In pots all across Israel, countless ktzitzot are simmering, blending into their mix a myriad of stories, immigration paths, and marriages. Some find their way into sandwiches at fast-food stalls. Others are eaten hot or cold the day after they’re made, sending regards from a forgotten pot in the refrigerator. And some are packed up in plastic containers to go home with a family memory. Ktzitzot are filled with memories.
The story of Rachel and Esther Ohayon lost ktzitzot begins in the spring of 1958, a year and a half after they arrived in Kiryat Shmona. The whole family emigrated from beautiful Mogador, in Morocco, where plump seagulls can tell stories of lovely fish in the cold water of the Atlantic Ocean. With a French bent to her accent, Rachel told me a story:
I was a soldier, a little over 18. [My sister] Esther, who is a little younger than me, agreed to join me for a picnic at the Dan Nature Reserve with a few guys from Kiryat Shmona and the neighboring kibbutzim. There were pilots and officer cadets, the crème de la crème of Ashkenazi Sabras. I hardly spoke any Hebrew, but I was very pretty, with hair down to my buttom. We spread out a blanket, and each of us placed the food we brought. They opened cans of corn and pickles; we brought what our mother made: thick slices of bread stuffed with meatballs in tomato sauce.
One of the guys opened the sandwiches, sniffed them, said, “Yuck,” with a deeply disgusted look, and asked who brought them. I didn’t say a word. I was so ashamed. It was obvious it could only be us, the newcomers. Esther kept quiet, too, and the guy threw it all down the stream. For years, I felt bad that I didn’t stop him, that I didn’t say anything. That I let him throw the delicious meatballs my mother made. I kept asking for her forgiveness my entire life. My sister and I ate about a spoonful of corn and a bite of a pickle. It all tasted awful.
A few more years had to pass before Sabras opened their palates, and glorious pots of ktzitzot brought by immigrants from Muslim countries challenged the supremacy of the common fried Ashkenazi ones, bulked up with carbs to feed as many mouths as possible. “Meatballs are known to be made of meat that is mixed with eggs and fried onion,” Erna Meyer wrote in the 1937 book “How to Cook in Palestine.” “But only few know it is possible to make wonderful meatless patties, first and foremost, from oatmeal. The materials: 150 g oatmeal flakes, 0.5 liter milk or water, 3-4 eggs, salt, chopped herbs, onions if desired. Form small cakes with a spoon, bake them in oil — a healthy, fulfilling addition to vegetables and salads.”
The spirit of positive simplicity ran through all the cookbooks of the time. In the years of shortage after World War II and the subsequent period of austerity, cooks attempted to satisfy hunger as inexpensively as possible, sticking to a vegetable or two, carbs, and fat. The joy of saving is the essence of the ktzitzot recipes of the kibbutzim, which are made with more bread than protein. They are crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside. And even though, on my kibbutz, a different member prepared them each time, I always remember them being exactly the same every time.
Unlike hamburgers, which provide joy only when served hot, these ktzitzot adapted well to the kitchen’s efforts to prolong their life. They were served hot for lunch, then packed up in coolers and eaten cold as a snack when the kids went out for a hike or to the beach in Ashkelon on Fridays during summer vacation. The caretakers would spread our lunch on a plastic tablecloth: canned pickles, canned chickpeas, a vegetarian “liver-style” spread, cucumbers, and the famous ktzitzot. “Be careful so they don’t get sand all over them,” they would say. But we did get sand all over them, of course — from my hands, or another kid’s hands, or just from a strong, gluttonous wind.
I loved eating them on the beach, and I loved eating them on hikes to the Wind Mountain or on trips with my parents to the grove near Moshav Shoresh. We’d sit around a wood table; Mom would remove them from the red picnic cooler and place them between slices of challah. Dad would squeeze some mustard out of a tube, Mom would say it was too much, he’d say nonsense, she’d frown and tell him not to talk this way, and I’d crumble the yolk of a hard-boiled egg on top. I loved this sandwich so much; it was the taste of my family when it was still together.
“Don’t put carbs in your ktzitzot,” my grandma would say. “The carbs take all the power out of the flavor of the meat.” She and my grandfather arrived in Jerusalem from Casablanca in 1949, and in her kitchen, like in the kitchens of all immigrants from Muslim countries, ktzitzot were a source of pride. The side of couscous or bread took care of hunger; everything that happened inside the pots was all about technique and the harmony of flavors. Meatballs or fish patties, spring patties made with vegetables, and those in yellow or red sauces, like the lost meatballs of Rachel and Esther.
My grandmother was a tremendous cook, and her talent for finding ways to compensate for shortages in the new country’s pantry made her kitchen shine. She replaced the aromas of saffron and mace with lemon zest, which she added to the meat. Her ironclad rules for meatballs included using oil without inhibition, because, “This is what gives flavor to the food,” she would say; grinding meat at home, because you can’t trust anyone, and the world is full of disease, and if you’re not careful, it’ll get into your ktzitzot; and, “Never tell a stranger what you put into your food. This is the secret of the woman’s power, of her family.”
“The hand’s size makes the size of the ktzitzot”; all the women on the Moroccan side of my family — my mother, grandmother, and my great-grandmother who lived to be over 100 — have the same small but strong hands. Even my daughter Alma has these hands, which make little ktzitzot, the same size her foremothers used to make. Just like them, she makes sure to keep the heat low, so that the water doesn’t get overly excited and boil out of control. If it boils too strongly, everything disintegrates: the meatballs, the home, and the memories.