Getting ready for Sukkot

This is the holiday intensive season of the year.

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My husband and son went to the Lower East Side to buy a lulav and etrog. Some years the etrogim available are a little bit sad, greenish shriveled and not quite full of הדר, splendor and glory. This year's etrog is pretty magnificent. It's hard to imagine a better looking etrog.

Dear friends from Israel are joining us tonight. I made chicken, trying to recreate the mind-blowing chicken my son made a few weeks ago with paprika, cayenne pepper and lots of freshly squeezed lime. If I get close to the fabulous chicken my son made I will be happy.

We are also eating these roasted Brussels sprouts. My son and I prefer them more charred. My husband prefers them less charred. I think this is a good compromise.

The challah still has to bake.

The oven is currently occupied with a plum tart (almond crust, and a layer of pureed apricot under the plums), and will be baked as soon as the tart is done.

This plum tart reminds me of my late friend Herta. This isn't exactly her plum tart, which was more classically German. Herta would have approved of the the neatly placed plum slices and the pairing of the almond crust with the plums. She would have done a marzipan lattice over the fruit. I can't approach Herta's elegance but I do think about her as I put mine together.

! חג שמח

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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...

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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

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