Little House on the West Side

The Settlement Cook Book pictured on the left, is probably one of the biggest influences on my cooking life. My mother purchased the book early in her marriage. As a little girl I was fascinated by that army of worshipful cook book reading maidens in their cute hats and dresses.

It took a long time before I began reading the recipes in the Settlement Cook Book. What I did devour though were the chapters on how to feed invalids, how to make soap, or dust a room or wash dishes or set a table for either French or Russian service. By the time I was in my early teens I was fascinated by the recipes for food items that I assumed only came packaged, like cottage cheese, or ketchup or noodles.

My kitchen has always been light on appliances. The Settlement cook book does not even assume an electric fridge. So, soon after my husband and I got engaged and my non cooking mother in law offered me her copy of the Settlement Cook Book, I jumped at the offer. It has been my go -to cook book. I also love the book as a cultural /anthropological glimpse into kitchens of the past.

As I have become a more experienced cook, I have been wanting a cook book not with recipes, but with formulas. My needs were answered by Michael Ruhlman's, Ratio. I had heard him interviewed on NPR, and uncharacteristically for me, announced to my husband that I needed that cookbook. my husband was kind enough to fulfill my needs.

One of the culinary tasks that I had been dying to try out was noodle making. Mrs. Randall, the mother of my best childhood friends, used to make her own spaghetti for family celebrations. Seeing those strands of pasta drying over clean sheets on the dining room table was one of the powerful visual memories of my childhood. The Settlement book had very cryptic directions for making pasta, the Rhulman book had fuller directions, it seemed like something to tackle.

My youngest had purchased a gallon of milk the Friday before Yom Kippur that turned almost immediately. The Settlement Cook Book suggests that macaroni be cooked in milk, rather than water. It seemed like a good way to use up the not quite sour milk. My son loved the results, the pasta ends up in a thick milky sauce, I seasoned it with salt and lots of black pepper, a favorite combination of my youngest son's.

We still had a quart of sour milk left. I decided to turn it into a soft cheese. I heated it to just below the boiling point in a large pot. Then I added salt and vinegar. The milk immediately separated into a repulsive looking mess. I had assumed that I had created a disaster. I poured the contents of the pot into a linen towel lined colander.After several minutes of draining, i tied the towel by it's corners to my kitchen faucet, according to the Settlement directions. I let the mixture drain for about an hour. I scraped the curdy mix into an empty sour cream container and added a bit more salt. the resulting cheese was similar to that lovely cloud like ricotta cheese.

Later in the day, my youngest and I embarked on noodle making. I rolled the pasta out by hand. I ought to have rolled it a bit thinner. Some of the pasta was filled with the cheese I had made earlier in the day. After we boiled the noodles we topped it with the rest of the cheese.

My picky eater son requested that I make pasta again. I felt a little like Ma in Little House on the Prairie. But these are both experiments that I will try again

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...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog