Another Friday...another cooking day

My oldest his home from China. Unlike her father and little brother, she actually enjoys eating. So, once again, cooking is actually fun.

She was craving eggplant parmesan during her last weeks in China, so that was waiting for her to eat as soon as she walking in the door.

She requested pomegranate meat balls for Shabbat, so I made them , with bulger wheat as the starch that holds the meat balls together. Right now I have sliced potatoes, onions mushrooms and carrots cooking in the oven bathed in the gravy from last Shabbat's chicken. It feels somehow Chanukah appropriate even though it isn't latkes.

The challa is on it's second rising. I was lucky to find a bag of King Arthur flour. So my challa dough has enough gluten in it to have that muscular feel when you knead it, meaning that it will be nice and chewy when we eat it . If I can't get King Arthur flour, I add gluten to the dough. I hate cakey/doughy challa.

There is a pot luck lunch at our synagogue so I made some mini cheese cakes . I only have one mini muffin tin so the baking has been a slow process. I baked two batches last night and one this morning.

Several years ago, I was researching cheesecake recipes and realized that they are all fairly similar. so here is my formula for cheesecake.

3 eggs

1 1/2 lb soft cheese - ricotta, cream cheese, farmer cheese,sour cream cottage cheese in any combination

1/2-3/4 c sugar

1 tbs flour

pinch salt

flavors - rind and juice of 1 lemon, or rind and juice of 1/2 orange, vanilla, cinnamon...

Put eggs in bowl and beat. add subsequent ingredients one at a time beating well after each addition.

add mixture into prepared pan ( If you are making one big cheesecake, make a graham cracker or nut crust, if you make mini cheesecakes this step is optional just put batter into muffin liners set into muffin tins)

bake at 275 until tan on top.

I decorated this batch with a a mixture of dark chocolate melted with butter. But strained and melted jam added to the end of the baking works well too. The cheesecakes on the blue plate are just a small fraction of the batch. But they were the only ones willing to model for the photographer.

Since I tend to cook most Fridays I might just devote my Friday entries to cooking.

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

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