A Pupick in the Pot

[Daily Gullet Staff]

<img src="http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/1197317116/gallery_29805_1195_33252.jpg" hspace="8" align="left">by Ellen Shapiro

Buried at the back of my freezer, I have just one pint of my father's chicken soup left. Aside from his prayer shawl (which I have requested for my son) and his grandmother’s Shabbat candlesticks (which he gave me when I married), the chicken soup is the only physical thing I have from him. It’s only a pint -- hardly enough to share three ways.

My father passed away last summer, and the certainty of his absence has been slow to take hold. By now I should know that he’s physically gone from my life, but I've reached for the phone to call him most mornings, as part of my regular routine -- to check in on his health or to relay a story about my son, his beloved first and only grandchild. Every few days, I catch myself lecturing internally "You really should call your father -- life should never be so busy that you don’t have time to pick up the phone and check in on him." Then I remember the reason so many days have passed without a call. That’s when I feel the loss in the pit of my stomach.

I always felt especially connected to my father on Jewish issues -- cultural and religious. Raised orthodox by Russian/Polish immigrant parents, my father grew up during the Great Depression. The era and the poverty, along with the customs and the culture, were woven into the fabric of his being. He spoke Yiddish fluently and, with us, his language was peppered with Yiddishisms.

We called my father "Shtetl Man." It was tongue-in-cheek at first but really, it was the best way to describe him. All our family friends came to refer to him as Shtetl Man too. At the Passover Seder, along with the four questions, there were Shtetl Man trivia questions framed in the Jeopardy format -- always preceded by the Jeopardy theme music.

My father could have been Tevye, from Fiddler on the Roof, though he was cast as Lazar Wolfe in the synagogue's production of the play. The cantor, of course, was cast as Tevye. With a little extra padding around the middle, he looked just like the Tevye portrayed by Zero Mostel -- right down to the gap between his two front teeth -- and in real life, he behaved like him too.

Long before political correctness entered the vernacular, my father warned when we were very young that he’d disown us if we married out of the faith. More than once, like Tevye, I imagined him rending his clothing over the loss of one of his three children, should it ever come to that. I knew he meant it.

Sometime before he died and after one of his hospital stays, my father took me aside and with tears welling up (a rarity for Shtetl Man) he drew me a map of the cemetery where his family members were buried. He counted out the gravestones. This row, four stones in, is where his mother and father are buried, two rows over is "the old uncle" and in the cemetery next door are his sister and brother in law, my favorite aunt and uncle, from his side of the family. He wasn’t concerned for himself; he wanted me to know where the family was buried so I could follow tradition and visit them before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

"You're different from your brothers," he told me, "you understand." He meant no disrespect to my older brothers, but we understood that of the three of us, I am the most deeply tied to Judaism -- more culturally than religiously. I can't separate "the Jewish" out from who I am. I keep my father’s hand-drawn cemetery map with my other personal documents, keys to the safe deposit box and overdue Israel bonds.

Until 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have been uncommon to see Shtetl Man chopping wood in the back yard. He would swing the axe above his head -- with a log attached -- and heave the whole thing down Paul Bunyan style onto a large chopping block, splitting the smaller log into fragments. Of course my parents had central heating, but he was stock-piling firewood for winter, to cut down on heating costs.

Then he'd walk inside to check on his shischl of chicken soup. Cooking that soup was an all-day affair. He would make the soup and, the next day, my mother would make the matzoh balls.

I asked, on more than one occasion, for a chicken-soup-making lesson, for Shtetl Man was known far and wide for his amazing chicken soup. When both of us were younger, he would have already shopped for the ingredients. More recently, he would wait for me and we'd go to the store together. Then we'd stand in front of the stove together and he’d pull spices from the cabinet nearby.

"First you fill a big pot -- a shischl -- with water and you add the chicken. I like to use legs, thighs, and wings because they add more flavor to the soup and they’re cheaper (always a concern for Shtetl Man). Then I add a tziboleh (little onion,) two if they’re small, I cut up some carrots into chunks—don’t make the pieces too small or they’ll disintegrate, add some celery, parsnips because your mother loves parsnips, and then we add the spices."

This is where things get imprecise. Much in the same way my father never owned a new car in his 78 years of life, he never followed a recipe. He didn’t think in those terms. While my mother loved to collect cookbooks and pore over them, my father never cracked the spine on a single one. He cooked "to taste."

"So, you take the salt and you add about this much to the pot," he’d say, cupping the palm of his bear-like paw.

"How much do you think that is?" I’d ask.

"I don't know," he’d reply. "Cup your hand and pour; you can always add more later if it needs it."

"Wait, wait!" I’d say. "Let me measure it before you pour it into the pot."

He’d give me a look and launch into one of his favorite speeches, one I’d heard him give to many an unsuspecting friend or relative who’d asked for a lesson in chicken soup making.

"It's all about taste," he’d go on. "If you can't taste what it needs, you can't cook a good soup."

We'd go through each of the seasonings like this: parsley, pepper, tarragon and, at the end, a little sugar.

A pinch of sugar was the magic ingredient in many of my father's recipes, from chicken soup to tomato sauce. It was never a lot -- maybe a tablespoon for a large stockpot, but he believed it made all the difference. Having been the beneficiary of Shtetl Man's cooking throughout my life, I had no cause to argue with him.

When we were kids, much the way other children fight over the toy at the bottom of the cereal box (we did that too,) we fought over the pupick in the pot of chicken soup. We would run to the pot muscling and maneuvering to get the pupick for our bowl, and I, the youngest, was right in there with my brothers fighting for the right to the pupick. So my father added extra pupicks to the pot. "It adds flavor," he’d say. When we got older and learned what the pupick was, the fights over the chicken’s "belly button" ceased.

I never did work out a perfect recipe for my father's chicken soup, but whenever I spoke to him on the phone and he heard a hint of a cold in my voice, he'd put a pot on to boil as soon as we hung up. And if he wasn't up to cooking that week, he'd tell me there was some "Jewish penicillin" waiting for me in the freezer, I just had to come to town to get it (I live about 75 miles away).

After my father died, my husband, son and I all came down with colds. We needed soup. Steven and I exchanged nods. It was time: I dug deep into the freezer, and I pulled out a quart-sized container. Lost in thoughts of my father, I heated up one of his last tangible gifts to me: his chicken soup.

I parsed it out so that each of us would have a portion, making sure that our son, just 14-months-old at the time, wouldn’t waste a drop. I narrated to him while I helped him eat -- I told him he was eating his grandfather's chicken soup. The soup was delicious -- but "the finish," as they say with wine, was bitter sweet.

Not long after, I started taking my son with me to a neighborhood synagogue when I went to say kaddish for my father. At first I was very anxious that PJ, who was then walking and talking in his own language, would be disruptive and I'd find us barred from entry. On the contrary, because of his presence I found that we were now celebrities at the evening services. His climbing up and down from the bench, mentions of Dada or Momo (our dog) and crunching on Nature O's never failed to bring chuckles from those standing nearby. And, while I say the words of the mourner’s kaddish out loud, I sometimes think of my father with me, a little girl, sitting by his side as he observed yartzeit and said kaddish for his mother, father, sister or brother.

Every time one of us gets a tickle in the back of the throat, my thoughts turn to that last pint of soup in the freezer. On countless occasions, I've been tempted to heat it up so that I could smell my father's soup cooking on the stove one more time, and feel the steam rising off the broth to my face -- the blanket of love that went into every pot. But I haven't been able to do it because when we eat that last pint of chicken soup it will all be gone forever, and right now, that's something I'm just not sure I can swallow.

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A long-time Daily Gullet contributor and eGullet Society staff emeritus, Ellen Shapiro is a photographer and writer. She lives in New York City with her husband, their son and their bulldog.

[shellfishfiend]

Those are beautiful memories and I know many people will envy the relationship you had with your father. If you do bring yourself to ever eat the last of the soup, you might salt it with tears, but I bet a smile will be on your face.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

[Varmint]

Simply beautiful, Ellen. Thank you so much for sharing.

I remember vividly going through a similar situation with the last jar of my late grandmother's jellies. My grandmother, more than anyone else, took the time when I was a child to teach me how to cook. She took me berry picking, she showed me how to cook fish, and she always had something special in her cabinet for me. She was in many ways the ideal grandmother: generous with her love and even more so with her time. Shortly after she died, I raided her pantry filled with home canned pickles, tomatoes, fruits and, of course, jellies. She had raspberry, red currant, blackberry and concord grape. She picked the fruit herself and made them into jelly. We ate the jelly with reckless abandon, never once thinking that the supply was indeed limited. It was only when I was about to finish off the last jar of a red current/blackberry mixture and went to get a replacement that I realized that there was no more. This was it. At that time I realized, two years after her death, that my grandmother was really gone. I enjoyed that last spoonful of jelly, a bit sadly, but with infinite love toward my grandma. And now, whenever I see my kids cooking beside me, her memory comes flooding back to me.

[Chris Amirault]

The haunting materiality of your father's soup is breathtaking. Thanks.

[Pam R]

Ellen, thanks for sharing this with us. Some of your memories are so familiar - from the pupicks (pipicks here) to the Yiddish spiked language. My father is also the chief chicken soup cook and I've spent lots of time learning. I was taught 'shiterine a bissel saltz' and that everything is really done by taste.

I hope that the aromas and ta'am of your own pots of chicken soup will keep this memory vivid for you, and be as strong a connection between you and your son as they are between you and your father.

[mizducky]

What a beautiful piece. I have similar feelings about my mother's chicken soup, though when she passed 20 years ago I never even thought to preserve a sample for posterity. But every time I make chicken soup, even though I occasionally gussy it up here and there, I'm basically paying homage to her recipe. Soup ... better carrier of memory than a madeleine?

[KatieLoeb]

Ellen:

Thank you for sharing that with us. It's a magnificent story and testament to your father. PJ will one day be proud to read it, even if he doesn't necessarily remember eating the soup.

Sense memories are powerful. The smell or taste of certain things can turn me back into a four year old, remembering sharing a breakfast cup of coffee with my father. He got me hooked on caffeine early, even if it was 10% coffee, 60% milk and 30% sugar. It tasted a lot like melted coffee ice cream and I still like that.

[Pierogi]

That was an amazing, eloquent tribute. Thank your for sharing that and touching my soul.

[Kim Shook]

Ellen, thank you so much for sharing your dad with us. I think I can see him! Here I am at my desk at 8am, quietly dabbing away the tears and hoping that no one notices because how can I explain that I'm crying over a story on a food site ? Your story touched me, as it obviously did others. I have realized for a long time that food is so much more than sustinance, but your wonderful words brought that home again in a very powerful way. Thank you, again!

Kim

[Ellen Shapiro]

Thanks everyone for the kind words and thank you for sharing your own stories.

Last night was another bittersweet occasion—a Chanukah party at my parents’ house. My father always made the latke batter and fried the latkes to perfection. Of course he had no recipe and his procedure was unorthodox (rather than a hand grater or the Cuisinart, he put the potatoes in the blender) but they were so good that the latkes hardly ever made it out of the kitchen. Friends would stand next to him chatting--and waiting for the latkes to come steaming hot out of the oil. If the crowd around the stove was too dense, others would congregate at strategic exit points from the kitchen to the dining room. Those sitting in the living room would often comment that it was taking an extraordinarily long time to cook a single batch of latkes.

This year Steven (FG) and my oldest brother Michael took the helm. They made the batter together (28 pounds of potatoes and 6 pounds of onions plus eggs, matzoh meal and a little salt and pepper) and Steven fried the latkes. He had two skillets going and cooked until all of the batter was gone.

Steven made a different style of latke, which was a smart bet. As with his chicken soup, my father was known far and wide for his latkes. He was a latke legend. But Michael and Steven started a new tradition and I know my father would be proud. At the end of the night, there was 1 latke left. And like the cup for Elijah, no one touched that last latke.

[Dave the Cook]

What's a pupick?

[Ellen Shapiro]

I thought you'd never ask! The pupick is the gizzard.

[KatieLoeb]

Isn't it also a bellybutton?

[Ellen Shapiro]

Yes, the word pupick also means bellybutton but in this context for chicken (soup), it is the chicken gizzard.

[Bond Girl]

That's beautiful Ellen. Something I can relate to, having lost my own father recently.

[pogophiles]

Thank you for that Ellen...

[boaziko]

Very touching, thank you Ellen.

In today's spoken Hebrew Pupick it is still used.

A book just came out (In Hebrew) for very young kids named: Where's my Pupick?

http://www.steimatzky.co.il/NS_ShowBigPict...s/13500048b.jpg

Boaziko

[Ellen Shapiro]

My father used to "go for the pupick" on my belly. It never failed to make me giggle.

[RobinKateB]

Ellen, thank you so much for writing that and sharing it with all of us. You are very lucky to have had such a wonderful father and we are lucky to have glimpsed a piece of him.

-Robin

[maggiethecat]

Ellen, this piece resonates with most of us. Thanks for it and a wonderful 2008 to you and yours.

[Ellen Shapiro]

I have been sick for the last 9 days. Yes, I have been to the doctor--two of them. That was as much to quiet my Jewish mother (well, both of them, the one who gave birth to me and Fat Guy, but it's hard to fault a guy for being protective). A virus, both doctors told me. No strep. So no penicillin. As the days have dragged on and I have dragged along I thought about my father and how I wished I had some of his chicken soup and then I thought "well, you know, you actually do have some of his chicken soup! Yes, 7 years later, I still had my father's chicken soup at the back of my freezer.

I mentioned it to FG and much to my surprise he said "why don't I cook it up for you?" I almost fainted. I'll eat yogurt past the expiration date, taste milk that is questionable to see if it's good--FG, not so much. Then again, my stomach is like a cast iron pot and FG knows that. he also knows how much that soup has meant to me all of these years and that I've been sick for a long time.

I didn't know what to do. I had a momentary internal struggle--if I cook it, it will be gone. Gone forever. But if I'm ever going to eat it, now seems like exactly the right time.

"Okay." I said. "Add some water." After 7 years, there was some evaporation. Steven cooked it. The apt. started to smell like chicken soup -- my father's chicken soup. FG boiled it. I tasted one spoonful. Hmmm. Edible. I tried another. Then I took a bowl and ladled some soup in. I fished out a matzoh ball. As I ate some, my son asked if he could have some too. Steven and I looked at each other.

"Well, I boiled it." FG said.

"Okay P.J., you can have some. He had a little and asked for more. Then he asked for a matzoh ball too. Steven asked for a taste as well. I added a little salt remembering that in his later years, my father, a lover of salt, had cut down on his favorite seasoning--doctor's orders. It improved the taste.

We all sat quietly with our soup. I talked about my father. I told P.J. again about the soup (the last time he has a batch it was about a year after my father died--he was two years old, too young to remember).

P.J. said "I think I remember this soup." Even though there is no way my 7 1/2 year old son could remember eating my father's soup when he was sick when he was two years old I considered the possibility.

Well, my father's soup is gone now. There is a little extra space at the back of my freezer. Steven, P.J. and I shared a moment, we had a taste and we created our own memory--one I won't soon forget. I wished my father was there but I suppose in a way, he was. And you know, I actually felt a little better too--maybe my father's "Jewish penicillin" was working . . .

[Toliver]

Ellen,

Thanks for the poignant update. Just know that the next time you make chicken soup, your father will be right there with you in spirit. And though the soup may not taste like his, it will taste like yours which is what tradition is all about...adding something new to that which came before us.

Thanks again.

[hsm]

As moving as ever, Ellen, thank you for sharing and I hope the soup cured what ails you. I know it made you feel better.

[Ellen Shapiro]

It really is difficult to let go of on so many levels. I guess it's time to get a pot out and try my hand at chicken soup!

Thanks for the kind words and support.

[judiu]

So, Ellen, how did your chicken soup turn out? Did you put in the extra pupiks?