Food Friday - book report edition

We were invited to a friend's house for Shabbat dinner and I just had to make challa. I do however, want to alert you to two terrific cookbooks. The first, is the book pictured at the left. I have seen lots of books of this type, a mix of history and recipes. Both the history and the recipes are meticulously researched.

Apparently one of the residents of 97 Orchard Street used to wake up early on Fridays and bake 20 challas to give away to the needy. I was inspired by her example.

This week, I gave three extra challas to the women who helped me pull together a celebration for my building last Sunday.This was partially an act of graciousness, and also so I wouldn't have to worry about what to do with the other half of the challa during Passover.

Wendy, my downstairs neighbor lent me this treasure of a cookbook. It was published in 1899. the recipes seem to come from both housewives as well as the fanciest chefs in America.

Some of the recipes are homely, like the bread soup made out of bread crumbled into a bowl with salt, pepper, water and a bit of cream. Other recipes are incredibly elaborate, like the teeny fish in aspic that is arranged to look like the fish are leaping in the aspic. The recipes are accompanied by wonderful engravings. My favorite shows a woman standing on a chair while she makes spun sugar. I hope that Wendy won't mind if I don't return this book for a few weeks.

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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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