More Passover Progress

Yes. I have been busy. Here are the four packages of chicken and one of chicken juice in my freezer. I want to thank my friend Alan for making me think about how to recreate the sense of pesto for a meat meal.
Actually thinking about this chicken I’m reminded of an old Jewish story about a poor man who eats an amazing dish at the house of a wealthy man. he described the dish in detail to his wife…let’s say for this telling that it’s pesto. he describes how it is made with basil and it’s so fragrant, and pine nuts, garlic and parmesan cheese…it’s simply incredible. the man obsesses about the dish until his poor wife renents and makes it for him.

She can’t find basil in the market, so she uses parsley, pine nuts are too pricy so she substitutes walnuts, she’s making the dish for a meat meal so the cheese has to be left out..and her husband hated garlic…so she grinds in a lemon to mimic that pungent cheese taste…in the story the husband eats the simpler meal and says…”Eh, what’s the fuss anyway.”. maybe I’m deluded but I do think that the chicken is good though.

Yesterday I made the charoset. I know that the classic Ashkenazi mix is made out out of chopped walnuts apples and wine. My father concocted a mix that is quite heavenly. I think he began with fruits mentioned in the Song of Songs, but then just put in what ever appealed to him. This year’s charoset was made with, apples, walnuts, almonds a Meyer lemon, a navel orange, raisins, California ( sour) apricots, figs ( black and light), dates, a few prunes, cinnamon, fresh ginger a bit of honey and sweet wine.

Growing up, my job was chopping up the charoset with the hand chopper in a big wooden bowl. it was hard work, and perhaps the reason that I still don’t mind wearing sleeveless. After I moved out, my father began to make charoset in the food processor. It tasted good, but the smooth texture was always a disappointment. Actually, I’m being polite. my sister just told me that it reminded her of dog food.
So of course I chopped by hand. It took more than an hour. here it is partially chopped.

Here is the charoset fully chopped.

My mother’s big anxiety each Pesach was the dreaded fallen cake. Pesach cake baking is relatively new to me. I found a recipe for a lemon almond cake from
Leah Leonard's 1949 Jewish Cookery . I decided to bake this cake because it uses only two tablespoons of matza meal. I figure the less matza, the better chance it has of tasting good. The cake did not fall and the crumbs on the pan tasted delicious.

As a kid I used to chop nuts for my mother using a little hand mill. I chopped lots of nuts in that mill. I love being able to use a food processor for the job. It’s much faster and does a better job than the little crank mill.
I think I will add an apricot glaze to the top before serving.

The meat has been duly massaged with spices and is now cooking away.

I will either make matza balls next or move onto the side dishes. Wish me luck.

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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