A Leisurely Friday and only a tiny bit of cooking

Today I am feeling like this is a luxurious Friday. I didn't get out of bed until 9:30. I decided to clean my oven. Shabbat starts at 4:22.

I can face Friday as a lady of leisure because nearly all of the food I am serving tonight was made last week.

Lately, my Friday morning workout has been accompanied by watching The Great British Bake-off. This week's episode was all about making desserts that were dairy-free and gluten-free and vegan. The first challenge of the episode of dairy-free ice cream.

I watched the bakers with great interest. I have been making pretty good dairy-free ice cream for ages. When this was a new adventure for me I used to substitute soy milk or almond milk for the dairy. I find that I hate the beany undertaste of soy milk and soy-based ice creams. Additionally, my youngest is both soy and nut allergic. Oatmilk was not then commonly available.

I no longer remember exactly how I stumbled onto the idea of using cooked starch to create a silky mouthfeel in my non-dairy ice cream. I can tell you that it works really well to create something that feels fat and luscious.

Many old-time cookbooks tell you to start ice cream with a cooked custard rather than with just cream and milk and sugar. Anyway, I had assumed that at least one of the contestants on the show would have used my method. This leads me to think, perhaps erroneously that I might have come up with an original cooking idea.

A couple of weeks ago I had made cranberry non-dairy ice cream. I had some left but homemade ice cream doesn't stay stable in the freezer like commercial ice cream. I started with that mixture, added some potato starch---corn starch is nicer but I have potato starch leftover from Passover.

I added the starch to a pot that had the old icecream I also added some more water, pomegranate molasses ( because it is a good dupe for cranberry), maple syrup a teeny bit of salt,

and some olive oil. To answer your next two questions: Yes, that is King Kong inside of my whisk, a gift from one of my sisters. It's about two tablespoons of olive oil.

You keep mixing the whole thing on low heat until it comes to a boil, unless like me you have a brainstorm and decide to grate in a sweet and fragrant little apple into the pan, and then it takes a little bit longer to cook the cold apple. I also whisked up an egg yolk to add into the mixture after the whole thing comes to a boil for additional satiny mouthfeel.

Cooking this sort of a mixture ( a bunch of wet stuff and a bit of dry starch) always has the feel of a fabulous science experiment. You stir up a liquid over heat and then as soon as it comes to a boil the starch molecules change shape and instead of a liquid, you have a gorgeous lush emulsion. This is how one thickens gravy or makes a cheese sauce or a pudding.

Anyway, that's what I did with my old ice cream, and pomegranate molasses and water and flavors. After it came to a boil I mixed some of the hot liquid into the egg yolk and then added the yoke-ey mixture into the hot mixture and stirred until smooth. That custard then went into my ice cream maker.

I did taste a bit off of the dasher after I packed up the ice cream into my freezer. It tastes like it was made with dairy. This will be a nice way to end our meal.

Autumn means that I MUST eat cranberries and winter squash in many forms. Autumn also means that I must see red and yellow leaves.

The trees along Broadway have done a not-terrible job of fulfilling that need.

A few years ago the subway stop near our house was rebuilt and re-designed. My husband calls the area in front of the station Spare Change Plaza because of the regulars who sit there.

Spare Change Plaza actually has other pleasures ( aside from the beautiful but terribly slippery in-the- rain pavement)

The plantings are wonderful.

I get enough of a taste of actual autumn to not feel deprived.

I am also adding these videos because I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I did. I'm sorry, they are in Hebrew. You might be able to get enough out of them even without knowing the language.

This last one is for a Shabbat laugh.

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...

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...

sarah in nyc

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