Grandmother’s Puddings

My trusty copy of The Settlement Cookbook has a chapter called “ Grandmother’s Puddings”. That chapter includes homey favorites like kugels, pies, puddings and compotes.

All this week I have been reading a terrific book, Inside the Victorian Home, by Judith Flanders. If you, like me love reading about the history of domesticity then read this book. Aside from making it clear how lucky we are to be living in modern times ( it’s so clean, modern medicine is so great!!! )

That book and the weather made me feel ready for an autumnal dessert. If I were making this dessert in a purely Eastern European fashion it would be a compote of apples and pears. If I were doing this in a purely American way it would be a straight pie.

Instead, this is a bit of a hybrid. I made a dough in my food processor. I started out thinking I would make an oil crust…but decided at the last minute to throw in an egg and a bit of baking soda, so I think it will be a cakey- base. Ok, if you want actual ingredients…about a cup of flour, 3/4 C oil , 1/2 tsp salt and a T of sugar, some cinnamon and some vanilla all pulsed a few times in the food processor. it made for a gloppy batter which I put in the bottom of my pie plate. I then sliced up two big apples and a tired pear in the food processor, piled the fruit on top of the dough sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon and baked until done.

I will throw this pie into back into the oven to heat while we are eating dinner.

And this is the only specialized piece of bread making equipment that I own. I use it to get the kneading started, to scrape the dough off of my counter and to lift the baked loaves off of the baking pan. You can bake bread without it, but it makes things so much easier. You can buy a plastic one if funds are tight. This wood handled metal one feels nice in the hand and looks pretty. I think it will set you back around $10.

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...

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

Search This Blog