Food Friday–wet chicken and Pre-Purim Edition

I know that most people think of cooking chicken in terms of specific recipes, chicken divan, chicken Kiev, Maryland chicken and the like. I tend to think of cooking chicken in two broad categories, dry and wet.

I usually cook chicken dry. The spices or goodies added to the pan may vary but basically it’s chicken cooked dry.

Today I decided to cook the chicken wet. While we were away in Florida, my son made a big Friday night dinner. I assume it was a fairly boozy evening, ( better not to ask too many questions) but we had most of a bottle of red wine left in the fridge.
I decided to use up that bottle of wine. Some of it went into a tomato and chicken soup that I’m pretending is an Italian peasant soup.

The rest went into the chicken. I got a raft of chicken thighs at Costco yesterday. I also got one of those wonderful addictive bags of peeled chestnuts and a bucket o mushrooms.
This seemed to be a a good winter combination for chicken. Cooking chicken with a fair amount of liquid in the pan draws out more juices from the chicken. When I pulled the cooked chicken from the pan it was swimming in a huge amount of winey chicken juice..

I put the chicken into a clean roasting pan.

I then put all of the wet stuff including the mushrooms and chestnuts into a big pot, added some balsamic vinegar and turned the heat up to reduce the juices. Making a reduction always sounds like a fussy sort of a job. It isn’t. While the juices were boiling away,

I washed the chicken pan and did some other kitchen clean up while taking breaks every little while to stir the pot.

I reduced the liquids in the pot until they became fairly thick and syrupy.

Once I was happy with how thick the juices were and confirmed with a taste of just how rich the flavor was, I poured all of the juices and mushrooms and chestnuts over the chicken.

It’s awfully pretty in a good earthy way. This is exactly the meal I want to eat on a winter Friday night.

Since Purim begins tomorrow night I thought it might be nice to have the challah reflect the coming holiday. Earlier this week, my friend Lorraine sent me this link Crown challot . While I loved the idea of the round braided challot I felt sad while looking at the pictures of those challot. They were for too yeasted and had risen for much too long. They had lost their muscle and looked sadly flabby.

Regardless of what I had thought those challot looked like, I did think that it was a nifty braiding technique. It’s a really fast, fast way to braid a challah.

All you have to remember is over and under, and before you know it you have this.

I plan to sprinkle poppy seeds on the challah this week to make them even more Purim-ey.

Both challot for this week are shaped like crowns. Next weeks are on the pan as well. One is braised in my usual 4 braid strand. The challah on the lower left is done in a herringbone braid. braiding the crowns got me in the mood for fancy braiding.

I made hummous this week. I decided to just add flavors that I like and the result is delicious but a bit international. I started with two cans of Goya chickpeas added a big dollop of tehina. I love really lemony hummous so I added the juice of two lemons. I also added some liquid smoke, some Siracha and Thai chili paste along with a bit of Hungarian paprika.

This is one of those pictures that conveys nothing about the taste. For all you can tell from this picture this hummous could taste like spackle. Trust me, this does not taste like spackle , it’s bright tasting from the lemon but also has a bit of a peppery buzz and the deep smoky flavor.
Our dinner guests are bringing dessert. I’m making a salad and also plain Israeli couscous. One of our guests is a kid who would like plain pasta.

Aside from making Shabbat dinner, I have been working unsuccessfully at reinstalling my printer driver. I will give it another try or two before Shabbat.
And for your Purim pleasure, this video of Purim in Tel Aviv in 1928 and in 1932.
Purim in Tel Aviv

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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