A blog, mostly about my work making Jewish ritual objects, but with detours into garment making, living in New York City, cooking, and other aspects of domestic life.
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Food friday
The sweet baby in yesterday's post made tonight's chicken.
It's cooked in za'atar and lime. My husband deeply misses our kids from their baby years. Perhaps because he was working long, long hours in those days and I was home with the kids, I much prefer hanging out with the adult version of those sweet babies. I am also grateful to have my son cook while I am still under the weather.
I made a lazy side dish of potatoes and vegetables roasted in last week's chicken juice. This is what I did.
A little bit of chicken fat from last weeks chicken juice and a cut up onion, popped into the oven as the chicken cooks and I cut up more of the vegetables. My friend Alan probably would have used more chicken fat, or at least saved the rest to use on other food. I tossed the rest of the fat. Sorry Alan.
Potato wedges are added to the pan along with tomatoes and mushrooms ( not yet pictured)
Here is the container of chicken juice, minus the fat. I plopped that on the pan and let the mixture cook until it was done.
Here it is after maybe 10 minutes of actual labor on my part. The oven did the rest. Like I said, lazy vegetables.
My nephew is joining us tonight. He loves whities, ( meringues in normal English, but whities in my family's lingua franca) so I made a batch. this time with chunks of bittersweet chocolate and slivers of dried apricot, and scented with orange extract and orange bitters.
right out of the oven
And now plattered. My late mother was a great believer in pretty cupcake liners. I am also serving some of last week's plum tart. If I were my mother, there would be a dessert course of small cakes followed by a second dessert course of a big cake to be cut with great ceremony. In addition to those two dessert courses there might also be a pre-dessert course of a fruit platter or stewed rhubarb or home made apple sauce. My nephew will just have to make do.
Shabbat Shalom Sarah. Looks like you had a delicious dinner. I particularly like the chicken flavors--2 of my favorite included. We should set up a time to talk on the phone. Lots been happening with me and I would love to hear what's new with you and yours. Miss you!!!!
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...
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...
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 ...
Shabbat Shalom Sarah. Looks like you had a delicious dinner. I particularly like the chicken flavors--2 of my favorite included. We should set up a time to talk on the phone. Lots been happening with me and I would love to hear what's new with you and yours. Miss you!!!!
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