Food Friday---a day late

I was hoping to write and post this before Shabbat, but Shabbat started at 4:11 and so this had to wait until now.

Our older son has been working in Israel since May. He usually calls us on either Thursday or Friday. This week he called us on Friday morning. I put my phone on speaker and my husband and I chatted with our son.

As we spoke, the glass on the 1927 framed photo of my father in law with his family reflected the buildings just to the north and west of us. I look at the image above and see the family photo, the rippled reflection of the buildings and also recall the conversation we had with our son.

After the call, I began to cook Shabbat dinner.

The spice package label claims that Amba is Arabian. I believe that it is Iraqi

I decided to use this spice mix with the chicken. I actually followed the directions for making the Amba. The result was far wetter than any Amba I have eaten.

I spooned the very liquidy Amba over two whole chickens and set the chicken to cook at 350. When the chicken was about 1/4 of the way cooked the roasting pan looked really dry. I mixed up more Amba, this time not following the directions and making a slightly thicker mixture. I also added a bit ( less than a tablespoon) of silan, date molasses, but I could have added honey or maple syrup.

Occasionally during the cooking I spooned some of the yummy crusty bits from the bottom of the pan over the chicken and did so again before I served the chicken.

This was crazy-good. If you can get a package of Amba mix buy it.

I served relatively bland freekeh (smoked young wheat) and rice ( lightly spiced with hawaij and ras al hanout) my husband made a big spinach salad.

Earlier in the day my husband mentioned that he doesn't love Amba as much as I do ( I adore it). He told me that I shouldn't expect him to like the chicken as much as I would. After dinner my husband was licking the pan juices off of the big work spoon I had used to to lift the chicken out of the pan to the serving platter.

That was Shabbat dinner. .

Shavua Tov!

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