cook cook cooking away

 I keep plugging along here. Yesterday afternoon I made a batata kugel.

My lovely son-in-law gets hives when he eats potatoes. I spent a long time yesterday in the "tubers from foreign lands' department of my supermarket trying to decide which ones could stand-in for potato in a kugel. I ruled out the one with skin that most people are allergic to and cooks up to a grey slimy mush. Instead I chose Korean batata which is firmer and less sweet than a yam. 

I assumed we had a few apples at home that could be grated in along with the batata. I was wrong. But we did have a couple of carrots. I added some chopped-up dates and Thanksgiving-ey spices along with a whole bunch of eggs. The result is mildly sweet. I might come up with something to top the kugel while it warms up and add more flavor.

I also cooked two roasts. They will be sliced and sauced later.

Most of the main dish elements of Seder are done and it was time to turn to dessert making.  I had been planning to make a rectangular layer cake that depending on how you count can be a six or seven or eight-layer cake. 

I decided to check the sources for a sponge cake. I went to the ur-source for Passover recipes...

My mother's Rambam machberet. This notebook was pulled out each and every year for Passover.  I didn't have to look far for what I was looking for. On the very first page

was exactly what I was looking for. A sponge cake recipe with no matza meal. My mother was probably 24 or 25 when she copied out this recipe.  She didn't know very much about cake baking. There are no directions just ingredients and a bake temperature. 

I don't know if my mother ever baked this cake. Unlike my mother, I grew up with a mother who baked and baked well.  I grew up at my mother's elbow as she baked, washing the dirtied dishes, prepping pans, chopping nuts.  Unlike my mother, I could look at this recipe and see that it had enough information for me to do what I needed.  I look at this recipe and feel sorry for my young mother. I can imagine her carefully writing this recipe down as Mrs. Pascal dictates this recipe and feel my mother thinking " What the hell am I supposed to do now?"

I baked Mrs. Pascal's cake not in a tube pan but in two jellyroll pans. 

I cut the cooled cakes into 1/4s after first getting rid of the ugly ends.  I stacked the cake with raspberry jam between the layers.

BTW, the Streit's raspberry flavored jam is kind of terrible. It isn't raspberry jam but sugar syrup with 25% fruit pulp that is sort of flavored with raspberry. I added lemon juice in hopes of improving it.

The other cake got filled with an apricot filling I made myself. Before you get too impressed, you can do it too. Heat up dried apricots in a bowl filled with water in the microwave. They will puff up impressively. Put in a food processor with some water ( and some sour salt because these are overly sweet Turkish apricots) and puree until it is a smooth paste. add more water if needed.

 I put some date jam between two of the layers for reasons I no longer remember. When I do this kind of massive cooking decision-making is made on the fly. Both cakes are wrapped up and in the fridge.

After the cakes were baked I made a farfel kugel with dried mushrooms, frozen kale, and a pint of soup. Yes, many eggs were involved. I  didn't taste this kugel but i suspect that it is good.

We also need to eat dinner tonight. 

I made a matza lasagna adjacent bake that was willed with what my husband fondly calls blobbo-taters- pureed cauliflower, frozen kale mozzarella cheese, and a can of diced tomatoes over the matza and vegetable layers. It will be edible which is all you can hope for during these crazy days.

I have alluded to Benny's tallit over the past couple of weeks but haven't written about it a whole lot.

Each of the main stripes is made up of a pair of wings. I had drawn the design on a piece of lavender cotton sheeting and then used the drawn design as my guide for both machine and hand embroidery.

It looked like this a few weeks ago. I have used this technique before.  Usually removing the cotton is not that difficult a job. 

This time it was a JOB. It took over two weeks to remove all of the cotton sheeting. 

Two weeks of pick, pick, picking away at the cotton thread by thread. My husband would ask me what my plans for the day were and I would reply " I am pick, pick, picking away."  Day after day I would think well, surely today I. will be done. And by the end of the day, while there was improvement, I was still not done.

Here they are, two stripes with wings, edged and ready to go.

 

I think that constructing the rest of the tallit will be a piece of cake.