In 1970s and 1980s Australia, the Jewish community Rachel Simons grew up in Sydney was still small, most of it comprised of European Jews who survived the Holocaust and their descendants. There were just two or three synagogues, one kosher butcher and one kosher restaurant: A place called Tibby’s in the B’nai Brith center. “Imagine if the JCC had a little room with a little kitchen,” Rachel, who is the co-owner of tahini company Seed + Mill, explains. “It was the only restaurant where we could eat.” The restaurant was staffed with one waiter who always wore a tuxedo, and it was a treat to eat there. Rachel and her sister Talia would often order plates of schnitzel with cherry sauce when they visited. 

Crispy chicken schnitzel cutlets were also a staple in their home, always stashed in the freezer so family members could take them out whenever they wanted. After school, Rachel would walk home with a gaggle of classmates and she would fry the schnitzels from the freezer and make a cherry sauce to go with them for an afternoon snack. (One time, she and her sister accidentally started a small fire making the schnitzel. Thankfully, Talia was able to extinguish the fire by dumping a houseplant on it.) Their mother Jane also served schnitzel for Shabbat dinner. 

The schnitzel recipe itself originated in the family with Jane, but the cherry sauce has roots in Czechoslovakia, where cherries are common in both sweet and savory dishes. It’s here, in Prague, that Rachel’s grandmother Annika Saxl met her future husband Otto Roubicek after World War II. He had already spent time in the small Jewish community in Bulawayo, a city in Zimbabwe and together, they moved there. Annika adapted her cooking to what was available. Unable to find fresh cherries, she used tinned ones in her cooking in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Jane grew up in Zimbabwe, but left for London and ultimately for Sydney. Like her mother, and grandmother, Rachel has also called several places home, always finding comfort at the Shabbat table. 

“When you pick yourself up and move to a new country, what do you look for to reestablish yourself, make friends, feel at home?” Rachel asks. Shabbat dinner has helped her connect and find a sense of grounding wherever she goes. “My Judaism and those rituals and traditions have followed me and my family everywhere we’ve gone. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Zimbabwe, Hong Kong, Sydney, Prague, New York, London.”

When she moved to London in her early 20s she lived with her now husband and two other Australian flatmates. “I was the only Jew,” Rachel explains. Still, she hosted Shabbat dinners for them, serving schnitzel. “Friday night, that’s the anchor to my Judaism,” she adds. Rachel also made the recipe in Hong Kong when she moved there in 2002, and brought it with her when she moved to New York City six years ago. 

As she’s traveled and relocated, the recipes for the cherry sauce and the schnitzel have evolved. “Between my grandparents, my mom, myself and my sister, we’ve really not found our roots in one location,” Rachel explains. “This recipe has traveled with us throughout our lives and every country we’ve lived in and been to, we’ve added a touch of that destination.” She’s added orange rind to the cherry sauce (and at times, five spice) and lemon zest to the schnitzel crumb. 

It wasn’t until recently, Rachel says, that she started to think of the recipe as something special, worthy of celebrating. When she prepared an elaborate dinner for a group of chef friends and put out schnitzel for the kids at the table, she says: “Everybody just wanted the schnitzel…. It’s impossible for an adult or child to not want schnitzel.”

Even during this period of social distancing, she and her daughter Annika (named for her great grandmother) are making cutlets for their family and neighbors. Rachel explains: “It is providing a lot of comfort during these times of distress.