Some New Yearish thoughts

Today I began my baking for Rosh HaShanah.

My daughter had made us an excellent honey cake for Thanksgiving which made me think fondly about my mother's honey cake. There were cakes that my mother always had on hand in the freezer in case of unexpected company. Honey cake was one of them. In case you were wondering about the other cakes that were nearly always on hand in the freezer, there were usually a few loaves of cranberry bread, several rectangles of a brownie adjacent chocolate syrup cake studded with walnuts, some mandelbrot, and a few bags of ruggelach. My mother could put together a decent dessert platter at a moment's notice.

My mother was a big believer of serving a platter of small desserts made up of the sorts of goodies that were in the freezer accompanied by a big cake that would be cut up at the table with a great deal of ceremony and served with tea. The big cake was often a chiffon cake. My favorite was her walnut chiffon cake. The walnuts combined with the chiffon base were just flavor alchemy of the best kind. My mother preferred to make the cake with a hefty addition of shaved chocolate which to my mind diluted the excellence of the walnuts.

But that was perhaps too long of a digression. I found the honey cake I
was looking for in the old Kehillath Israel of Brookline cookbook.

Although (Mrs. Joseph) Roxy A. Paley was just a name to me when I was a little kid studying my mother's cookbooks. I now am very fond of several of Roxy's descendants. I decided to be a responsible baker and let my eggs come up to room temperature before I started baking.

While the eggs were warming up I made a plum tart. This is not the classic German plum tart made with a muerbe-teig crust and Damson plums that reminds me of my dear friend Herta and all of the daughters of proper German Jewish ladies who all make plum tart for Rosh HaShanah with the same religious intensity that they recite Kol-Nidre. This is my take on that tart, inspired by it but not exactly that.

I made up a crust made with brown sugar and some bulgur wheat for texture along with the white flour, coconut oil for the fat, and lots of spices for flavor. I pressed the crust into a 9x13 pan and let it par bake while I made a custard with more of the coconut oil, flour to thicken, sugar, orange juice, and lots of fresh ginger and freshly squeezed lemon juice and some orange juice from the store. After the mixture came to a boil I strained it over the crust and let it bake while I sliced up a dozen plums and let them macerate in a mixture of sugar, flour, and bourbon. Once all the plums were sliced I arranged them in the pan ( not as elegantly as my friend Herta would have) and then baked until the mixture was done.

While the plum tart was in the oven I started on the honey cake. Instead of using strong instant coffee, I brewed a cup of strong coffee made with ground cardamom. I also took Roxie Paley's spices as suggestions.

I decided to bake the cake in a big 13x18 jellyroll pan. I thought that if I cut the cake into strips and put filling between the strips the cake would look pretty and I wouldn't have to deal with the less than gracious thing of serving half a round cake that makes it clear to the guests at that meal that they are on the B-list of guests as opposed to being on the A-list.

Cutting the cake up into strips left some cake over. I agree with my mother's penciled comments. It is a very good honey cake.

I made a filling out of a mixture of apple butter, and date butter, a bit of cocoa, and some silan. I cut the cake into four-inch strips and stacked the cake strips and filling.

I may top the cake with something pretty before I serve it. I have a couple of days before I decide how to make the cake look cute. There may be some additional desserts if I have time. Tomorrow is challah baking day and the main dishes will be cooked on Monday.

Earlier today I saw this gentleman on the corner of Amsterdam and 96th Street.

I had some serious theological issues with his sign, especially at this season of repentance.

This year (actually, year and a half) HAS been pretty terrible but I don't think that the end is near. The cool ray of light was not Divine light but most likely some schmutz on my lens.

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...

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

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