Food Friday- Don't Let the Door Hit You On the Way Out Edition

Tonight is kind of a momentous Shabbat. Our older son moves out on Sunday. He had signed a lease on an apartment uptown from us on April 1, but Corona Virus, and Passover had put a crimp in his plans to not just pay rent, but actually to live in his apartment with a roommate. I'm delighted that he has a steady income and can move out. Unfortunately, once he moves out he is part of a different household and can't visit us unless he is masked (and us too) and socially distanced.

He goes off into the world an excellent cook and bread baker. If i play my cards right he may share his sour dough starter with me.

I wanted to put a bit more effort into this meal.

I made red chicken, that is chicken with smoked paprika, hot paprika, cayenne and black pepper.

I massaged the spices into the chicken and cooked it on a bed of potatoes, carrots and parsnips. Here it is before cooking.

And after cooking...

Despite the fact that getting food is still a little complicated, I wanted to add a couple of fun notes to the meal. Given that this is for my older son, the fun came in the form of chicken wings.

We had gotten almost to the bottom of a bottle of maple syrup so the dregs of that bottle mixed with mustard poured over the wings, make for a delicious last Shabbat at home.

I had two egg whites left over from noodles I had made a while back, so those got turned into meringues. (Two egg whites need 1/2 a cup of sugar and a spec of salt to turn into meringues after lots of whipping. Bake at 325 until the meringues feel like they have a crisp outer shell when poked with your finger.)

Every Passover, some items in my pantry seem to hide when we change the kitchen back. This year the amazing Mexican vanilla that our daughter and her husband brought back fro their honeymoon for us had gone AWOL. Last night my husband found it. A cap-full went into the meringues as well as bits of the candied orange peels I had made last week.

Although the nights have been cold (I have been sleeping in two sweaters these days and under a giant pile of blankets) The trees on Broadway have decided that it is truly springtime.

It seems that we may be able to emerge in a few weeks.

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

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