Food Friday–outside influences edition

Well I had thought that all of the food I had bought would last through the holiday, but I was wrong. I had to buy three more dozen eggs which will bring out 2013 total to 12 dozen eggs. I also went to two of the local Kosher stores. I noticed frozen Kosher for Passover pizza.

As I walked home, I thought about how one could make a kosher for Passover pizza crust. By the time I got home I figured it out and got to work.

I beat two eggs with a mixer added about a cup of matza meal, some olive oil and some salt. I let the mixture sit for a bit so the grains of mazta could swell a bit, and then patted the mixture into the bottom of the spring form pan. After the crust had baked for a few minutes I added the sauce and the toppings.

I made this simple pizza for my younger son. My older son and I shared a chopped kale and pickled salmon pizza. my youngest said that while it wasn’t as good as a regular NYC pizza, it wasn’t gross and was a nice change of pace.

While in the kosher store I bought this.

I decided to use it in tonight’s chicken and long with onions and pears.

As I assembled the chicken I kept thinking about cooking terms like lardoons. I think that the salty smoked beef will flavor the chicken nicely and be a nice foil to the sweet pears.

Here is the chicken right out of the oven. I reduced the cooking juice with some wine left over from Seder. I’m making yet another marinated vegetables and I still have to make another set of meringues. It’s actually nice not to have to bake challah.

Matza!! right out of the box! A boon to housewives world over! I’m actually not yet sick of matza this year.

And a note on Passover cooking tools. My dairy pots and knives are a hodge podge that I have picked up over the years. they aren't great because they don’t have to be, they are only used a week a year.

My meat pots and utensils are the ones my parents bought in Halifax when they first got married. Their meat pots are great. many of the work utensils, the spatulas and big work spoons are those wonderful old fashioned wooden handled ones with the red and white painted handles. I love them.

Last year I realized that my father’s Passover knives while they were dear to my heart because they were my father’s, were dull enough to be safe to give to a baby to play with. I bought new knives this year and am a much happier camper. Just because they knives belonged to my sainted father does not make them holy. I haven’t thrown away the knives…but maybe I will give them to babies in my building.

( That’s a joke, I’m joking, I promise)

I do love some of the heavy baking pans, including the large handled one I used to cook tonight’s chicken. I get such deep satisfaction using those sturdy things that were made to last.

While my sister was here for the holiday we reminisced about the dairy pots. They were just about the thinnest pots I have ever used. I’m really glad that I didn’t inherit them. They may still be in my mother’s apartment in boxes, unless she abandoned them in the basement in Quincy.

I am looking forward to tonight’s dinner. are guests are all people that I’m particularly fond of. They don’t know one another yet, but I think it will be a good table.

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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