Cooking is hard

I do like to cook but traditional Jewish food is best made by and bought from the experts.
Tomorrow night Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins. So today, the faithful make the annual pilgrimage to Russ & Daughters on the lower East side.
If you like smoked and cured fish and to party like a Polish peasant, you will love this place. Their chopped liver is one of the best I’ve ever tasted.
A few years ago I found their chopped liver recipe in The New York Times Cookbook. It’s not the most complex recipe, just chicken livers, hard-boiled eggs, onions and shortening. But if you want to make it the recommended way, you need to bake a chicken beforehand so you can use the schmaltz (chicken fat) instead of Crisco. By the time I cooked the chicken, bought organic eggs and made two pounds of chopped liver, I probably spent $40 and five hours. Today I spent five minutes in the store and bought two pounds for $25.
Whoever came up with the phrase, “What am I, chopped liver,” clearly never had to make it or buy it. Being called chopped liver is the highest compliment.

2 thoughts on “Cooking is hard”

That trout mousse looks good! They have really good smoked sturgeon, too. I usually do apple desserts but this year I might try a new recipe for honey cake. I am delighted to report that I have a work meetings in NY this week so I get to skip services! I actually thanked my boss for giving me an excuse again this year. I told him how one year I had terrible stomach pains and went to the ER. It turned out to be nothing and my husband said: “You will do ANYTHING to get out of services.”

You can’t blame me. The choices in Stamford are Orthodox (all day, or so it seems, and I sit in the back with the other inferiors, but brilliant cantor who sings like nothing you have ever heard and is totally sexy as well- but not sexy enough to sit there all day) or Reform (only 2 hours, but most boring rabbi in the world-so boring you want to pinch him, cantor is chick with a guitar singing something resemblingKumbaya). So you see why I try to get out of it.