Food Friday from somewhere along the Silk Road

This morning as I began to mix up the spices for my chicken I decided to pretend that I was a Grandma who came from somewhere in the Middle East. A couple of summers ago my sister took me to an Iraqi restaurant in Lowell, MA and I understood in my mouth the connection between the food of India and the food of the Middle East. So, perhaps I wasn’t exactly a grandma from Iraq but I was playing with that blend of flavors.

So there was lots of turmeric, cinnamon, black pepper and sumac and cumin mixed together. There may have been some other spices in the bowl but I can’t for sure swear to what I added to the bowl.

I massaged the spices into the chicken, and a few hours later we ended up with this.

Two beautiful fragrant chickens. They are now cut up and sitting in the fridge waiting to be warmed up for dinner.

I also made potatoes. the fruit and vegetable pushcart guys are selling beautiful tomatoes so I bought some and roughly chopped them up, and added them to the potatoes along with a box of mushrooms and lots of black pepper and some olive oil.

I put the pan in the oven along with the chicken and let it cook along with the chicken.

After a while the top layer was all dried out.So I stirred it all up.

Stirring is actually the big secret for keeping oven roasting stuff juicy.

We are also eating a vaguely Asian cabbage salad.

It is dressed with sesame oil, rice vinegar and a bit of honey.I will add some chopped nuts before serving. This too is improved by an occasional stir.

Comments

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...

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog