Shabbat for the “Food is Fuel ‘ gang

as t

As tiy have probably figured out by now, I really love food. Cooking for me, is often a form of play. I like to combine flavors and textures. I like having flavors play off of one another both in a particular dish and over the course of a meal.

I know that not everyone approaches food the same way. My husband, certainly does not. My late mother in law was not a good cook. My brother in law always says that he didn’t know food was supposed to taste good until he left home. Once, on a visit to my in laws they began to talk about the excellent crackers they had just bought at the supermarket. They went on and on about the amazing crackers they were going to serve me. I assumed that it might be something slightly out of the ordinary, something one normally might buy in a gourmet shop.

What they brought to the table was a box of store brand saltines. Which brings me in a round about way to this week’s Shabbat dinner. My daughter is away for the weekend. It’s been a hard work week for my husband, so it’s just the three of us for dinner. I decided to make something uncomplicated and pleasant.

One of the first ways I learned how to make chicken was with honey and mustard.it’s sweet, it’s salty and it creates a crispy crust. It’s pleasant for simple tastes.
That, and it looks really pretty. I taught this to my kids as a fail safe way to flavor chicken or fish when you aren’t feeling all that clever.

I also made quinoa with the chicken juice from last week. the meal will be rounded out with roasted vegetables with rice vinegar and of course challah. I think I’m not making dessert this week.

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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!!!

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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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