By Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence
The ridiculous hype surrounding cooking one meal with a few courses once a year suggests that many of the general public haven’t been making Shabbos ever, let alone for the last few years.
There are months dedicated to cracking down on time management to achieve that perfect Thanksgiving dinner. I sit there watching all the cooking shows, reading magazine articles, and observing the rest of the ridiculousness surrounding cooking one measly meal with a bird, some string beans, and a pie. I wonder if we’ve failed humanity by not showing them how the Orthodox woman throws it down in the kitchen.
Why aren’t there reality shows documenting how we make a homemade dinner every night for our families, in addition to the weekly Shabbos prep, and occasional month-long celebration of three-day yomim tovim, where we get to cook and bake as if we run an actual restaurant?
If you ask any woman who’s grown up in the Orthodox world, she can recite recipes, different cooking applications, and shortcuts to making several proteins, sides, and desserts.
They’re familiar with how to grill on direct and indirect heat, smoke meat, and which wood to use to achieve different flavors, how to sous vide and reverse sear, and why brining before making specific proteins can tenderize meat.
As Orthodox women, we need to somehow pick up how to bake challah, other bread, cakes, and desserts; if they’re not bakers, they know where to buy the best.
They know the best food processors, the best immersion blenders for soups and sauces, and the best and safest mandolins.
Go into any kosher kitchen, and you’ll find more small appliances hidden in cabinets than in some restaurants. Air fryers, rice cookers, pressure cookers, woks, griddles, and sheet pans galore. And then we find places to put all the stuff away. Now that’s talent. In fact, I’m pretty sure if you dropped any of us in a commercial kitchen, we’d do just fine.
Why do we value this type of domestic work? Why make ourselves crazy when we have everything ready-made available for purchase? I’d venture to guess that the reason is because our value on the family unit is greater within the Jewish fold than anywhere else I’ve seen. And the center of every home is the kitchen. It’s where we gather night after night, even on the busy school days, when kids filter in at different times. It’s where we spend our time all Shabbos, disconnecting from all of the weekly technological temptations that distract us from the same type of communication we get to have during that one day.
And as the matriarchs who feed their families when they’re sad, happy, tired, bored, or anxious, we’ve become more than adept at our way around the kitchen. It’s the heart of the home and where the best memories are made.
There’s a strong correlation between food and love. For me and so many other women who express themselves through their cooking, cooking is an opportunity to gather family, neighbors, and friends in a way that nothing else can.
When people comment that all the work I do in the kitchen must be effortless because I love it, I always disagree. It’s not that collecting ingredients, developing recipes, and executing the dishes isn’t enjoyable; it’s something I’ve come to love. But it’s time-consuming, messy, and tedious work.
I don’t love the process of what each dish entails, but I do love the reaction when I serve it. I love watching people love the food I’ve put so much into. That’s my love. It’s how I express myself to others. I’m lucky I get to do it way more often than one Thanksgiving a year. n
Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence is a native of the Five Towns community, a mom of 5, a writer, and a social media influencer.
