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...

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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