A Post Sukkot treat

My neighbor had dropped off her etrog the other night. We had one of our own. Sometimes, after Sukkot I make marmalade inspired by my friend Miriam's mom Rachelle, a truly impressive cook and an old buddy of my mother's.

I only had two etrogim, but I did have a gallon sized bag in the freezer that has been filling up with orange peels. My brain is still not quite up to par. I did have enough brain power to cut up a pile of citrus rinds.As I cut up the peels I thought of the many jars of Dundee Marmalade that got consumed in my childhood home. I thought about how all of those jars boasted that the marmalade inside was hand-cut.

It's important to boil off the bitter oils that live inside the citrus peels ( and especially in the etrogim). Rachelle's recipe involves many days of soaking in water and changing that water. I use a method I have seen in other cookbooks of repeatedly boiling the peels for a while, dumping the water and then repeating the boiling of the orange peels.I remember five changes of water appearing in several books. (This is what happens when one has been reading cookbooks since early childhood, although to be honest when I was really young I only read the chapters about making sweets.

Cooking methods have worked their way into my lizard brain from the shelf of cookbooks in the kitchen in Quincy.Once in college when I was what British books call impaired, one of my friends asked me how to cook a roast. I had never cooked a roast in my life and was in those days vegetarian. In my impaired state I spooled out a multi part recipe for coating the meat in seasoned flour, browning on the stove top before cooking in the oven.

I suppose making marmalade would have been easier if I had ever seen anyone making marmalade. It isn't all that hard. The tools you need are simple.

Here they are after I was done and they all got washed.

As I look at the photo I realized that I didn't include a sieve in the photo. That is essential for the many drainings of the boiled citrus peels.

After a couple of hours or boiling and draining (frankly I lost count of how many boils and drains I had done) I added sugar to the orange peels and some water. I think the traditional way to do this is to weigh the peels and then add the same amount of sugar. I added four cups of sugar and some water. I had started out with less sugar but realized as the mixture boiled that the marmalade wouldn't thicken unless I added more sugar.

I let the mixture boil away until it got thicker..

I even poured boiling water over the jars that were to store the marmalade.

This is what is what got made today..

Two 16oz mustard jars, a mason jar, a jam jar and a large Costco sized artichoke jar. My neighbor who brought me the etrog will get one jar. If you like marmalade this is a great thing. If not, not so much.

There is a tradition to save the last bit of etrog jam for Tu B'shvat. Last year I had the last scrapings of etrog jam on Tu B'shvat.

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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