There may be quite a number of entries with this heading as our Friday night dinners have turned out really well. This week I took the frozen chicken fat that I had been saving and turned it into schmaltz. After chopping up the chicken skin, I added some water and let it simmer until the water had evaporated. Then I added a finely chopped onion and let it cook in the rendered fat. It started looking like this . I continued cooking it until it took on a deep brown colour.

I drained out the  fried chicken skin and onions (called Griebens) and  stored the schmaltz.

I also made kreplach for my chicken soup. The process is much like making tortellini. I made up some pasta dough with 3 eggs,  1 tbsp of oil, pinch of salt and 2 cups of flour. I rolled out the dough using almost the finest setting on the pasta roller, cut the dough into squares, put a tiny amount of filing on each square, folded it into triangles and then pinched the edges of the triangles together.

Glad that I made about 120 of them, that should tide me over for a couple of dinners. I will admit that matzo balls are much less labour intensive.

Next was my favourite part of the day. Making the challah. Once the dough has risen we make a 6 strand braid. I was calling out the ‘legs’ while Nicholas was braiding.



I can’t wait to see what we’ll put on the menu for next Friday night when my sister from California will be breaking bread with us!