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!