After the apocalypse ( or after the day that felt like the apocalypse)

THIS was the view from my window this morning as opposed to the terrifying orange of two days ago. Air quality isn't perfect yet, so I have spent the day indoors. My tiny adventure out of the house yesterday left me with a terrible headache.

It's Friday, so that means a cookign and baking day. It was a challah baking week. Before I shaped the challot I reminded my husband of his religious obligation to bug me and remind me to take challah.

The book my husband bought me with ALL of the rules of taking challah spends a great deal of time going through how big a piece of dough must be taken from the main dough to qualify as a כזית, the size of an olive. I just lop off a piece that is the size of a really big olive and don't get into the madness of people who never saw an olive determining that a כזית could possibly be the size of a baseball or a watermelon.

I know that common practice is to wrap the dough bit in foil and toss it into the oven while the actual challah bakes. I like watching that dough lump burn. Sue me...the mitzvah is done. I promise that this particular rant is done as well.

I decided to add a filling to this batch of challah. We own far too much cocoa so the filling is a mix of cocoa, raspberry jam and apricot jam and a bit of water to make it spreadable.

It has taken me until recently to realize that you can yank dough that is a wonky rectangle into a a perfect rectangle as you roll up a filling inside. Yes! you are the boss of the dough!

Here are the loaves braided and waiting to rise.

A few hours later, they looked like this.

Unlike the last batch of challah, these aren't overbaked.

Sunday, I had made a batch of whities (meringues to the rest of the universe) for my friend who is in need of them. The whitie making left me with three egg yolks. Those yolks are now a batch of noodles.

After I cooked and drained the noodles I made a sort of fake sesame noodle sauce with almond butter, gochujang a bit of honey and cider vinegar. I also added some carrot and cucumber for a bit of crunch. It isn't the identical flavor to cold sesame noodles but for a sauce that took about a minute to make....good enough for government work.

I also made chicken.

What is in my little lavender bowl? The cumin and cardamom mix my daughter gave me, some amba powder, soup hawaij and a couple of shakes of cayenne pepper. A while back I couldn't get enough of smoked paprika and sumac. This is my amba powder moment. I think that the flavor profile of this chicken lives in the geographic region somewhere between India and Iraq.

I have been working away on mending/reinforcing my friend's wedding tallit.

I have two big projects starting soon and until they begin it has been oddly restful to do all of the hand stitching to repair, and reinforce this tallit.

I still hate China silk ( that doesn't just mean that it comes from China but it is a type of really thin silk).

I am nearing the end of this phase of the project and can soon move on the the parts that I can do by machine.

Shabbat Shalom!

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

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