Food Friday–House Guest Edition

Our Minneapolis friends, Alfie and Judy have spent most of their time in New York staying at a B&B across town. They are back with us for Shabbat. They have been having a blast running around the city. One of their adventures took them to Brighton Beach, known locally as Little Odessa. They bought us some Russian spices, a Russian spice mix meant for meat and sumac. I have been dying to try sumac. Yesterday I made an amazing salad with sliced cucumber and carrots dressed with olive oil, vinegar, sumac and smoked paprika. It was really delicious. The combination of sour and smoky is quite intoxicating.

I decided to cook tonight’s chicken in the same mixture. I mixed generous amounts of both and rubbed each chicken piece with the mixture. I had thought that the rub would go on easier if I mixed it with olive oil. At the last minute decided that it would make the chicken too fatty. I’m glad I didn’t go that route because I pulled over two cups of chicken fat out of the roasting pan after the chicken was cooked. After the chicken was cooked I put all of the chicken into a clean roasting pan. Then I dumped three trays of ice cubes into the juices that were left and spooned off the fat into a measuring cup. After I got rid of the fat, I then reduced the pan juices and added the juice of a lime. I reduced the juices until they were about 1/4 of the amount they were when I began.This way you have a really flavorful chicken juice to pour over the chicken. I’m not fat phobic, but too greasy a meal is kind of unpleasant a few hours later.

When I cook on Friday’s I’m usually done by early afternoon, but we won’t be eating until about 8:00 pm. I need to put the food into the oven to warm just before Shabbat starts, so the food needs to be improved by a long warming period. by warming the chicken in the reduced cooking juices it’s even better than it was fresh out of the oven.

Alfie and Judy also brought some kale. I made a salad with the kale, celery, chickpeas, rosemary, salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegar.

I also baked rice in the oven while the chicken was cooking. I added cardamom to the rice ( those are the black dots) .I think it will be a nice foil for the chicken.

We will also have a green salad and a fruit salad for dessert. Judy and Alfie brought a ton of fruit. I will make that a little later today. I also roasted some tofu in sesame oil and rice vinegar for our vegetarian guests. I find that tofu is tolerable only when roasted in a deeply flavored marinade. Otherwise it tastes like eating soggy Styrofoam. An overnight marinade and a few hour in the oven and the tofu is fit for human consumption.

Best wishes for a productive and peaceful 2012 for all of us.

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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