Passover Marathon, Part 2

Why does Ashkenazi Jewish food have a reputation for being bad? Probably because it is so simply seasoned, that it takes a great deal of care for the cook to get it to cross the boundary between bland and delectable, without crossing that further bound into oversalted. As a case in point, my great-grandmother's chicken soup, which became my mother's chicken soup and is now, in effect, mine. I don't have a recipe, because my great-grandmother's refrain in the kitchen, whenever someone would ask for a recipe was, "until it's right." This is an until it's right recipe. If you can't tell the difference between right and not right, maybe you should let someone else make it.

It starts with a chicken. I didn't want to do a huge batch, so I opted for chicken parts instead today. I would have preferred backs, but Pat's didn't have them for sale. Instead I took one leg and four wings. Another trick I've been known to do is throw in some feet, for color, but those were easier to find in Flushing. I'm sure I could have found chicken feet at one of the many Asian markets in town, but I didn't want to add a stop this morning.

Then the vegetables: an onion, a small rutabaga, four carrots and four ribs of celery, all chopped coarsely, along with two whole cloves of garlic, some sprigs of parsley and about six whole black peppercorns.

Then the water: Cover it all with about three quarts of water. Add a little bit of salt, but not too much--leave yourself some leeway to adjust the seasonings along the way.

Bring to a boil. Skim off foam as it appears. Lower to a simmer. Keep skimming off foam. After it has boiled about an hour, taste the soup. Adjust the seasoning. Then wait until the chicken joints are all coming loose. With a whole chicken, that could take an additional two hours. With pieces, as with today, it took about an hour additional, for a total of two hours. Taste the soup again, adjust the seasoning, wait a bit, and taste again. When it tastes like the people you will serve it to will know you love them, then it is ready.

Drain the broth. Reserve the carrot and rutabaga pieces and put them into the broth. Eat the plain boiled chicken with some of the freshly prepared horseradish (and some of those roasted beets I mentioned in the last entry, that weren't part of the official menu) as a cook's treat lunch. (Or make it into a chicken salad that goes great on matzah--but Hot Librarian doesn't like chicken salad.)

As for the lamb shoulder, I did come up with a nice spice rub. First I rubbed the meat with coarse sea salt. Then I pan roasted about half a teaspoon of fennel seeds, and crushed them with a mortar and pestle. (Note: Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews do not consider fennel kosher for Passover. Another reason I am not Orthodox, and tend to prefer the Sephardi palate.) I mixed the crushed fennel with half a teaspoon each of cumin and coriander powder, and about a quarter teaspoon of cardamom powder, in a small plastic bag, and shook it up to distribute the spices evenly. Then I rubbed the mixture all over the lamb. It's a small shoulder, about two and a quarter pounds, so I won't start roasting it until after I pick the Little One up from preschool. Before then, I'll print the haggadot.

Still to do in the kitchen (and I may not get a chance to blog about all this today):

• Roast the lamb;
• Roast the vegetables (carrots, celeriac and potatoes with lemon and savory);
• Make the matzah balls and reheat the soup;
• Make the orange, olive and fennel salad;
• Make the salade aux fines herbes (mache with tarragon, parsley and chives in a shallot vinaigrette)
• Assemble the seder plate.