Food Friday - a cultural mix

My son came back from his nine months in Israel raving about sweet chili sauce. During the year he lived in three different apartments and he did lots of cooking. My son loves food. So he talked about the magical qualities of this sweet chili sauce that makes everything taste better, like barbecue sauce does.

Earlier this week, my son and my daughter went on an adventure top Chinatown. One of the stops on this adventure was at Kam-Man the Chinese grocery store, for the food my daughter missed from her sojourns in China and with the hope that my son could find something similar to the fabulous condiment he had discovered in Israel.

The adventure was a successful one. My son brought home this bottle of sweet chili sauce from Thailand. My kids were delighted by their adventure and made dinner to celebrate. My daughter made a vegetable stir fry. My son, meatballs using the chili sauce.

It was as good as he had promised.

Yesterday I decided to make another batch of babaganouj. I patiently roasted the eggplant on a long carving fork over the gas flame until it was all blistered. I nuked a whole onion that was coated in olive oil. Then I put the eggplant, onion a tablespoon full of mayo and a healthy glugg of the sweet chili sauce into the food processor and whipped the mixture up until in was fully pureed. It was sublime, there is a hint of sweetness and then a mellow heat that blends perfectly with the smokiness of the eggplant. I love this mix of the Middle Eastern and the Thai.

Yes, it is really easy to buy pretty good packaged babaganouj in my neighborhood. The home made version is just so much better.

We are invited to a friend's for dinner. I am responsible for challa ( currently on it's first rising) salad ( not yet made) and dessert. I had made cream puffs earlier this week to bring to a synagogue event, and couldn't let my kids eat any of that batch. They were very sad, so I made another batch to bring tonight so they can enjoy them as well.

The cream puff shells are made. My saucepan handle snapped off as I was lifting the mixture from the burner to add the eggs. I was able to salvage it all. The custard is cooling and then I will stuff the cream puffs. Yes, I will add a bit of chocolate glaze to the top

Comments

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...

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...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog