Food Friday- Thursday Night Dinner

This was my dinner last night.

Home made kale noodles turned into my grandmother’s staple, lokshen mit kaese, noodles with cottage cheese and eggs. Last night was the first time I had ever added greens to noodles. I added cooked kale rather than the more traditional spinach. I had kale in my freezer and not spinach. I discovered a few things while making these noodles. First of all, I discovered that my new stick blender from Costco does not work. So the kale puree is not as refined as I had hoped it would be.

The failure of my stick blender is not particularly useful information to any one out side of my household. My other discovery is actually of more universal usefulness. I realized that vegetables were probably added to noodle dough to make them easier to work. I used semolina flour which is normally hard to work, kneading semolina flour is one of those household tasks that are better than going to a gym. You really feel that burn in your biceps as you knead and roll out the noodles.

Using the vegetable puree in the noodle dough made the work fairly easy. I also have slowly begun to realize that packaged noodles are ubiquitous not because making noodles is that difficult, but because manufacturing them is so easy.

These noodles were eaten by everyone, even my vegetable hating son. I added about 1/2 cup of the pureed kale to the noodle dough which was 1- 1/2 C semolina flour, two eggs and a pinch of salt put into a bowl. You mix the dough beginning with your hand, pretend you are four and making mud pies. Add the pureed vegetable. Add more semolina flour if the dough is wet and gloppy. Sprinkle the semolina on your counter and knead until you have a lovely coherent lump of dough. Turn the bowl upside-down over the dough on your counter and do something else for 30 minutes. the dough needs a rest and so do you.

After your break come back and roll out the dough. I used my 1 inch dowel. It’s just the best dough rolling pin. Sprinkle more semolina flour on the counter and on the dough to keep it from sticking. I find it easier to rollout a Spaldeen sized lump of dough at a time.

Cut the noodles in any way that makes you happy. this time I cut 1/2 inch wide strips using a rippled pastry cutter. I left the noodles rest on a cookie sheet for several minutes before I boiled up the water. The noodles need a short cooking time, say five minutes.

Tonight we are having chicken roasted with smoke paprika and allspice. I baked barley, winter wheat and rye with black pepper, cardamom and soe of the chicken juice. the shitake mushrooms are from our visit to Kam Man.

For dessert I made this.

I know it looks repulsive but it is spiced fig sorbet.It tastes yummy despite it’s suspicious demeanor.

My life isn’t all cooking. I made my mother this shirt last night,out of a really heavy weight beefy knit.

I had made myself a dress out of the rest of the fabric several months ago. It feels really good on. I figured it will be a nice transitional shirt for the cooler weather.

It’s now tine to get the dining room to transition from a sewing room back into a dining room for Shabbat.

And to start you feeling ready for Rosh HaShanah.

El Nora Alila

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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