Who's afraida a seder?

Preparations area well under way for our last Brooklyn seder for the foreseeable future. The first step was making Alice Waters' chicken stock to use for matzoh ball soup.

I spent many hours on Wednesday checking regularly on this pot of chicken, veggies, spices, and lots of water, worrying that it would never transform into the delicate broth that my idol Alice had promised.

The good news was that after an hour in this fragrant, the breasts of the beautiful organic, free-range bird were poached and tender and flavorful, and in a moment of inspiration, I decided that Daniel and I should have tortas for dinner.

So when 8:00 rolled around, we toasted some buns, heated up some refried black beans, chopped a few pickled jalapenos and an avocado, and created this guy, modeled after the delicious tortas we'd gorged on in Sunset Park many weeks ago.


By the time we were done with dinner, the stock had thickened and soaked up a bunch of flavor. I strained it, let it cool, and now it's sitting in a big pot in our fridge under a layer of chicken fat, waiting to be skimmed and turned into matzoh ball soup.


Then yesterday we hit up Fairway in Red Hook along with the rest of Jewish Brooklyn. Armed with our list, we ran a kind of Kosher Supermarket Sweep, and amazingly made it in and out of the store in about an hour.



Now I've got some eggs hard boiling for the seder plate and tonight, I'll start on the macaroons. Very exciting...