Food Friday - Caveman Shabbat Edition

Son #1 returned from nine months in Israel, earlier this week. One of our family practices is that a returning child gets to choose both the guest list and the menu for their first Friday night back home. Son #1 took this responsibility seriously. Several emails went back and forth about the guest list.

The menu needed more direct communication. His choice was flanken ribs cooked in barbecue sauce. I don't know what flanken is called in English, but these are big fat beef bones with a bit of meat and fat attached. After we eat the flanken ribs our table looks like a family of cavemen has just finished a meal.

Since Son #1 also invited dear friends who are vegetarians, I had to make sure that they would not be revolted by the stacks of chewed bones that would be part of our meal. Our friends assured us that they would not be offended by our meat feast.

Our butcher had only a small amount of ribs on hand yesterday, so I have added meatballs to the meal. Son #1 and I made both the ribs and the meatballs this morning. he sampled the meatballs when they were done, and proclaimed them delicious. Despite how tempting the ribs looked, he decided not to nibble one before tonight.

I love my circa 1940's roasting pan. It makes me laugh each time I use it.

Son #1 has been describing a delicious pre-packaged eggplant in mayo that he had enjoyed while in Israel. My friend Alma Lou who lives in Jordan, sent me some recipes she thought I might enjoy. Today's eggplant was inspired both by Alma Lou's eggplant and the one my son had adored. I decided to stick the eggplant on a carving fork and cook it over the gas flame until the skin blistered. My eggplant was fat and needed a bit more cooking in the microwave. A minute or two in the food processor with mayo and spices and a bit of lemon. I don't know if it tastes either like Alma Lou's eggplant or like the one that Son #1 loved, but it does taste really good.

Kale roasted with onions in olive oil and sea salt.

Our meal will be rounded out with a salad, roasted crispy kale, couscous and blueberry pomegranate sorbet.

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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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