Food Friday–Strong like Ox Edition

One normally does not think of cooking as an upper body strengthening activity, but this morning it certainly was.
After I did my weights work out. I put up the challah dough. I don’t use a bread machine. You need to position your body so all of your weight flows from your feet to your hips through your arms to knead the dough. I usually do the first kneading until I have a slight burn in my upper arms. Here is that dough all smooth and ready to rise.

Then I got to work on the noodle dough. I used semolina flour. The had kneading is hard. The dough is much stiffer than the challah dough. Again I knead the dough until it is as smooth as the proverbial baby’s tushie. The semolina flour makes kneading the challah feel like it’s no work at all. By time time I’m done with kneading the noodles I feel like Wonder Woman.

I left the ball of dough to rest underneath a bowl, let the challah dough do it’s rise and then did some errands. After lunch first I did the second knead of the challah dough and braided the challah.

Then I rolled out the noodles thin using a dowel. I found a ridge pastry cutter to cut the noodles.

After letting them rest a bit, I boiled them and made Lokshen mit kaese, the eastern European version of fettuccini Alfredo. I had made the cheese last night.

I’m also serving cod.

I know this meal is very white. I’m serving a kale salad. Dessert is meringues that I had baked yesterday and red grapes. Yikes! our dairy dishes are white, I had better use bright linens on the table.

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...

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog