A family affair

“FOOD TO JEWISH PEOPLE IS SOCIALISING, IT’S FAMILY. THERE’S NEVER A TIME WHEN THERE’S NOT FOOD”

Words: Tomé Morrissy-Swan

The meal starts with a prayer. “Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, boreh p’ri hagafen,” says Ivan Lester. Blessed are You, God, ruler of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.

“Amen,” those around the table respond.

Ivan pours sweet wine from a small, silver kiddush cup. It tastes not unlike port. He slices a large round challah (not plaited, as is the norm), which represents the circle of life. It’s Rosh Hashanah, a celebration of the new year. And, like all Jewish festivals, it’s heavy with symbolism, especially of the culinary kind. We dip both the soft, sweet, pillowy bread and slices of apple into honey. There are dates on the table, and honey cake too.

“Everything in Rosh Hashanah is sweet, for a sweet new year,” Ivan explains. “It’s a lovely holiday, in anticipation of a good new year,” adds Ivan’s wife, Sandra.

“We’re a very modern Jewish family,” their son, Andrew, says. “For us, Rosh Hashanah is very relaxed, very family orientated. A fantastic, fun evening with some delicious food.”

Sandra hands me a bowl of glistening chicken soup, two golf ball-sized matzo balls bobbing within. “Jewish food is comfort food,” says Ivan, who made the masterful broth. “Food to Jewish people is socialising, it’s family,” Andrew butts in. “It’s talking across the table. There’s never a time when there’s not food.”

The Lesters are a family steeped in what they call “Jewish soul food”. Ivan makes one of the best chicken soups around, but salt beef is their calling, and they’ve invited me to their home in Loughton, to the northeast of London, to talk about it. From their Borough Market stall, Nana Fanny’s, they pump out more than 1,000 salt beef sandwiches, on bagel or rye, per week.

“Salt beef was a method of preservation before refrigeration, it goes back generations,” says Andrew. To both preserve and tenderise tough cuts of meat – typically brisket in Jewish salt beef – beef has long been brined before being boiled.

Many cultures have a tradition of preserving meat in salt – the protracted shelf life of salted beef made it popular with the British merchant navy, Andrew explains. But the tender strips of delicately cured and gently spiced brisket we know and love today? “Predominantly it was eastern European Jews that came to this country and brought their favourite foods,” explains Andrew, whose ancestors hail from Russia and Poland.

Ivan tells me he adds saltpetre, sugar, garlic, peppercorns, bay, star anise and mustard seeds to the brine. “I won’t tell you the quantities,” he says, guarding a deep-rooted family secret. The beef is turned regularly before being boiled for a few hours. The whole process can take up to three weeks.

Ivan was born in London in 1944, by which time his mother Sarah and grandmother Fanny had long been making salt beef. According to family legend, Fanny had a barrow on Brick Lane from which she’d sell meat cured at their home on nearby Hanbury Street. She passed on her recipe to her daughter, creating a dynasty of which Andrew is the fourth generation. Andrew remembers going to his grandmother Sarah’s house, and “you’d never go and there wouldn’t be salt beef. Like someone might have their signature roast dinner. We were brought up with salt beef, we probably have salted blood.”

That certainly could be true for Ivan, who was a foodie from the off. “Being nosy and loving food, I got involved and started helping to brine it from an early age,” he tells me. Ivan trained as a chef and worked at gentlemen’s clubs in the West End, and hotels including The Savoy, before turning to street food vans and market stalls as far afield as Cambridge and Folkestone. They sold burgers but salt beef was always their specialty. “I always say Dad is the inventor of street food,” Andrew jokes. “He was serving food on the street before the phrase ‘street food’ existed.”

Ivan has been selling it for six decades and is one of London’s few masters of the art (most places that sell it buy salt beef produced by specialists, including Nana Fanny’s). Over six decades, his recipe has barely changed, save for a recent reduction in salt. But the equipment has. Ivan used to brine the brisket in an enamel baby bath in his garage – modern health and safety standards have put paid to that.

The Lesters ran long-established stalls at Exmouth and Broadway Markets, but Borough was always the dream, and 12 years ago they finally opened. Salt beef is synonymous with London, rarely seen elsewhere in the country, and for Andrew, offering a product of such important cultural heritage at one of the city’s oldest food markets is key. “We’re doing something that’s very much part of our culture, and people seem to like it. It’s nothing more than that, we’re no frills.” Here, visitors can enjoy stacked rye bread or bagel sandwiches, with pickles and strong English mustard balancing the fatty, salty meat.

Talking of which, my soup is finished and Ivan hands me a beautifully arranged platter of blushing-pink salt beef. The meat is delicate as a feather, with a buttery texture and a slightly fatty flavour that lingers wonderfully in the mouth. The meat pulls apart with ease and you can see air pockets where the fat has rendered down – the sign of good salt beef, says Andrew. Alongside sweet, sour, crunchy dill pickles, sinus-clearing mustard and soft, pillowy challah, it’s heaven.

We move on to the honey cake. It’s light, mildly sweet, comfortingly simple. The Lesters tell me about the importance of upholding Jewish traditions, how their grandchildren love celebrating Chanukah, how each festival comes with culinary symbolism, from Chanukah’s oily latkes to Passover’s seder plate with its array of foods. This year there are 20 family members coming for Rosh Hashanah, which coincides with Ivan’s 80th birthday. After the prayers and sweet treats there may be Ivan’s chopped liver (“the best in the world,” says Sandra), chicken soup, roast chicken and perhaps some of that special salt beef.

“Any excuse to have a celebration,” says Andrew. “Even without the festivals, every Friday night is a festival, because you’re with your family, eating, drinking, and you’ll always end up rolling out.”