Food Friday and a bit more work

One of the many wonderful things about having my older son living home is that he likes to cook. This week he offered to make part of the meal. He claimed, or as those of us who grew up in Boston say, hosied the Challah. The roasted broccoli was a joint effort. The chicken was made with flavor consultation with said son.

There are the chicken and the challah passing one another on the stove top. The challah is egged up and is waiting for the oven to hit 425. Once the challah is in the oven I lower the temperature to 385. This is one of my father’s rules for excellent bread baking. I take this teaching on faith. Actually, you end up with a really nice crust if you start the bread off with a high heat.

The chicken is made with Herbes de Provence and some hefty squeezes of fresh lime. I had a tomato in the fridge so I chopped it up into the bottom of the chicken pan. I guess I could have done something fussier, but you don’t get much yummier than this.

I had an irrational yen for potato balls. Potato balls were the sign for fine dining when I was a little kid.

One of the nice thing about being the grown up is that I can satisfy those irrational food desires. The other nice thing about being a grown up is that I can ask one of my kids to help me out in my follies. I figured that this was just goofy enough a job to appeal to my youngest, so he was my partner in crime. My oldest wandered by to admire the cuteness of the potato balls. They are spiced in a way that a 1950’s timid chef would be perfectly comfortable with, salt, pepper and parsley. Food does not have to be exotic to be good.

I baked dessert last night, a pear and cranberry tart in a pecan crust. One of our guests is gluten intolerant. While she can’t enjoy the challah, she can enjoy the dessert.

Here is the challah after it’s adventure in the oven.

And here is a baking cheat. For some weird reason, whenever my son bakes the challah the braids loose their definition. I like a clearly defined braid on a challah. I may not have six pack abs, but I like clearly defined challah braids. Before I baked the challah I sliced along the indentations with a sharp knife. It worked. Now you can do this cheat the next time you bake challah.

The other nice thing about having a cooking partner is that I can do a bit of work on this short Friday.

The Klimty-book now looks like this.

I bound the edges of the cover with wide blue grosgrain ribbon and stitched it with two fat rows of gold machine embroidery. The ribbon is also a bit of a cheat. The cover needed to be a smidge wider than the pages. I was able to fake the additional width that I needed.

Here is a peek- a boo shot of the piece.

I’m thinking of painting the names of the bride and groom on the cover. This book is a very grand version of the Birkat ha mazon booklets that are so often given as party favors at weddings and bar- mitzvahs. Those booklets usually have the name of the bride and groom on the cover. I thought that I would make a design of their linked names.

I’m not posting my design of linked names to keep this piece a surprise for the bride and groom. I’m sure that you wouldn’t blab… but I can’t trust everyone.

For your pre- Shabbat enjoyment – the view from the Costco parking lot. The railroad bridge has the best views of Manhattan, and always makes me happy that I’m coming home from Boston.

And the jail at Riker’s island.

When my older son was in 10th grade he was beaten up by a kid in his school and needed to get stitches. The kid clearly had issues. He was 19 and a freshman. This was the kids sixth arrest that year. As a result of his assaulting my son he was sent to Riker’s. Every time we pass the jail we wave at my son’s attacker. Yeah, we assume that the is no longer there, but we still wave.

Shabbat Shalom!!!

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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