
DATE: Sunday, September 28, 1997            TAG: 9709250048

SECTION: FLAVOR                  PAGE: F8   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:  145 lines

CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: * A story on Sweet Temptations bakery in today's Flavor section, which was pre-printed, confused some kosher terminology. The baking pans in the bakery were to be color-coded: either ``dairy'' or ``parve'' (meaning neither dairy nor meat, but neutral). A quotation from Rabbi Joseph Friedman should have read: ``You can't have a dairy cake at a meat meal. You should not cook the calf in the milk of its mother. For 3,900 years we've understood that to mean you don't mix meat and dairy.'' Correction published Sunday, September 28, 1997. * ANCIENT FIRES PURIFY BAKERY RABBIS WITH BLOWTORCHES HELP SWEET TEMPTATIONS GO KOSHER

SINCE HIS Brooklyn days studying with chefs who were ``right off the boat,'' Moses Brown has created the kind of pastry that urges salivary glands to weep joyous bucketfuls.

With business partner Bonnie Skillman, he now enjoys brisk business at Sweet Temptations, a fine pastry bakery on Detroit Street in Portsmouth that recently expanded to twice its former size. In their first three years at the Port Norfolk shop, Brown and Skillman noticed their Jewish clientele often ordered kosher pastry from as far off as New York City.

The search for holiday desserts and special breads such as challah, an egg bread, was largely futile in Hampton Roads, which has a considerably smaller Jewish population than Brown's old stomping grounds in The Big Apple.

``There was nothing here,'' Brown said.

Until recently.

In a fiery, late-night inspection on Sept. 20, Sweet Temptations went kosher.

Two fellow displaced New Yorkers, Rabbis Yosef Friedman, and Sholom Mostofsky, led the process. They brought tools of the trade, including a large blowtorch to burn away impurities. Their dress was casual for the dirty, hot job of purifying the bakery. Mostofsky donned a black yarmulke. Friedman wore a ``Dad of the Year'' ball cap.

``Work clothes,'' Friedman explained.

The rabbis represented the ``Vaad Squad,'' slang for the local organization that governs all things kosher. Both men were excited about having a kosher bakery.

``I don't know of another community this size that has a facility of this caliber,'' Friedman said. He took a phone call ``out of the blue'' from Moses Brown about going kosher. He gets a lot of calls like that, but most folks back out after learning how hard it is to go and stay kosher. Not Brown, who grew up in a Jewish community and spent years at a kosher bakery in New York.

The rabbis and the pastry chef hit it off. Chef Moses, as the rabbis like to joke, is leading an expedition to the ``Gastronomic Promised Land.'' He's been practicing his Yiddish for the journey.

``He has great Yiddish,'' Friedman confided.

Rabbis don't just come in, bless some food and, bingo, the joint is kosher. The inspection is lengthy. All the food and preparation materials must be pure.

Brown and Skillman put in hours of preparation and cleaning. They had the preparation areas steam-cleaned, including a spotless walk-in oven that would have done the witch from ``Hansel and Gretel'' proud.

But the oven was not clean enough. The rabbis had Brown turn it on full blast to burn off the impurities. Burners of another kitchen stove were turned up and racks were scoured by flames, until blue flickers shone through melted holes in a covering of aluminum foil.

``The idea of heat being sterilizing is an ancient one,'' Friedman said. ``The idea of sterilization both physically and spiritually is ancient.''

They shut off the heat on the stove and pulled away the aluminum foil.

``Anything that could have been food on that stove,'' Friedman said, ``no longer exists molecularly.''

Nor do Sweet Temptations' old baking sheets.

``We had to buy all new pans because they were going to torch it,'' Skillman said, as she waited in the shop. She pointed to a garbage can with a baking sheet in it. The sheet had two holes burned through it.

It is the cost of progress.

Man,'' Brown said in the kitchen. ``It's getting hot in here.''

All thanks to Mostofsky, who had fired up the blowtorch to sear clean pots and pans.

Brown went outside, where Friedman and an assistant spray-painted the sides of baking pans into color-code: parve, or dairy, and non-parve.

``Idiot proof,'' Friedman told Brown. ``If you put an orange rack on a blue cart you know something's wrong.''

The shop will increase its production of non-dairy goods.

``You can't have a dairy cake at a meatless meal,'' Friedman said. ``You should not cook the calf in the milk of its mother. For 3,900 years we've understood that to mean you don't mix meat and dairy.''

His beeper went off.

``High-tech rabbi,'' he joked, and returned to the kitchen, where he and Mostofsky cleaned utensils by dropping them into a pot of boiling water, which Mostofsky kept at a rolling boil with the help of his blowtorch.

After the utensils were cleaned, they were color-coded.

Brown was exhausted from a day of cleaning that began before dawn. The inspection was at night, since the rabbis had celebrated the Sabbath until nightfall. Then they were free to work. Brown is a Baptist, so he worked in his kitchen all day.

``You know why there aren't any kosher pastry shops around?'' Skillman quipped. ``Because it's hard.''

The two shared a bench in the front room and waited for the rabbis. Near a wall of fame - photos, newspaper clippings - they spoke of meeting each other.

Skillman, a Johnson & Wales-educated chef, met Brown when she applied to be his assistant at the Founders Inn.

She wanted him as her mentor as soon as she met him.

``I liked her enthusiasm,'' Brown said. ``But I had to find out about her integrity. I'm very particular about who I work with.''

``I must have passed the test,'' Skillman said.

They laughed.

Skillman said Brown is an artisan in a dying craft.

``It's already dead,'' Brown said. ``These big corporations are pushing out pastry that's been frozen.''

``Because of all the natural ingredients in our product, there's no comparison,'' Skillman said. ``You taste the egg, the butter, the flour, the sugar. That's why it wasn't so hard for us to go kosher.''

Ninety-five percent of the raw material they used, she added, was pure to start with. And they sell a product people are happy to buy - especially now.

``It's not like we're selling insurance,'' she said.

It was almost midnight.

Friedman walked in.

``Where's Rabbi Brown?'' he asked.

They laughed again.

Friedman asked about utensils, and Brown rose.

On the way back to the sauna-like kitchen where Mostofsky's torch was getting to know a few pots and pans, Friedman told Brown that ``we're going to go through those three racks. . .''

Thousands of years after the rules were established, it's still a long journey to the Gastronomic Promised Land. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

GARY C. KNAPP

Rabbi Sholom Mostofsky...

Photos

GARY C. KNAPP

Rabbi Sholom Mostofsky purifies a mixing bowl at Sweet Temptations.

The items must be sterilized to remove particles that may

contaminate kosher foods.

Rabbi Yosef Friedman, left, confers with owner Moses Brown, center,

and Mostofsky during the inspection and purification.