January 25, 2010, the restaurant opened, and suddenly I had a new career: running the front of the house at a nineteen-seat Montreal-style Jewish deli while Noah ran the kitchen. Wed decided to call the place Mile End, after the neighborhood in Montreal where his grandparents grew up and where wed lived together before our journey south. We had ten things on the menu: For the morning service we had a bagel-and-lox plate, a skillet breakfast called the Mish-Mash, and a breakfast sandwich; for the afternoon service we had slaw, pickles, borscht, smoked meat, salami, smoked turkey, and frites and poutine.

Id never so much as bused a table before, but when we opened, I was the only person taking orders. I simply couldnt believe there were people in this place. And they were lining up to eat our food! At the museum, Id work for months on an audio guide and rarely get user feedback. But Id put a sandwich out there and see that smile, see that three-year-old girl lick the plate, and in the same way Noah had always wanted to make something with his hands, I realized that connecting people with our food was my own true calling.

I suppose I should have known that all along. After all, one set of my maternal great-grandparents were chicken farmersso theres that farm-to-table ethic in my bloodand the others were hoteliers in Lakewood, New Jersey: Thats probably where my love of hosting comes from. But the ease with which I fell into this new livelihood had more immediate roots too. When I was growing up, my mothers approach to food was always a bit more gourmet than that of my friends. She was always taking cooking classes, or listening to Arthur Schwartz on the radio and testing new and unusual combinations on me and my more-than-willing friends. But what she really loved was dining out. Whereas Noahs memorable family moments happened around his grandmothers table, ours happened at restaurants of all stripes throughout the city.