Ruthanna Emrys's Journal

Rain's been coming down since last night.  Wind's starting to pick up.  The forecast sounds fairly alarming, but we are on high ground and far from large bodies of water, so we have our fingers crossed.  We have lots of food, ice, and alternate sources of light.  There are brownies and blondies, and will be roast chestnuts if the power stays on much longer.  I've done what I can for work from here, so am now, guilt-free, sitting in the living room with warm wife, dog, and housemates.  We are reading each other weather reports and random funny things off the internet, and there may be role-playing by and by.

Everyone stay safe and dry!

So this was not the most Hallmark of Passovers--fortunately, Hallmark has yet to fully co-opt Passover.  Bobby spent a good part of the seder with gastrointestinal troubles, which made for a lot of interruptions and parents getting up and down with him.  He spent the rest of the seder alternating between misbehavior (trying to blow out the candles) and cuteness (insisting on answering rather than asking the four questions).  But it's meant to be a family ritual, and we had family and friends happy to help out and participate, lots of good food, good discussion, and good questions.  In some sense the seder spread out through the whole day--S and I talked about how "freedom" is used in modern political discourse, and A and I got into a debate over whether Jews are permitted to question G-d's morals, all well before we sat down at the table.

And speaking of ritual prep, S did something wonderful.  For the past few years, she's insisted on getting the fancy round matzah for the seder itself, even though we use the ordinary square box matzah for the rest of the week.  The round matzah make perfect sense to me intellectually: they are hand made, and look like they were baked in a hurry on a hot rock.  But they've never quite had the same emotional resonance as the square crackers I grew up with.  This year, though, we discovered that there's a lot more demand for fancy round matzah in DC, and if you don't buy them a couple of weeks in advance, you don't get them at all.  So S, in cooperation with page_of_swords, did something she's been talking about for years--they actually made matzah, right in our kitchen. 

The rabbinic rule for matzah is that you can have no more than 18 minutes between water touching flour and putting the bread in the oven.  Ostensibly this is too fast for free-floating yeast to start the rising process; it's also numerologically significant in some fashion.  In fact, it turns out to be just the right length of time to be doable, but still feel genuinely rushed.  This is the bread of haste.  It's the simplest, most primordial flatbread that you can make in a modern kitchen--flour and water dough, thrown onto a baking sheet, cooked briefly in the oven and brushed with olive oil and salt for flavor.  It's perfect.  It's nothing like what I grew up with, but it tastes right anyway--all the ritual's emotions invoked by one of the most basic foods of civilization.

For the record, we used our bread of haste at the table, but we did not use it for the hidden afikomen.  Hiding a prototypical-but-oily pita-chapati-tortilla in your child's bedroom is not effective ritual.

My wife got me a 4 pound duck at Eastern Market, because she knows me and loves me.

Day 1: Roast duck with five-spice powder. Stock from the carcass.
Day 2: Yorkshire pudding baked in duck fat. Salad with duck cracklings.
Day 3: Fingerling potatoes roasted in duck fat.
Day 4: Duck liver mousse (padded with chicken liver). Deviled heart and kidney, plus one liver piece I accidentally left out of the mousse.

Still to come: risotto with duck stock and the remaining cracklings.

I'm not sure why I can't get a week's worth of meals out of a 4 pound chicken, which has twice as much meat on it.  Possibly just not as inspiring.

This turned out really well.

Slice parsnips thinly and throw into a small roasting pan (I used 6 for 4 people; it should have been more).  Cut white part of leeks into chunks and toss on top (I used two--should be more if increasing the number of parsnips).  Pour in a lot of olive oil.  Add in less than a tablespoon of schmaltz/chicken drippings, and a couple splashes of sherry.  Grate a little parmesan over the top, and sprinkle with Penzey's pasta sprinkle.

Oh, man.  The only problem was that the house smelled like roasted parsnips for hours, and there were no leftovers.

I have been staring at this article I'm trying to write all afternoon with no success.  I'm still trying to work out the next action sequence in Land Beyond the Border in the back of my head.  And I don't want to do the dishes.  So you get a meme instead.  This one appealed to me because I have a reputation as both A) a picky eater, and B) an adventurous eater.

Meme is as follows (ETA: some changes made based on S's better memory):

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

 

So, 30 31 that I've tried.  14 that I can't eat unless I stop keeping kosher.  9 because I'm a teetotaller.  4 because of excess levels of capsacin.  11 because of genuine pickiness.  That leaves 32 31 still to try.  I'd better get to work on that.