From My Mother's Kitchen by Mimi Sheraton

They were served fresh out of the boiling pot, “with croutons on them.”

Like a traffic conductor, or a toreador, he found a way to guide the strong-willed women in his family safely past each other.Īlso, my mother said, the potato balls weren’t fried. He’d contrive to usher my mother up to bed and then stay up late with us, always the best at rolling - his dumplings, like any present he wrapped or peanut butter sandwich he made, were painstakingly uniform and precise - and always cleaning up behind the whole maelstrom so the house would be guest-ready in the morning. He’d sneak out to buy the potatoes ahead of time, handle the boiling and mashing before my sister and I got in. My father became a master at navigating it. But the tension is real - and as much a part of the tradition now as flouring our hands to roll the dough. There’s never any doubt that the potato balls will get made. “Do we really need to make them?” our mom will say. Just before dinner is served the next day, we haul two old electric skillets onto precious counter space and slowly sauté the dumplings in butter until they’re a perfect crispy golden brown. But my mom - even though the recipe is from her family, the flavors from her childhood, the tradition ostensibly hers - resists. My sister and I can’t imagine not making them. The joke is that she’s not at all cool.Įvery year, the potato balls are a struggle. “I’m cool as a cucumber,” she says, not participating, looking amused. “Mom, what are you doing?” I ask, in faux-documentary mode.

My father is tending the boil with an old enamel skimming spoon, pulling the dumplings from the water once they float to the top and (in the classic family test of doneness) “wiggle-woggle” there for a bit.Īt one point I pan to my mother, seated by the window. She’s dropping rounded balls of a simple dough - boiled potato mash, egg, salt and flour, kneaded together and then rolled into spheres the size of shooter marbles - into a stockpot of simmering water. My other son is eating Cheerios, but my father and sister are making the family version of kartoffelklösse, the German potato dumplings my sister and I have cherished since we were kids. The rest of the iPhone video documents my mother’s bustling kitchen on the eve of the big holiday meal. “Potato balls,” he says, testing out his then-new words.

He’s 2, seated in a high chair, and his hands are covered in flour and a sticky dough.

From My Mother's Kitchen by Mimi Sheraton