As surprising as some people find this, yes, Jews have been known to create recipes for pork, before. As there are almost 14 million of us on the planet, as of the time of this writing, one should not be shocked to hear this - we're not all going to walk in lock step any more than anybody else, and some of us have our reasons. There are those who are reform, and see kashrut as being an outdated form of observance. There was one fellow I knew who, after his mother died, went on an "I'm angry with G-d" kick (as he put it, later), and started guzzling the other white meat as his personal form of rebellion against a supposedly uncaring creator. A little sheepishly, later on, he shared his recipes with others, adding that veal could perhaps be substituted for pork. Having written at length about the question of evil before his mother's illness had made its appearance, and watching his philosophy flee him in the face of grief without even one of its postulates having been refuted by the incidents, he felt a little silly and, so, he said, he would share these recipes, not in mockery of G-d, Judaism or the Jewish people, but as a confession and renunciation of his own earlier foolishness, as he laughed at himself.

Besides which, he added, "it does taste a lot like veal. Maybe they could make a substitution?"

Then there are those of us who've worked food service, doing so in cities in which the question "so, Yussef, you can't find a nice Sephardic girl?" gets the answer "well, yes, but I'd really rather not date one of my cousins, mom." Chicago, alas, is not the most Jewish of cities, and kosher restaurants to work in were hard to find, so, where one worked, people would come in and order what they would order and why not? I still remember looking at my first pile of ground pork with what I guess was not at all a subtle look of dismay. I wondered how small those little worms really were, the ones we had to cook the meat thoroughly to kill, picturing them wriggling their way through the meat, crawling over my skin, no doubt finding their way through a nick in my skin before entering my bloodstream and finding their way to my ...

"Man up and get real", I told myself. "This is your issue and not the diner's, and not even really the pig's, G-d rest its soul. There is the order and you are a professional" ... at which point chef spoke up. "Do we have a problem, Joseph?", he asked. "Do you like working here? Would you like to go on working here?" Yes, a professional who suddenly remembered just how close he'd be to not being able to cover the rent this month, even with the job. On which, by the way, I really wasn't a professional, but when one has worked so hard to find work, one sometimes tells oneself little lies. Digging in, with chef's kind indulgence, I made something from this recipe, which had met with his approval if not his complete confidence:

Tevye would not have been proud. Look, I was stumped and we were supposed to create something, and didn't pork taste kind of like pike? "Not so much", said one of my co-workers, but the sabbath at my mostly (read: overwhelmingly) Ashkenazic shul had ended just hours before, and this is what came to mind. Looking at the meat, I wondered if it would have killed the farmer to let the poor animal have a little nosh once in a while - not a speck of fat was to be seen in the pink, amorphous mass that had once no doubt been a loving, intelligent creature, playing with the family dogs, no doubt while the children argued over what its name should be, having no idea that sentence had already been passed and that there would be no appeal and no escape from the executioner. But why obsess? The leanness meant that there would be no discernable lumps of fat to melt away, and isn't that what mattered most?

For each two pounds of some little boy's once faithful companion I had to cook, I added 1/3 cup of matzoh meal, two large white onions (grated), two eggs, two cups of chicken broth because it couldn't hurt, 1/2 cup of chopped curly parsely, 2 tbsp. of chopped dill and two green serrano chilis. No doubt to remind the diners of the flames of Hell awaiting those who defy G-d's law, I'm sure somebody will ask? Not at all.

Chef was not convinced, having heard of the original dish. "This will be ready when? Tomorrow morning?", he asked. "Maybe a little sooner than that, boss", I said, forming the meat into small marbles the size of hazelnuts, which I then rolled in cornstarch in order to help them hold their shape, before dropping them into a small pot of broth, made (again, for each 2 lb. order) by first softening two medium minced yellow onions (yes, more onion) in olive oil (4 tbsp. worth) with 2 chopped cloves of garlic, adding 1 tbsp. of ground turmeric (cooking the onion and turmeric just long enough for the turmeric to dark slightly and release its aroma) and then 1 tbsp. of paprika (which I then cooked for a few seconds, just long enough to darken very slightly), adding about a pound of chopped tomatos very quickly after that (so the spices would not burn), which I then cooked soft, adding a quart of chicken broth, 1 tbsp. of caraway seed, 1 tbsp. of cumin seed and 4 chopped scallions (green onions in the Midwest) (greens and all), before simmering this mixture for about ten minutes to create the broth in which our porcine friend would take his final bath.

Ten minutes of simmering was plenty. I took the balls out of the broth, which was served as a first course, the fish balls being served with a simple garlic mayonnaise - two egg yolks (at room temperature) added to two previously crushed cloves of garlic (raw cloves crushed to a paste), 1 tsp. white wine vinegar and 1 cup of olive oil being slowly beaten in until a lightly thickened sauce formed. It was then served, with a dollop of mayonnaise on the top of each dumpling, the rest on the side, and a stern admonition being given to the server to not call that sauce aioli or allioli, because it wasn't. I'm assured that the dish was quite edible. Not that I would know.

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