One of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries is of my lit­tle legs run­ning up a four-sto­ry walk-up in Boca Raton, where Grand­ma Agi was wait­ing at her front door, call­ing out ​“Csil­lag!” She wore big fash­ion­able glass­es, a leop­ard-print house­coat, and fuzzy slip­pers. The apart­ment had a thick smell of fry­ing pork cut­lets, her rántott hús. She’d hand me a choco­late egg cream, ush­er me and my old­er broth­er, Jor­dan, into the kitchen, and feed us until we were plump. Dessert was almost always palac­sin­ta spongy egg crepes that looked like yel­low moons with brown craters spat­tered about. She let us stuff them with nuts, cheese, jam, sug­ar, and syrup. 

Grand­ma Agi, my pater­nal grand­moth­er, grew up in Budapest, Hun­gary, at the worst pos­si­ble time, to put it light­ly. She sur­vived life in the Jew­ish ghet­to dur­ing World War II, the Stal­in­ist regime after the war, and the Hun­gar­i­an Upris­ing in 1956, a failed attempt to over­throw the oppres­sive com­mu­nists. After decades of hard­ship, Agi final­ly decid­ed it was time to flee. On the night she left Budapest, she stopped by her sister’s house to say good­bye. Her sis­ter cov­ered her in a big fur coat, and Agi slipped off into the night, head­ed for the safe­ty of Aus­tria and even­tu­al­ly New York City.

In a hap­pi­er time and a hap­pi­er place, Grand­ma Agi and Papa Steve met at a dance hall in New York and set­tled in Queens, run­ning a suc­cess­ful dry clean­ing busi­ness togeth­er. They raised a fam­i­ly and, like all good Jew­ish Amer­i­cans, even­tu­al­ly relo­cat­ed them­selves (and their dry clean­er) to Flori­da. That’s where I enter the picture.

Csil­lag is the Hun­gar­i­an word for star. When Agi would call me csil­lag, it made me feel like my world was mag­i­cal and full of won­der. As I got old­er, that sense of won­der start­ed to fade. I was explor­ing my inde­pen­dence from my fam­i­ly and mak­ing my own path in the world. I found my way to New York and land­ed in some of the tough­est restau­rant kitchens in the city. If any­thing is going to knock the mag­ic out of your life, it’s work­ing as a line cook.

It wasn’t until I hap­pened to find the last tat­tered copy of The Cui­sine of Hun­gary by George Lang sit­ting atop the sale pile in a Man­hat­tan book­store that the won­der came rush­ing back. I had nev­er seen a cook­book on Hun­gar­i­an food, and I pored over its exten­sive his­to­ry of Hun­gar­i­an cui­sine and cul­ture; it was both new and famil­iar. There were illus­tra­tions of kings and queens in extrav­a­gant cos­tumes stuff­ing their faces with palac­sin­ta but also dish­es I nev­er knew exist­ed! Chilled berry soups, hearty brais­es with ripe stone fruits, and lay­ered cakes as tall as a per­son. All I had known of Hun­gar­i­an food was fried meat and heavy sauces. I imme­di­ate­ly pur­chased the book.

That day kicked off a decade of my own dis­cov­ery of what it means to be Hun­gar­i­an Amer­i­can. Being sec­ond gen­er­a­tion often means a weak con­nec­tion to the lan­guage, cus­toms, and rit­u­als that make you spe­cial and unique. I trav­eled to Hun­gary, liv­ing there and eat­ing my way through my her­itage. I con­vinced Grand­ma Agi to give me her recipes (although it took some cognac to coax them out). I lay­ered my cheffy instincts over cen­turies of tra­di­tion. I found my own inter­nal csil­lag, a guid­ing star passed through my fam­i­ly and into my own sense of self.

Nana Arlene, my mater­nal grand­moth­er, was born and raised in the Bronx by Sephardic Jew­ish par­ents. She met her hus­band, my Papa Howie, in Rock­land Coun­ty, New York, where they ran a very suc­cess­ful phar­ma­cy. When my mom was a teenag­er, they moved to Flori­da and reopened their phar­ma­cy in a strip mall. Their next-door neigh­bor in the mall was a dry clean­er run by … Agi and Steve. Nana Arlene and Grand­ma Agi became chum­my, and like good Jew­ish women, the yen­ta instinct kicked in, the pho­tos came out, and my mom and dad were matched up by my grandmothers.

My child­hood was A Tale of Two Grand­mas. Both of my grand­moth­ers are ladies who lunch, ladies who enter­tain, and ladies who fill up a freez­er, ready to feed any­one who walks through the door. Wher­ev­er I went, I nev­er lacked a good meal made by lov­ing hands. 

As I got old­er, Grand­ma Agi would shoo me out of the kitchen, even as I became more inter­est­ed in cook­ing. She didn’t under­stand a man want­i­ng to cook; a man should be cooked for. Instead, it was Nana Arlene who began cook­ing with me — truss­ing chick­ens, bak­ing choco­late cakes, and mak­ing pep­pery vinai­grettes for Roque­fort sal­ads. She is an exact­ing mas­ter tech­ni­cian in the kitchen. She saw that cook­ing was an inescapable part of me and was hap­py to be my first, and best, teacher.

Sec­ond Gen­er­a­tion is not my grand­moth­ers’ cook­book, but it is my way of shar­ing a bit of their mag­ic with you. Hun­gar­i­an food is extra­or­di­nary, unique, and full of old wis­dom. I’m reimag­in­ing those tra­di­tions with an eye toward sea­son­al­i­ty, mar­ket-dri­ven ingre­di­ents, and a touch of mil­len­ni­al flair — mixed in with some clas­sics from the restau­rant along­side a few Hun­gar­i­an-inspired dish­es of my own inven­tion — because I want to help bring Hun­gar­i­an cook­ing out of the shad­ows and into the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. And all the parts of this book that lean dis­tinct­ly Jew­ish are gifts from Nana Arlene. This book wouldn’t exist with­out the two matri­archs of my fam­i­ly, who taught me that food and love are just syn­onyms for each other.