Food Friday - but posted a couple of days late late

Wet chicken with root vegetables, cranberries and one dried pepper

As I was cooking Shabbat dinner this week, I realized that I tend to think of cooking in big broad categories. Generally, I cook chicken dry, that is, baked or roasted uncovered in the oven. I can throw in any of a variety of ingredients, so it may taste different but the basic cooking technique is the same week after week.

My sister tends to cook chicken wet, that is cooked covered in a pot on top of the stove. This week, I was in the mood for wet chicken. I suppose most people would call it a stew. My wet chicken was made up of onions, celery, some beautiful parsnips, potatoes and some of the gravy from last week's chicken and about a cup of cranberries. My husband was away in California for most of the week, visiting his father and sister. He brought me some dried peppers as a gift. I added a pepper to the pot as well. I was unsure how hot the pepper was, so I just added one. I thought that the fruity hot flavor would be pretty good. It turns out that the pepper wasn't hot at all, but the stew was good, even without the soft warm hot pepper undertones I was anticipating.

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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 יְהֹוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וִיחֻנֶּךָּ M

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 read a batch of recipes and the

Chanukah

Last night we lit the first candles of Chanukah. We were joined by our dear friends Alfie and Judy. My husband met them during his college years. I am new to the game since we have only been friends since 1982. I made latkes, lots of them. I took the opportunity to use last night as a dry run for the latke dinner with our kids later in the week. Our kids are eaters. My my original plan was to make the latkes in the air fryer but I realized that it would take too long to do the many small batches needed. Instead I baked the latkes in a hot oven with lots of oil on my baking sheets. I made potato latkes. As a kindness to my husband I did the blasphemy of leaving out the onions. I did add shredded carrots for texture and lots of smoked paprika and black pepper for flavor. I made carrot, apple and dill latkes. I also made summer squash latkes with amba powder and sumac. Unfortunately I had baked them at 350 and not 400 which I discovered is the sweet spot for crispy oven baked latkes. Th

sarah in nyc

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