Food Friday and problem solving across the board

The tallit bag and atara were being picked up today. The seemingly difficult part of the atara, doing the calligraphy was done with ease. the part that ought to be simple,edging the piece had me stumped.

One of the nice things about having a hard deadline is the piece just had to get finished. For a little while I just felt completely stuck and was unable to figure out how to edge the atara. Finally, I edged the piece with three rows of couched cording.

The result is both sturdy and pretty.
Elizabeth picked up the tallit bag and the tallit with the new atara. She was in a rush and ad requested that I just leave the work with my doorman. I did. For me my favorite part of working with the client is seeing their reaction when they first see a piece. Elizabeth was kind enough to come upstairs to look at my work with me.

I know it made a rushed day for her even more rushed, and I am grateful that she did. Elizabeth was really, really happy. I hope her husband will be pleased as well.
Tow of our friends are moving out of state. it is their last Shabbat in our community. Tomorrow’s kiddush is in their honor. One of our friends is really fond of my whities ( meringues in standard English). I had decided to make a batch and to make a cake out of the left over egg yolks to serve with tonight’s dinner.
We had a switch of dinner guests and tonight’s guest is glucose intolerant. That meant that I needed more whities for tonight and the cake would be served tomorrow.
Oh Hoshanah Rabba I had collected etrogim and my plan was to make a dessert to serve on Simchat Torah. My cold foiled my dessert making plans. I had made candied etrog, but that was as far as I had gotten.
I made an extra big batch of whities with 6 egg whites.

Whities need goodies added to them, this batch had chunks of bittersweet chocolate and shredded coconut.
When the whities were baking, I began the etrog cake.

I beat the 6 egg yolks with a cup of sugar . When they were thick and pale yellow I added just over a cup of flour mixed with a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt. I minced a knob of ginger and maybe 1/2 a cup of the candied etrog slices. I tasted the batter and added a teaspoon of ginger liqueur, some orange juice( My mother would have described the volume of juice that I poured into the batter as a mouth full) and fresh orange peel. I put the mixture into a bunt pan and baked.
When I turned the cake out of the pan, I realized that some of the batter had slipped under the parchment paper that I had used to line the pan. That meant that some of the cake wasn’t appealingly brown , but was instead weirdly yellow.
I suppose that if I weren’t my mother’s daughter, I could have just served the cake and been done with it. I thought about what I had on hand that might solve the ugly cake problem. Melted apricot jam poured over the cake would be perfect, but I didn’t have quite enough. I did have some cherry jam. It wasn’t my first choice, but it was on hand. I heated both jams together, added some more of the ginger liqueur and poured it over the cake. A few slivered almonds do a bit more camouflage work and we can all pretend that this was exactly what I was planning all along.

Another cake--faked.
There is more to tonight’s dinner, sumac and paprika potatoes, zaatar chicken, soup and a yet unmade salad.

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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