Hibachi Failed

Father's Day with its snafus.  First, I got the week wrong.  It had been my intention to make a corned beef which takes about a week.  Two days to defrost the brisket, five days with Morton Tender Quick, then a few hours of boiling.  Thought I was on target, only to look at the calendar which listed Father's Day the Sunday before I had expected.  So I headed to Trader Joe's for some good Kosher ground beef.  I could make hamburgers on the restored hibachi.

I had purchased this when my children were school-age.  Must have cost about $15.  A few years ago I thought about buying one from Amazon, as mine was long lost.  Price, about $80.  Rarely used, not worth it.  However, on cleaning my basement about two years ago it reappeared.  I cleaned it.  Good as new.  Many opportunities to grill something passed me by.  The hibachi sat under a table in the dining room for maybe two seasons.  Now some hamburger in hand, hot day just prior to the summer solstice, and a special occasion.  I took it out.  

In my garage, I had a package of unopened charcoal.  Not the briquettes, but real assorted pieces of charcoal logs.  Never opened.  In the basement, I had a package of briquettes, similarly unopened.  I opted for the good stuff, as much for its proximity as its superiority.  I assembled the hibachi, placing a layer of assorted charcoal pieces atop the lower grid.  The charcoal package gave three options for igniting it.  I did not have a flue style starter, nor did I have lighting fluid.  That left me with the easy choice, twisting some newspaper, placing it on the cast iron base of the grill, igniting it, then put the lower grid atop the newspapers and restore the charcoal above that.  Easy enough.

Commercial progress blindsided me.  Apparently, newsprint has changed.  It must be chemically treated differently than it once was.  Using a Bic lighter, I could singe the edges, but there must now be some fire retardant put into the manufacturing process.  Those twisted logs of newspaper never created the raging flame that newsprint on fire once did.  The charcoal never acquired part of the flame.  I gave up, though between Father's Day and Fourth of July I can purchase a container of charcoal starter fluid.  And maybe use my more spacious fleishig grill and briquets to give barbecue a second go.

Ground beef patties created with an egg, some Panko crumbs, and seasonings, then cooked in a skillet.  Trader Joe's Kosher beef is the best, a sensory step ahead of what Shop-Rite Kosher Meat department carries.  It was good.  Just not charcoal grilled.

I will need to scrub the hibachi once more, dry the cast iron to avoid rust, then plan its Second Act more carefully.

Pesach Menus

My kitchen has established itself as my source of recreation if not creativity.  I've collected cookbooks, kosher and general pretty much since receiving my first paycheck.  When I first subscribed to cable TV, the Food Channel became a staple, though no longer is as instruction from experts waned in favor of endless competitions.  The internet brought searchable recipes, refined by keywords from kosher to Valentine's Day to dessert.  The cookbooks are not obsolete, though, as they reflect what masters with skills far exceeding mine have tested and thought about.  

A few times a year I plan and toil more than others.  Thanksgiving with its traditional tastes.  Always roasted turkey.  Always sweet potatoes, but not always presented the same way.  Wife's birthday, elegance for two.  Shabbos dinner with guests, elegance for four.  The sukkah, a confined space.  And the annual challenge of them all:  Pesach or Passover.  This Festival has its blend of ritual, dietary restrictions, sharing with guests or in my younger years being a guest, and imagination.  Thinking and discussing some concepts of Freedom, still part of our political discourse today.  And we discuss obligations, as we are mandated certain things like eating matzoh, drinking wine, and tasting bitterness.  Imagination also entails creativity, making those foods on the permitted list with special presentations to reflect abundance amid restriction.  The absence of bread does not have to convey deprivation.

My kitchen gets scrubbed, unpermitted foods sold by my Rabbi acting as my agent, and my largest grocery bill generated as I select some mixture of need and want with significant price markups.  Matzoh in a five-pound box.  Matzoh meal.  Some specialty dairy and candy.  Macaroons as a quick snack.  Even soda made with cane sugar, the only time of the year when this appears as an acceptable grocery purchase.

The Festival lasts eight days.  The first two evenings and the last two are formal Festivals, with the Friday night during the Intermediate Days presenting another occasion for a special dinner.  As a practical matter, by the final two Festival evenings, people are pretty tired and tend to try to finish up what they've prepared earlier in the Holiday.  So the culinary challenges really appear for the first two nights devoted to ritual Seders and to shabbos dinner.  

The Seders, or Sedarim in Hebrew, have some specified eating obligations.  We drink four cups of wine at designated times while we recite the story of our collective and personal redemptions from Egypt in a monograph called a Haggadah.  Parsley is dipped in salt water.  We recite a blessing over a wad of raw horseradish sweetened with an unspecified amount of a fruit-wine-nut blend called Charoset.  We eat not only matzoh, but pieces from specified parts of the three boards which we set out on our tables.  And though not part of the Haggadah, many communities including mine begin the supper portion with a hard boiled egg sitting in a puddle of salt water.  None of this requires a recipe search, other than Charoset whose contents vary by regional tradition.  Being of Eastern European ancestry, mine is a mixture of shredded apples, ground almonds, and kiddush wine with a splash of cinnamon.  Other places use dried fruits such as dates, apricots, or figs as the base.  In America, where we embrace multiculturalism and live in prosperity, Eastern European families will make their Charoset from the more expensive though flavorful dried fruits, though I go for my more economical tradition.

Much like Thanksgiving, the menu often reflects compromises between traditions that do not change from one year to the next and with creativity.  Kosher cookbooks invariably contain a chapter with recipes in compliance with Passover's dietary limitations.  My own Seder preparation grid has eleven categories:

1. Charoset
2. Appetizer
3. Soup
4. Matzoh Balls
5. Salad
6. Dressing
7. Entree
8. Kugel
9. Vegetable
10. Dessert
11. Beverage

Cookbooks and web searches yield ample possibilities but over decades my own basic pattern has declared itself.  Ashkenazi Charoset.  Gefilte fish for seder, usually for shabbos as well, though a stuffed vegetable will sometimes make a good shabbos substitute.  Chicken soup, homemade.  Composed of chicken parts, carrots, celery, onion, pepper, maybe a turnip, maybe a kosher for Passover bouillon cube, all boiled in my biggest and oldest stock pot for hours. That chicken will fall off the bones, only to reappear as chicken salad or stir-fry the final two Festival nights.  Matzoh balls have multiple variations.  The matzoh meal box has the basic recipe of eggs, fat, and meal in a basic proportion.  I like to add some club soda, maybe some parsley to the batter.  Others like to add ground nuts.  Some people stuff the matzoh balls with ground beef.  My fat is vegetable oil.  Others opt for chicken fat, known as schmaltz.  I boil mine separately in water, then add to the soup.  Others add their uncooked balls directly to the simmering soup.  And how many to make and of what size?

Salads are one of those uncommitted variable dishes.  Vegetables other than legumes and rice are permissible.  Mine can be tomato-based, cucumber-based, lettuce or cabbage-based.  Some make beet salads, but not everyone likes beets, though borscht is also a Passover soup classic with a large contingent of enthusiasts.  Indeed, the college caterer used to serve a small bowl of borscht with a boiled potato during the Intermediate Days.   Dressings come bottled, but vinaigrettes are easily created with olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, and seasonings.  Mustard to create an emulsion is not permitted.  My salads tend to be simple:  Israeli with several diced vegetables or cucumber with thinly sliced onion.  Lemon juice and salt and parsley complete the taste.

It is the entrees that showcase the effort and the planning.  Realistic choices are beef and poultry.  For a crowd, which Sedarim often have, a whole turkey takes the least effort relative to yield.  Brisket comes in different sizes.  Many families center the meal around that, a display of taste and generosity, as a five pounder could run a multiple of what a whole turkey costs.  But they will each serve both Sedarim.  Smaller attendance opens more options.  There is whole chicken, chicken parts, turkey breasts. small briskets, tzimmes made with beef or lamb cubes, rib roasts, and stuffed veal breasts.  The price of crock pots, air fryers, and Insta pots has declined to where people can purchase one only for Passover use. While the number of guests drives the final selection, appliance availability also needs reckoning, as most people only have one oven and four stove top burners to spread over several dishes. The soup will occupy one of the two large burners for a very long time, as will a whole turkey in the oven.  Matzoh balls, and made from scratch gefilte fish also use up considerable stove top.  

Starches take several forms.  Some cooks just make potatoes or tzimmes as the side dish.  This being a time dedicated to matzoh, kugels or puddings based on matzoh have become popular.  Some people opt for the easier potato kugel.  Whatever form, the kugel has a starch base mixed with eggs.  Additives such as carrots or mushrooms give character.  Potatoes are moist, but matzoh needs to be reconstituted with either water or a few ladles of chicken soup from the stock pot.  Most are baked, some are done stove top.  Sometimes the matzoh kugel becomes matzoh stuffing for the poultry entrée.

  

Vegetables could be anything.  Seasonal items go on sale, in my region, asparagus is discounted most years.  Carrots are versatile with boiling, roasting, and glazing.  Green beans are the only beans permitted.  Many a Bar Mitzvah caterer includes green beans with sliced almonds on the dinner plate, something acceptable for Passover.  And beets are sweet, though not universally liked.  More adventurous people may opt for artichokes, a staple at an Italian Seder table.

Dessert is another branch point, a restricted one as dairy is not permitted with a meat meal and flour not permitted with any meal.  Eggs become the agent to allow products to rise.  Finely ground matzoh or potato starch become the sources of substance, and ground nuts add bulk and flavor.  Fruit desserts such as sorbets or poached pears are popular.  I find nut cakes tasty and reasonably straightforward.  Others prefer sponge cake, which seems like a waste of yolks unless repurposed to crème brûlée for a dairy meal.

And beverage.  The Evil Coca-Cola.  Tea, plain or mint.  Club Soda laced with Manischewitz.  KP wine.  

So I find myself at pluripotent menu planning with a lot of uncertainty.  I think it better to set the menu, then shop, though others would advocate for food selections to drive the menu.  My grid has a lot of open squares, both for Shabbos and for Sedarim.  Recipes from kosher sites and my kosher books are all suitable.  Recipes by popular cooking magazines do much less well at maintaining within the Pesach and Kashrut boundaries.

And I have to wash all dishes before starting and afterward.  So tentative:

1. Kiddush wine
2. My usual apple-almond charoset
3. Boiled Frozen Gefilte Loaf with grated fresh horseradish
4. Chicken soup in my stock pot
5. Matzoh balls seasoned a little differently than before, boiled in water, never in soup
6. Cucumber Salad
7. Half-turkey breast
8. Matzoh Kugel a la White House Seder
9. Carrots sweetened in some way
10. Almond torte 
11. Evil Coca-Cola with the yellow cap

And consider shabbos later.

Making Lasagna

My kitchen.  A place I like to be. Few things bring me more personal satisfaction than making supper each night for my wife and me.  Or periodically an elegant dinner for the relatively limited number of friends that we have acquired.  It's food.  It's not all kitchen.  I have to think about what to make.  For guests or special occasions.  It starts at my desk where I search recipes in cyberspace and fill out a menu grid, then sample what might be possible in the living room where my Kosher cookbook collection fills more than one shelf.  It entails a survey of the weekly Shop-Rite ad which hints at what I can make economically.  There is usually a two-hour expedition to the store itself, aisle by aisle.  America has food abundance.  I have the good fortune of ample funds to purchase pretty much anything that I can imagine as useful for a satisfying meal.  Often too much, as the contents of my limited freezer need some juggling.

Most meals are simple.  Something from the freezer.  Pierogies, crunchy fish, faux meat packaged as a heat-up entree, fish fillets thawed a day in advance.  Meat for shabbos, more often than not poultry, thawed two days in advance.  And a vegetable.  Sometimes perishable like a sliced tomato or cucumber.  Often frozen like corn or green beans where I can extract as much as I need, then boil.  Sometimes the vegetable Shop-Rite puts on sale that week.  Simple, but with a modicum of which of the many options should I take.

Along the way, I have a few signatures, or at least go-tos.  For shabbos cholent.  For guests, a roasted turkey half-breast or chicken cacciatore, one needing little effort, the other requiring many steps.  Desserts, a nut cake or a honey cake, one basic recipe with variants.

For suppers at home, I have two that require preparation, Macaroni and Cheese in the style of Horn and Hardart, which was my Automat staple, and Lasagna taken from the first cookbook judged worthy of the Artscroll Jewish publishers.  Each needs some targeted purchases.  Lasagna offers me more room for experimentation.   Each lasts four meals, one out of the oven, one the following night's supper, and two rectangles cut cold, wrapped in foil, and frozen for a supper each of the next two weeks.

Lasagna has a spinach base, so I need to get frozen spinach when on sale and keep it in the freezer until the day before.  I usually get the cut variety, but have gotten the leaf form.  They thaw waterlogged, so I take a fistful at a time, give a good squeeze, placing a handful at a time into the mixing bowl until all has been drained.  For a while I tried using a colander.  My hands extract more water.  Then a tub of cottage cheese.  Most come as one pint but the Shop-Rite house brand comes as 24 ounces, which seems to leave me more filling to work with on assembly.  Cottage cheese comes in a number of different forms.  Large or small curd, reduced fat or full fat.  After baking, the curd size doesn't matter.  Small mixes more easily.  And always full fat.  The purpose of cheese of any type is its sensory pleasure, which comes from its lipid elements.  And brand on sale when I go shopping.  An egg is needed for binding.  Dump into the bowl after the spinach, blend with a fork.  Then seasonings.  The Artscroll recipe calls for oregano and black pepper.  I vary this.  Oregano seems to work best.  The half teaspoon given in the recipe comes out unnoticed.  I use more, but since I never measure it, I don't really know how much more.  Black pepper is not noticed at all when served.  I look at my spice collection and pick one.  The Middle Eastern spices don't do especially well, despite Lasagna being a Mediterranean preparation.  Season salts and Asian spices are better.  But the options and my selection make each preparation a little different.  

The real variation from batch to batch comes from the cheese that is added to the cottage cheese filling.  The Artscroll recipe calls for mozzarella.  It is easy to find kosher-certified mozzarella.  And it is a staple of Italian pasta recipes because of its melting qualities and texture.  As a semi-soft cheese in its kosher formats, I find it difficult to shred with a processor's shredding disc.  More liquified mozzarella, really more of a paste, mixes easily with the cottage cheese in the prep bowl.  I have found cheddar a better option.  Table-K cheddar is easy to find and reasonably economical.  It shreds easily, which makes it better for the upper topping.  I will most often use some form of sharp cheddar, either by itself or in combination with mozzarella.  For flavor, I have used acceptable additions of blue cheese and Monterrey jack, but cheddar and mozzarella seem to offer the preferred texture and taste.

The lasagna is layered and topped with jarred spaghetti sauce.  There are several brands that are kosher-certified and go on sale.  The jars have become subject to shrinkflation, now containing 24 ounces when they used to contain 26, which is what the recipe calls for.  I find the 24 oz usually adequate but sometimes pull a partially used jar from the fridge to supplement.  The vegetarian jarred spaghetti sauces have their own variants.  Marina, basil, garden tomato.  The varieties without texture perform better.

So with just a few variable ingredients, the sauce, cottage cheese style, topic cheese, and spices, I can get a lot of different minor combinations from the same recipe.  Not having any reason to standardize what I do, and indeed a lot of reasons not to, each batch comes out unique but never dramatically so.  While I vary these brands, I do not do formal experimentation with the combinations or write them down.  Instead, I will purchase the cheese in a half-pound brick without earmarking it for lasagna.  Spaghetti sauce is purchased without lasagna or variety in mind, so I choose what is in the pantry.  Oregano is a constant, a small handful crushed.  Other herbs and spices vary from none to a shake or a few grinds of black pepper, to something in my spice collection that catches my attention when I see what I have available.

However I make it, the end result is usually good.  Sometimes a little overbaked.  More often just right. The underlying purpose, basically the enjoyment of my kitchen and the challenge of preparation is always fulfilled.

Making Lasagna

By now I've accumulated my staple dishes, those things that I make once and serve multiple meals, usually with the help of a freezer.  Macaroni & Cheese in the style of Horny Hardart, crock pot stew, chicken cacciatore, often a turkey, and lasagna in the style of Artscroll.  Most have multiple ingredients, are made in large cooking utensils, require measuring devices, and have multiple ingredients that need to be set out and often mixed in an appliance.  Every one of them worth the effort with enjoyable products that repeat over several dinners.  Every one of them requires several sessions at my sink to wash all the equipment used, then was all the dinner dishes used to consume them along with the rest of those meals.

So it went with my most recent lasagna.  Not a lot of ingredients.  Some oregano and black pepper.  No measuring spoons, just a palm estimate. Spinach.  I used to drain in a colander.  With experience I just squeeze out handfuls from the thawed bag and dump into the bowl as I go until there is no more.  Pour out the residual water and place the plastic packaging into the kitchen garbage container.  Rinse my hands. An egg.  Crack into the bowl, mix gently with a fork that will be a multipurpose utensil.  Three types of cheese.  Cottage cheese just gets dumped into the mixing bowl with the spinach, egg, and spices.  The tub and its lid need washing before either recycling or repurposing.  I used a blend of mozzarella and cheddar this time.  A pound of mozzarella.  Get out a plate, a knife, the food processor with its shredding disc.  With a sharp knife, bisect the square of cheese so it fits in the processor's feed tube.  Shred each half, transfer to mixing bowl.  Moist mozzarella does not shred cleanly.  It made a sticky mess with strands adhering to each other, which is why I shredded it before the cheddar.  Using mostly my fingers, transfer that blob to a stainless steel mixing bowl.  Then clean off residual mozzarella from the processor and its disc, putting that into the mixing bowl.  Shredding cheddar goes more easily.  It comes as a rectangle that fits into the processor's feeding tube.  On same plate, with same knife, cut about two thirds of it and shred.  That cleans the disc somewhat.  Leave the shredded cheese in the processor bowl.  Then separately, with my hands, move about half the mozzarella and half the cheddar into the mixing bowl with the cottage cheese.  Normally I blend all the ingredients, which becomes the filling, with a fork and some effort.  No go with the sticky mozzarella.  My right hand and its fingers made a much better blending too.  Squish a few minutes and I had a reasonably uniformly distributed mixture of cottage cheese, mozzarella, cheddar, and spinach with the egg, oregano, and black pepper along for the ride.

Lasagna needs a lasagna pan.  I have two.  Picked the older uncoated one.  Spray with generic Pam.  Now some sauce.  I had one partially open.  Usually I use a new jar, sometimes run a little over, so the extra is always good to have.  A layer of sauce on the bottom of the lasagna pan.  Arrange noodles, it takes five to cover the pan.   Then half the cheese-spinach mixture over that.  When less experienced, I used to spoon it out.  Now I take about half out of the bowl with my hands and spread it evenly by punching it down with my fist, much like I often do with an olive oil quiche crust that does not roll well but comes out as a blob.   Then some more sauce.  This I spread with a fork.  Another layer of noodles, rest of cheese-spinach mixture, punch down.  Then about half the remaining sauce spread with a fork.  Then another layer of noodles.  Then another layer of sauce, which used up the jar, forcing me into the reserved partially used other jar.  The top with rest of mozzarella.  By now, sitting in the steel bowl, it was no longer shredded in an easy to distribute way.  I made little balls of about three quarters of it, patterned it evenly over the sauce surface, then distributed the rest of the cheddar whose strands did not adhere to each other.  Then the remaining mozzarella into little balls, distributed in any gaps.  Since the noodles are not precooked, it needs some liquid.  The now empty sauce jar got about a third filled with water, then poured over the now assembled lasagna.  Cover with foil, bake at 350F for 80 minutes, remove foil halfway.   It was good.  Always a little different each time I make it, as I vary the types of cheeses, their proportions, and the flavor of jarred sauce with each preparation.

With experience, I was able to minimize dishwashing.  No measuring devices.  Not a lot of forks and spoons.  One sharp knife to cut the cheese.  Food processor did not use the chopping blade.  The disc was a sticky mess with mozzarella residual in the cutting grates.  It emulsifies easily with dishwashing liquid and washes away with rather hot water.  A sink spray works well.  The clear plastic fitted feed tube pusher had ridges on its surface that coated with mozzarella.  Little scrub, hot rinse.  Processor bowl housed mainly shredded cheddar.  Not hard to wash.  Processor top posed the biggest challenge.  Its injector molding gave it different areas with narrow plastic channels where both types of cheese accumulated.  I had to dislodge some of these with a sharp knife, then wedge the kitchen cleaning pad into small surfaces pretreated with detergent, then was away with hot water by sink spray.  The cheese got dislodged adequately this way.  The steel bowl had only mozzarella which did not stick tenaciously to it.  Simple wash with detergent and rinse.  Plate on which cheese was cut, just ordinary dishwashing.  And glass bowl that house the mixed filling took some effort.  The cottage cheese and spinach particles dried.  Before it could be scrubbed clean it had to be soaked.  While it had only broad, round surfaces, no channels like the processor top, getting it fully cleaned took a few steps.  And a quick wash of the cottage cheese container and sauce jar before they go into the next recycling pickup.  But all done.

Much of this effort has gotten easier over time with experience and with some experimentation.  I probably will not use more than half mozzarella again.  It's just much harder to incorporate than is shredded cheddar, and harder to clean up.  No colander, no measuring cups and spoons. Always have some spare sauce available.  Maybe a little less water at the end.

My wife and I eat about 25% per meal.  From the pan the first night.  Second night, take another quarter, put in second small frying pan and heat in oven.  At same time divide the remaining half into two rectangles.  Wrap each with foil, label, and freeze for the following week.  Then wash the lasagna pan.  We have four very good meals.  Some cleanup required, but with experience and planning it has become less excessive.

Stir Fry

Shabbos Dinners.  Good prices at Shop-Rite.  Limited storage life.  All merge to create a stir-fry.  A very big stir-fry.  Last set of onions on sale at Shop-Rite had some that needed to be discarded.  I took an unblemished one.  Baby carrots hanging around in fridge too long.  Parboiled some of those.  Can't make stir-fry without celery.  On sale this week, got a stalk, sliced three ribs.  Mushrooms on their last days.  A few discarded, most sliced.  And what's left of a chicken breast from a shabbos past.  Frozen peas on sale, got those.  Some frozen mixed vegetables would go well.  My remaining head of garlic had gone soft, but I had ample prechopped garlic in a jar.  And parsley on sale.

At the top of my pan rack in an S-hook, I keep a rarely used fleishig wok, though this could have used any large pan.   Let it get hot with ordinary vegetable oil.  Then saute onions, add celery a short while later, then garlic, carrots, and mushrooms in sequence.  Parboil the frozen vegetables.  Strip the meat from the bones of the chicken breast, dice and add.  I had a small amount of leftover quinoa and rice pilaf.  Into the wok for these.  Larger amount of Spanish rice, into the microwave as the side dish.

Then flavoring.  In keeping with the Asian theme of the wok, some unmeasured amounts of soy sauce and rice wine vinegar that had occupied space in the refrigerator door.  Seasonings included a small handful of salt, some shakes of preground black pepper, a middle eastern spice blend, and some ground coriander.  Then the peas and mixed vegetables.  Chopped curly parsley at the end.  Quite a lot.  

Serve from the wok and from the plastic storage container that held the Spanish rice.  The penultimate can of my case of thirty Molson's which I really didn't like much.  That needed to be used up too.

Probably three dinners worth.  And a surprisingly large amount of dishes to wash, as each vegetable went into a separate bowl before its turn to enter the wok arrived.  And each stored item had been in its own plastic container or small saucepan.  Those have to get washed and put away as well.

No recipe on this.  Use what I had on hand, think about what I like, think about potential tastes and blends.  No measurements other than number of onions and celery ribs.  And a unique, satisfying result.

Some Cooking

Allocated this week to upgrading my kitchen skills.  Rough start but able to catch up.  Agenda:  Hungarian Monkey Bread for the Delaware Choral Arts Potluck supper.  Dough came out sticky, lots of cleanup, which I'll start during the rise, then make the coating.  Was not planning to use the food processor but I may need to grind some brown sugar.  Pastry board is a mess.  I will need that to roll out the dough, then later today I need to make rough puff pastry for later in the week.  That also needs a pastry board as well as a clean food processor.

Tomorrow, shop for rest of ingredients in advance of yontif.  Thaw cod.

Day after, blintzes.  I need a blender for that, which I have.

Big cooking for shabbos guests.  Start Challah early in the morning. Use stand mixer. Go to services while dough rises.  Make pie dough before services and chill in fridge.  I think I'll still be able to go to services.  When I get back, make pie.  While pie bakes, punch down challah dough and shape loaves.  Pie comes out, bake challah.  Then after that roast tomatoes for soup.  Make salad while pie bakes, as it is best refrigerated.  Late afternoon, assemble coulibiac which takes a while.  Set aside, but do not bake until about an hour or two before guests arrive.  Make soup.  This keeps.  It can be heated on stovetop while coulibiac bakes.  Steam carrots.

Set table.  Put everything in serving dishes.

I think I can keep this all sequential.

Stir Fry

Tofu always seems like an economical ingredient option.  When I order it out, often as part of Chinese vegetarian cuisine, I always like what they bring me.  Yet when I make it at home, usually as part of an appetizer to a larger meal, my own preparation invariably disappoints.  I think it is like a background that has little culinary value in its own right but gets enhanced or ruined by what come with it.  I bought another box.  On the advice of the Moosewood Cooperative Cookbook, I froze the package.  A day before use I thawed it, then squeezed out as much liquid as advised by pressing between two plates, and later with my hands.  This supposedly alters its native texture to one more grainy, which it did.

Then to make something.  Lots of stir-fry recipes.  Basically cube the tofu, add some form of marinade ingredients, typically soy sauce or variant, with some seasonings.  I used tamari, some good salad dressing, and some Mexican blend of spices.  Sauté the tofu, set aside.  I had lots of veggies to use up.  Celery, scallions, baby carrots, half a broccoli crown.  My last onion had spoiled by I still had a red onion in reserve.  And some past-prime mushrooms that would otherwise go to waste.  Some garlic from the jar.

All sauteed in stages, with the carrots and broccoli parboiled first.  Then return the tofu, now a bit too crumbly to be served that way at a restaurant, and cover with some more of the marinade.  Heat for five minutes.

Well, it used stuff up.  It was edible, main course last night, leftovers as a side in a day or so.  My respect for Moosewood & Squirrel aside, perhaps the next experiment with tofu should be making it straight from the package, squeezing the water from a fresh cake of tofu, then preparing it.  Likely to be a lot less crumbly that way.  And the marinade would probably go better if I made it from a tested recipe.

My twelve Semi-Annual Projects include enhancing my proficiency in the kitchen, as well as my enjoyment of my time there.  This dinner, with all its many dishes to wash the next day, contributed to that, even if the dinner results themselves could have been better.

Making Rugulach

Ingredients set out.  Butter and cream cheese need to reach room temperature.  Filling ingredients mostly on the counter.  It's been a long time since I made this, last time and this for a specific occasion.  Used a cookbook last time, internet via FoodTV star this time.  It's not the most important task for today but the one I want to do the most.

Some Kitchen Time

Since I have an awards reception to attend this morning, shabbos dinner started and continues in a crock pot.  Not a whole lot of advance planning other than thawing the chicken.  Then some vegetables past their prime, sautee the chicken parts, add a can of rinsed beans, some grain this time barley, a secret blend of spices only secret due to its spontaneity and lack of record keeping, then top with some water.  High for an hour or so, then low until dinner with maybe a stirring or two en route.  Get about three dinners from this.  Cleanup not oppressive.  Go about my day.

Mother's Day Dinner takes a much different trajectory.  As empty nesters, the kids honor Mom from afar.  I provide a card, a nominal gift, and the day in the kitchen.   Without even entering the kitchen, menu and shopping completed.  Then into the kitchen where defrosting takes literally seconds to extract from the freezer but days to acquire the ability to proceed.  Need to retrieve the two recipes that reside in my cookbook collection, largely obsolete as online has become a much better way to capture a far expanded array of recipes from a far expanded array of experts and amateurs, all at virtually no cost.  Then convert kitchen sink to milchig after shabbos for culinary marathon on Mother's Day itself.  

Since the menu is dominated by baked items, the sequence of oven use matters.  Dessert first, then bread, then entree timed to be completed shortly before serving.  Baking things also requires some assembly and modern kitchen appliances have properly displaced the elbow grease of the baalaboosta.  Wine needs to go into fridge.  Salad will need so prep time.  And a visually elegant table too.  Effort for sure, but joyful effort.

Kitchen Cleanup

Probably my least favorite edible would be mayonnaise, really a form of pulverized grease.  I never buy it but on occasion emulsions are essential to certain items.  I had everything i needed to make a wonderful supper highlighted by tuna melt, a frequently ordered item in a restaurant but troublesome to make at home.  I had a can of tuna lurking in the closet, just bought some celery, parsley on its last usable day or two, have onions but opted for powder. Have salt and pepper but no mayo to bind it.  So I made my own.  Recipes call for far more than I needed and difficult to halve due to an egg that could be portioned only with difficulty.  So tuna ingredients run through the minichopper, and on to homemade mayo. As much as I dislike the final result, no ingredients are objectionable, in fact, commonly used for other things.  An egg, an acid like tarragon vinegar, salt, pepper, splash of hot sauce, squeeze of Dijon, then whirl.  Cup of oil in pourable measuring cup with a lip and slowly pour through the liquid shoot on the lid of the chopper.  Whirl as I go.  Before long, fluffy off-white spread, at the intersection of liquid and solid.  Put some in a leftover milchig jar, spooned some onto the tuna and mixed.  Restaurant level tuna salad and enough mayo to spoil before I use it again.

Pulverized grease can be a challenge to clean.  Whole chopper acquired an off-white inner surface, and a slick one.  Cleaned blade first.  Generous supply of green Palmolive dish detergent, careful scrub as the  blade is sharp with multiple surfaces and interfaces with plastic, then a vigorous spray rinse.  Then bowl and two part lid.  Not that difficult.  Then tuna bowl.  Pan for tuna melt doesn't look that hard to clean, nor do the dishes but they need some dish detergent and rinse by the sink sprayer rather than the faucet.  Very good tuna melt on pumpernickel.  Worth some time at the sink the next morning.

Came Out Especially Well

Much of my recreation, or at least satisfaction, has moved to the kitchen.  I have developed a few go to preparations:  Lasagna in the manner of Artscroll, Macaroni & Cheese in the manner of Horny Hardart, Fish Market Apple Walnut Pie, and shabbos dinner.  Except for shabbos dinner, which is usually one of multiple variants of chicken, with occasional beef cholent or dairy instead, the others all have recipes.  Yet even fixed recipes have their variations.  For lasagna, the sauce and cheese will vary depending on what's on sale.  Recipe calls for mozzarella, which I almost never use.  Sometimes I will buy it pre-shredded, more often of late I run the cheese through my minichopper.  The pie gets half butter, half Crisco for the crust.  Usually I moisten with water, sometimes apple juice.  The kind and number of apples varies with sale prices and availability.  Sometimes I grind the walnuts for the topping, more recently chopping them coarsely in a baggie and mixing with the other ingredients.  Usually I spice with cinnamon, sometimes with Pumpkin Pie Spice.  Macaroni offers me a chance to experiment more.  Tubular macaroni comes in a variety of forms.  I think the Automat used Penne Rigati but I like to change it.  Pretty much abandoned elbow macaroni.  Cheese tends to be some type of cheddar.  I vary the portions of bechamel sauce ingredients and the thickness to which I let it heat before melting the cheese.  The tomatoes come from a small can with chilies, sometimes mild, sometimes original.  Salt is kept a little less than the recipe requires.  Sugar gets added to the tomato mixture, a little more than the two tablespoons the recipe indicates improves it.  It calls for white pepper and cayenne, which I've learned to substitute with black pepper and a dash or two of hot sauce.

All elements came together especially well yesterday.  Shredded rather than ground cheese.  Used Penne. Monterey Jack on sale so I used that 2/3 with cheddar 1/3.  I was a little more patient in letting the bechamel thicken before adding the cheese, which melted more evenly than it usually does.  Made it a little sweeter than usual.  Mixing pasta and white sauce was done in stages to make distribution  better.  It poured evenly into the lasagna pan and baked just right for 45 minutes.

Ideal texture, ideal taste.  Just right.

Failed Meals

Three of my last four attempts at special dishes all failed in some form, all attributed to inattention or cutting corners on my part.  Cholent was great, Kosher beef cubes from Trader Joe's of better fat content than what Shop-Rite sells.  But cherry pie, macaroni & cheese, -lasagna all came out notably flawed.  For the pie, I used Crisco instead of half butter like I usually do.  Getting the portions for a double crust did not go well, nor did the added water.  As a result the crust was too short with the taste of the shortening, crumbly, not pasty like usual lapses.  For the M&C I added too much flour to the roux.  For the lasagna, I used mozzarella primarily, forgot to grease the pan before adding the first layer, and overbaked it.  Hard to take out of pan, edges burnt, topping more of a crust than that gooey coating which should have been more like pizza.  

Since this is one of my hobbies pre-retirement extending forward, I take these lapses as either loss of interest or loss of capacity on my part.  It's probably more inattention.  But the cholent was terrific, and I'll have occasion to make the others at some future time.

The Cheap Chef

Bringing a special dinner to reality comes a few times a year.  Seder, Rosh HaShanah, Thanksgiving, Wife's Birthday and with Covid limiting our dining out, our Anniversary.  With RH approaching, I paid a little attention to the actual preparation.  Menu comes first.  For Seder and Thanksgiving, and to a lesser extent Rosh Hashanah,  themes set a pattern. It is tempting to think that online recipes have made cookbooks obsolete, maybe they have, but I still like browsing the significant collection of cookbooks that I have acquired and will even view some from the library.  But basically it is motzi, premeal starter, salad, meat, starch, vegetable, cake, and beverage.  I try to include something that either I've not made before, or at least in a while, and something that takes more effort that I would be willing to expend were it not for a special occasion.  Then an ingredients list, review of what I have available, and circled items become the shopping list.  Meat at Shoprite, eggs at Trader Joe's, some of the more important produce at Sprouts or maybe Booths Corners Farmers Market.  Thaw what needs to come out of freezer.  Then assess cookware and appliances.

So we have Rosh Hashanah:

1. Kiddush
2. Apple + Honey
3. Round Challah with Raisins
4. Chicken Soup with Orzo
5. Escarole with Asian Sesame Dressing
6. Bastilla
7. Irene's Rice Kugel
8. Glazed Carrots
9. Apple Honey Bundt Cake
10. White Wine

Game On.