Potato knishes, blueberry buns and knishes with sesame seeds.
It takes a village to make knishes and buns.
The thing that I possibly love best about being Jewish is the food—the passing down of recipes, the sharing within our community, and the beauty of the culinary traditions. Some of them are so odd and involve an acquired taste: my grandmother slapping the board with whiskey to make her Passover candy, the cleaning of the fish bones to make gefilte fish and boiling up the broth we call yuch, and the tradition of cooking with chicken fat or schmaltz.
Blogging, apparently has broadened my community. I had never heard of blueberry buns until I received a comment last week from a woman named Irene Saiger, telling me of her family’s tradition of taking challah dough and filling it with sugared fresh blueberries. She invited me to try her recipe: click here for a link to that.
I couldn’t imagine why our family had never tried this, so I made them today. And since I was going to the effort of filling circles of rolled out challah I decided to make some potato knishes as well. A potato knish is another kind of challah bun, this one savory, stuffed with mashed potatoes. At their best they are made with chicken fat—schmaltz—both as part of the mashed potatoes as well as brushed onto the dough before baking. My mother always had chicken fat on hand. She would tear it off of the chicken every week and keep a bag full in the freezer, along with chicken livers, saving both until she had enough of each to make chopped liver. Years ago I started saving up chicken fat in the freezer. But I never used it for anything. Today I found the bag but it was, well, rancid. My kind neighbor, Bev, volunteered to stop by the store and pick up a fat chicken for me. And then I thought of Ben, five houses down, who loves to make his own chicken stock and matzo balls with schmaltz. “Ben,” I asked, “Do you, by any chance, have any chicken fat in your freezer?” “I have a jar in the refrigerator, still fresh. I’ll bring it right over,” he said.
What are the odds of finding a neighbor in the middle of east central Illinois with a jar of schmaltz in their fridge?
The Plate is My Canvas 
Dori, ECI should no longer surprise any of us. We have everything here and it is the best kept secret ever!
” couldn’t imagine why our family had never tried this”. As a teenager I remember my mother bringing home from work one of those cheese-and-sausage gift boxes. In it was a summer sausage, something I had never heard of. I loved it. But the strongest memory is of the puzlement and wondering why, given that both my father and mother freely admitted to knowing of summer sausage and having tasted it and liked it ( it was not a revelation to them as it was to me), why I had never tasted it before, why had it never been in our house, not once all those years. In my 20’s I remember an adult student of mine making chicken divan; it was another revelation. I am considerably older now, and have observed food habits in many families and concluded that there is a substantial element of randomness (or in some case, path-dependence) on what we are exposed to and not. This is above and beyond the obvious, such as ethnicity, religion, etc.
I like your term “path-dependence.”
I’m famous now! Glad that I could be of help, especially after tasting the knishes, which were (as usual) nothing sort of incredibly delicious.
Can’t wait to hear how the blueberries buns were??
Potato knishes look great!
Irene
They were fantastic! We had the last two with coffee this morning. Nothing lasts long at this house. Thank you so much for the recipe!
So glad to hear!
Irene