אני פורים

If you had asked me last week or even yesterday if I would be making hamentaschen for Purim I would have told you that I would not.There are just the two of us at home. While we are going to services tonight we participated in the communal Mishloach Manot, so of course, it wasn't necessary.

But I woke up this morning like a woman possessed. This recipe has been on the front of my fridge since before the pandemic.

I believe that I did make this recipe for yeast dough hamentaschen. It may have come from my schoolmate Rena Gopin's mother---but then again perhaps not.

I don't know if it has been the parade of photographs of gross triangular-filled pastries that are NOT hamentaschen, covered with rainbow sprinkles, filled with Nutella, or speculoos or chocolate hummus---but I woke up this morning like a woman possessed, determined to make hamentaschen.

So I followed the recipe above making almost no substitutions. it is a lovely, lovely dough. I made a poppy and fruit filling that wasn't as claggy as either poppy seed filling right from the can or prune lekvar right from the jar. The mix of dried fruits and poppy and the last bit of homemade marmalade brighter with some citric acid and the last bit of the fig molasses my daughter gave me as a gift is really yummy.

So I rolled and filled and baked.

I was surprised by my physical NEED to be doing this particular set of labors right now. I was reminded of how my mother---even after she had suffered a couple of strokes and if you asked her what month it was would consistently be six months off would call me to remind me that her estimated taxes needed to be filed. My mother's deepest internal calendar was tuned to the tax calendar. Today I needed to bake hamentaschen that tasted old-fashioned and authentic-

While rolling and filling these hamentaschen I remembered the Purim thirty-two years ago ...during the Gulf War when my husband played Sadaam Hussein in a Purim Shpiel and how that night Saddam Hussein was defeated. I thought about how many people would be dressed up like Vladamir Putin tonight and perhaps that miracle would be repeated.

Purim is a day for eating stuffed foods, where things are hidden inside, just as Esther had to hide her identity.

If your Hebrew is good enough, watch this video about the essence of Purim.

The following is completely untranslatable and screamingly funny---there is a long setup but be patient. It is so worth the wait.

Happy Purim!

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