Very Jewish Cooking

When someone dies in the Jewish religion, we have a very set mourning procedure. The funeral takes place as soon as possible, followed by a week of mourning, where the mourners (parents, siblings, spouse and children) spend a week sitting on low chairs, with torn clothes, and being visited by family and friends. There are prayers held every evening and the mourners don't cook, and don't organise or serve their own meals. This week is called shivah, and it takes place at a shivah house.

Whilst I was in France, my great-aunt died. This was not unexpected, in that she was very ill, but it happened a little sooner than we all thought. So this week has been a week of mourning for my grandfather, who is her brother, and her three children. My mum has had the job (along with a family friend) of being in charge of the organising of all the meals, although the Jewish community is wonderful at cooking meals for everybody. There are a lot of people to feed, as my great-aunt's children have families of their own who also need to eat at the shivah house, which is my great aunt's house.

The prayers are suspended for the Sabbath, so Friday evening and Saturday. Instead, you follow the rituals of the Sabbath, which take precedence over everything else. We always have a nice family meal on Friday night to welcome in the Sabbath, and so this week, we invited the family. There were 18 of us altogether, mainly adults, one child (the other children are on summer camp) and several of my generation: over 18, but still counted as children. We had my grandparents, who are my mum's parents, and my mum's sister and her husband; two of mum's cousins, plus their husbands, and three of their children; we also invited the friends who are helping with the meals. I'm very lucky to have such a close family.

Here is our very Jewish Friday night meal. We had a buffet because there were so many of us so we combined the first two courses rather than doing starters and mains:

Challah (Jewish plaited bread)
Egg mayonaise
Egg & onion
Chopped Liver
Pickled cucumbers
Sausage rolls
Salt Beef
Latkes (fried potato cakes)
Viennas (Little kosher sausages)
Corn Salad
Green Salad
Coleslaw

Fresh fruit
Apple & blackberry crumble
Flourless chocolate cake (we made two because there were so many of us!)

Asparagus

Sorry for the lack of recent posting. Last Thursday I had a massive exam, so lots of time was devoted to that. Luckily, I found out yesterday that I passed (the pass mark is 60%). We are still waiting to find out our actual marks, however. Once that was done, term kicked in almost straight away - my first class was Tuesday, and I had lots of Cold War history to learn very quickly!

Yesterday, just before finding out I'd passed that exam, I went to the market in the centre of Oxford and got lots of lovely English asparagus. I had some of it as a mid-afternoon snack yesterday:I just steamed it for a few minutes, then ate it with some garlic butter. Lovely.

Today's lunch was largely based on asparagus too:

I steamed the asparagus again, to dip into a soft-boiled egg. I had some avocado and tomato on the side.

One of my favourite lunches

This has to be one of my favourite things to have for lunch. It's simple, and cheap, and tastes really good!

Spinach and egg tortillas:

Start by defrosting a balll of frozen spinach. Of course you could use fresh instead, but I think you'd need to wilt it down in that case.




Crack in an egg, and season:


I always use my George Foreman grill for this.

Place tortilla on (preheated) George Foreman:


Then pour mixture into the centre, trying not to lose any of it out the edges! Fold in half, and close the grill.



Leave for about five minutes, maybe more. You can tell it's done, because the centre puffs up.


I always serve this with a salad. You can add other things into the mix, such as chopped tomatoes, mustard, cheese, or anything else you fancy.

Eggs, continued

With all this egg eating, it's lucky that "they" no longer think that eggs are quite so bad as you as was previously believed. Probably not such an issue with cholesterol, unless you are genetically prone to higher cholesterol.

Details of the research, that is potentially funded by an egg-promoting body (!) can be found on The Times website and The Guardian Foodblog.

So does that mean that I can have more eggs tomorrow?!

I think I probably eat more eggs than most, seeing as I love them, but, importantly, they are an easy, cheap source of non-meat protein, and I don't buy/cook/eat much meat.

Making Lunch

Finally, a little cooking. But really, only minor. A good distraction from todays work - which is stats. I hate stats. I wanted to use up the left over herrings in sour cream from home. I love them:
I have to assure you that it tastes better than it looks. Basically, it involves combining the fish from a jar of roll mop herrings, with some of the onions from the jar, chopped pickled cucumbers, chopped apple, and sour cream.

So I made some egg may too, and a salad. And ate it all with some of the bread I brought up from home.

This is a slice of rye, and a slice of black bread. It comes from the Kosher butcher (who also sells bread, and other Kosher things) at home. I'm sure I could get it from the Polish place near my Oxford house.