I was just reading about Nick Blackman, a Derby County striker who is currently on loan at Maccabi Tel Aviv. Bit of a culture shock, you’d think. And it is. Although Blackman is in fact Jewish. His father is a West Indian Christian but his mum is the daughter of a concentration camp survivor from Manchester. So Nick doesn’t exactly ‘look Jewish’ but according to the strictest of strict Jewish law; he is. Jewish mum = Jewish.

But what interested me was that Tal Ben Haim (used to play for Chelsea and Man City, but not at the same time) invited Nick round to his home for ‘typical Friday night dinner’. Hmmm…

Friday night dinners are a big deal for Jews. Even the most non-practicing, irreligious, atheistic, devil-worshipping, bacon-eating of Jews ‘does’ Friday night. Its a massive tradition. And, because food is involved, it has endurance that other traditions (where you stay hungry) don’t.

And the rule is simple. You have ‘the family’ round and you eat chicken. There’s no question as to ‘what shall we make?’ or ‘do you fancy beef??’ (have you seen the price of kosher beef??), you have a housefull and you feed them chicken. Roasted chicken.

We do Friday night dinners every week. Always have done. My mum and aunt used to share them, alternating, so we’d eat together with the cousins and (always) any strays and stragglers you can find.

Some hipster celeb chef in Hoxton reckons he invented ‘top to tail’ eating. Well he didn’t. My grandmother did. And she learned it from her mother, back in Poland. Because a chicken back then was an ultimate luxury item. So, other than the head, nothing was wasted. The liver was used to make chopped liver. The feet, heart, neck any other odds and sundries formed the base for chicken soup. Even the humble ‘parsons nose’, a lump of extraneous fat, was ‘rendered’ to provide the ‘shmaltz’ (fat) which was used on bread in place of butter. The feathers were fried… ok, maybe not. Poor people don’t waste food. End of. If rich people want to spend 35 quid eating part of cow that is normally thrown out with the garbage, that’s fine.

But then I went to Paris in about 1974 and had Friday night dinner with a Jewish family. And they brought to the table something called ‘cous cous’. Yeah, we all know it now, they sell it in Waitrose in all sorts of flavours and styles. But then, it was more WTF??? And the chicken was stewed. Because this family were originally from Morocco, not Poland. And their ‘traditional friday night dinner’ was way different to mine. Not in spirit, that’s a universal constant, as, being one of the ‘strays and stragglers’ I understood and appreciated. But in menu. No chopped liver. NO CHOPPED LIVER???? No chicken soup? (Soup is a cold climate thing, hence not big in Morocco). There was chilli, there were all sorts of ‘things’ that were selected specifically for me to eat as everyone sat there giggling. Like I cared as they were all delicious and the meal was total enlightenment.

So I wondered which version of ‘traditional friday night dinner’ Nick Blackman was fed in Israel. Which would depend purely on where his wife’s family originated and who taught her to cook. But I bet they ate chicken.

Happy Monday (you can eat what you want on Mondays, Lila’s having tangerine; bit sharp)

A xxxx