Food Friday- problem solving edition

Because problem-solving is about seeing that there is more than one way to do something,

My mother was the sort of hostess who spent lots of dinner in the kitchen getting the next course prepped while the guests were enjoying their meal. She would sit for bits of the dinner but for much of it, she was absent from the table, busy clearing the remnants of the previous course, plattering the next adding radish roses or parsley sprigs to the main course, putting the tea up to boil or adding last minutes garnishes to the dessert platters.

I try to be a more relaxed hostess than my mother. Usually, dinner is served in two courses, the main course, and dessert. There is something nice about the languid pace of a multi-course meal. My dishwasher though, can't keep pace with a really elaborate meal.

Another problem I have I have in serving a meal is managing the various food issues of my diners. My son and I love charred tomatoes. My husband detests them. My husband and son love pickles and olives. I can't tolerate the salt. I could go on and on about all of our dietary quirks, but I won't.

I have come up a solution that solves both of these problems.After Motzi I bring out a simply dressed bowl of greens and several bowls of additions to the salad. This is most of tonight's additions, roasted zuccini shreds, curried cauliflower, spicy okra and tomato

and a cucumber salad. There may be a few more bowls of goodies added to the mix.

I like that people can build their own salads without having to pick or apologize because of their dietary needs or food aversions.

After eating the salad I bring out the rest of the main course. it's all easy and relaxed and I don't have to pop up and down that often during the meal.

What is our main course you ask?

It's sliced beef again. My son will make another excellent sauce before the meat goes into the oven before Shabbat. I will figure out our arb before Shabbat and our guests are bringing dessert.

Amazon.com Widgets

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...

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

Search This Blog