Celebrating Modern Jewish Living Through Food, Tradition, and Family
Dad’s Farina
Oh how my father loved his Cream of Wheat. To this day, I simply don’t get it. I will never get it. If you’ve read any of my other Baker’s Daughter blogs, you know how much I adored my father (still do), but for the life of me, I’ll never understand his fascination with farina, the milled wheat that was the basis for his beloved hot cereal.
I always kept a box of Cream of Wheat in my pantry, so that whenever my parents made the trek from Florida to visit with me and my family in Boston, I’d have it in my house. I can still clearly see my mother at the stove, her back toward me, stirring away as my father sat at the kitchen table…in anticipation of what? Yuck.
True confession: my father has been gone for six years now, but the box of Cream of Wheat that was in my kitchen cabinet when he last visited in May 2012 is still there. I just can’t bring myself to throw it away.
Just this week, i was perusing The New Jewish Cook Book by Betty Dean, published in 1947. What should I find? A recipe for Farina Pudding, (a dessert of all things–I can’t even imagine), that uses farina as its base. The recipe adds brown sugar, raisins, scalded milk, eggs, and butter to the farina and bakes the mixture for 30 minutes, as you would a cake.
Ms. Dean also suggests serving it with a pudding sauce. Fancy. To Ms. Dean’s credit, she does offer lovely sauce recipes such as Chocolate Sauce, Brandy Sauce, and Orange Sauce, but I don’t think any amount of chocolate (or brandy) could convince me to raise a spoonful of (disguised) farina to my lips as a dessert. Sorry, Betty.
As for my Dad, this recipe would have made his day. I so wish he was here so that I could…ask my mother to whip it up for him.
Until Next time,
Jodi
Jodi Luber
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
TheJewishKitchen.com
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Jodi Luber
Here goes: Born in Brooklyn. Daughter of a bagel baker with a Henny Youngman soul and a mom who makes Joan Rivers seem tame. Late bloomer. Married the love of my life at 45 and love being a mom to our three kids. I'm a professor at Boston U. Happiest in the kitchen baking and remembering how my dad would melt from a single bite of my cheesecake.
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