Cooking and baking and sewing....

First of all we are celebrating the birthday of our youngest tonight. His actual birthday is taking place next week and he will be celebrating with friends but tonight he is joining family. Given that I am switching the house over to Passover mode next Sunday, I am actually pulling the main dish portion of tonight's celebration out of the freezer. it's delicious food but cooked in the past couple of weeks.

I have one small challah in the freeze but with only one week left after this one for Chametz ( leavened stuff) I made a second loaf that is braided like a challah but is just a rye bread with added dried cranberries and fennel seeds.

This is the last bit of our rye flour from Netcost.

Below is a tiny visual tutorial for braiding challah. Four strands always look better than three. Bakeries do a four stranded braid.

Always start your braid not from the end, but from the middle. It gives you a prettier braid. The braid below was photographed after the ugly ends were tucked under the loaf. Once you have done that turn the challah so the braided part is on top and continue braiding.

This is the completed loaf. Some of the dried cranberries are sticking out.

I pushed the exposed cranberries under the surface of the dough so they wouldn't burn.

This is the not-challah after being baked.

Given that most of the meal was pulled out of the freezer, I have decided to make a lovely dessert for the birthday boy. I decided to make meringue shells filled with lemon curd. Lemon curd and meringue are a good thrifty housewife combo. The egg whites are used for the tart shells and the curd makes use of the egg yolks.

I made the lemon curd first with the juice and rind of two lemons, about a cup and a half of water, a 1/2tsp of tapioca starch and a tablespoon of flour. If I had more tapioca starch I would have used just the tapioca but we are getting close to Passover so substitutions are in order. I believe I added a scant cup of white sugar and a tablespoon of coconut oil. I put the mixture up to simmer as I whisked it constantly. I took little whisk breaks to beat up the egg yolks and then temper them with the hot lemon curd when the curd was hitting the boiling point. I added the tempered egg yolks to the pot. I added some rose water for flavoring. The lemon curd is setting in the fridge.

I have learned that you can't fill meringue shells until the last moment.

I traced tea cups onto parchment paper for the shape of the shells.

Here they are before baking.

They are still baking as I type this.

I finished my work on Tim's tallit. Tim had his tallit woven by a master weaver from Vermont.

The tallit itself is an extraordinary piece of weaving. The color ( unlike what my camera is telling you) is a rich sapphire blue. I used test bits of the weaving to make the pinot.

I dyed silk fo rthe atara and couched the text using gold cording tacked down with a combination of blue silk and blue metallic thread.

I embroidered the ribbon binding

I did a bit more couching with hand dyed silk embroidery floss on the ends of the atara.

I have loved having this spectacular piece of weaving in my hands.

Shabbat Shalom...and hoping that by some miracle it really is a Shabbat of Shalom.

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

sarah in nyc

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