Food Friday–what’s in my fridge right now edition

Last Friday the local NPR station had Mark Bittman on as a guest. he talked about giving a dinner party. He mentioned feeling anxious about "doing a dinner party". I was thinking that he was talking about having say, twenty people over for dinner. Well he didn't mean having twenty people over for dinner, he meant two. I don't put any worry into a meal until I get to more than eight at the table. We usually feed between six and a dozen people on any given Friday night. If I could fit more people around the table, I would feed a bigger crowd. Usually the number of guests at the table grows organically.

Last Shabbat I sat next to my friend Mark. When the bar-mitzvah boy began to chant the haftarah I mentioned to Mark that it was my birth-Torah reading. Mark said that it was the Torah reading for his bar-mitzvah. Amazingly, Mark’s bar- mitzvah took place on the day that I was born.
I invited Mark and his wife Carole to join us for Shabbat this week. As it turns out, a few of my favorite people were also celebrating their birthdays right around the same time. Our table is full for this birthday meal.

Nearly all of is is sitting in my fridge right now. The glass cowl of marinated vegetables is topped by a black plastic container containing babaganouj.

Next to the marinated vegetables is the guacamole that will be served with the ceviche as a first course on a bed of lettuce.

The chicken is cooling in the fridge so I can skim the fat off the pan.

I cooked the chicken with Schwarma spices. I assume that it will taste good because it smelled heavenly as it was cooking.
Our guests are bringing dessert. My friend’s son is celebrating his aufruf tomorrow. I made some desserts for the great event.
I made these fruit and nut bon bons.

This is an old fashioned goodie that was hard to make pre-food processor and quick and easy post the age of food processor.

I used dried peaches ( I was looking for but could not find the tart California dried apricots so substituted dried peaches), figs, dates prunes and pecans. I pulsed the mixture until it was mixed formed into balls and rolled in dried unsweetened coconut. You can use any mixture of dried fruit that makes you happy and any tree nut you have handy. I suppose you could also coat the outside of the fruit balls with chopped nuts or chopped chocolate or enrobe the balls with melted chocolate and let them cool. But I had chopped coconut hanging around in the pantry and used that. It’s a free country, make these balls in a way that makes you happy.

I also made a batch of cheesecake bars. They are waiting in the freezer.

I still have to make a starch for the meal. I may make taboule or I might go for rice.
My mother received the arm protectors today. She was very happy with them. She was a little horrified that I suggested that she throw the old ones out.

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