It's a good think that I can fake things

I usually don't do much dessert baking. But commercial Passover baked goods, are for the most part, dismal. Besides, how could we do Passover with my mother without serving the flourless chocolate nut torte?? That cake came together fairly well.

flourless chocolate nut torte

One of the nice things about having Passover in my house is that I can choose the menu. The thick asparagus my father adored, is not on the menu. Neither is the boiled broccoli. My mother makes a wine-nut cake that always tasted a bit musty to me. So that to is not being served. No banana cake either, because I hate the taste of cooked bananas.

I decided to make an orange walnut cake from Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food. She is a really smart woman and a great cookbook writer. I made the cake which involved ground almond and chopped walnuts, the rind and juice of an orange, and lots of eggs. I don't know if my oven's temperature is miscalibrated, but after I took the cake out of the oven and turned it over...it all fell out on the counter.

I had too much invested in that cake to dump it. So I patted it all into an oiled rectangular baking pan, drrizzled melted chocolate over the whole thing and returned it to the oven for an other baking session. After it looked solid, I scored it into diamonds and today put those diamonds into the ultimate baker's cheat, little fluted paper cups. If you don't tell my guests that I wasn't starting out to bake cute little cookies, they won't know.

Chag Kasher V'Sameach to all who celebrate. And thanks for coming along on the journey for those of you who don't.

Comments

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog