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Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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“I really want my roots to come through in this meal," I said, very conscious of the cameras filming everything I was saying. "I want to make sure viewers and diners"----and investors, please, especially investors----"see everything that the food of my ancestors can be. That Jewish food isn't just matzah ball soup and pastrami sandwiches." So it was with that attitude I went about planning my menu. "I'm thinking my first dish is going to be a tribute to my grandmother," I said. "She was very into chopped liver. I hated it as a kid, for good reason: her chopped liver was bland and gritty." Grandma Ruth hissed in my ear, but I ignored her. "I want to make good chopped liver on good bread with something vinegary and acidic to cut through it. Maybe some kind of pickled fruit, because the judges really loved my pickled cherries in the last round." "How about kumquats?" suggested Kaitlyn. "Or gooseberries?" "I like gooseberries," said Kel. I made a note. "We'll see what they have at the store, since we'll be on a budget. With the second course, Ashkenazi cooking has so many preserved and sometimes weird fish dishes. Think gefilte fish and pickled herring. I've wanted to do my special gefilte fish this whole competition and never got a chance, so I think now's the time." "If not now, when?" Kel said reasonably. "Indeed. And I think coupling it with pickled herring and maybe some other kind of fish to make a trio will create something amazing. Maybe something fried, since the other two parts of the dish won't have any crunch. Or I could just do, like, a potato chip? I do love potatoes." I made another note. "And for the third dish, I'm thinking duck. I want to do cracklings with the duck skin and then a play on borscht, which is what the dish is really about. Beets on the plate, pickled onions, an oniony sauce, et cetera." "Ducks and beets play well together," Kel said, approval warm on their round face.”

Food For ThoughtTeamworkBrainstormingJewish Food
Book:Sadie on a Plate
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“Kaitlyn's bread was still hot coming out of the oven; it emitted the most heavenly steam as she sliced into the golden crust. "The liver!" she called. Kel and I swarmed her, schmearing slices of toasted bread with the chopped chicken liver made with schmaltz---chicken fat---spicy and smoky with paprika and za'atar, and sweet with blackened, almost burned caramelized onions. I topped it with fried leeks and some microgreens.”

LiverChickenJewish FoodAppetizer
Book:Sadie on a Plate
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“I loved these little teasers before a meal, things I didn't have to order but just came to me like gifts from heaven. These amuse-bouches actually looked like little gifts; they were small pouches of dough that twisted at the top and came to a gleaming golden-brown ruffle. They actually looked kind of familiar. "These were on Chef Supreme!" I said. I took a quick picture. "I wonder if they've got a sauerkraut and potato filling, like the ones Chef Sadie made on the show." I bit into it. The wrapper crunched and then relaxed into a nice doughy chew, almost like a very thin pizza crust. Sure enough, the interior was plush and buttery with a smooth potato puree but also zingy with fermented cabbage, the sour shreds of leaf providing a perfect contrast to the richness of the potatoes and the crust. "Remember when I told you there was no such thing as too much potato?" A mustard seed popped between my teeth, spicy. I finished with the ruffle on top, brown and shatteringly crunchy. "It's still true.”

PotatoesSequelJewish FoodAmuse BoucheKnishes
Book:Best Served Hot
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“The chopped liver was smooth but just a little grainy, rich but with just a slight iron tang. The kimchi was sour and tart and crunchy and a little fishy, clearly the real thing. Piled together on a toasted slice of baguette and with a little extra richness from homemade mayo, it was an excellent bite. But not one that photographed all that well. Sure, the kimchi was bright red and pretty, splayed out like phoenix feathers, but the chopped liver was brown and mushy. I didn't think liver would get me all that many hits. Something that also tasted good but didn't photograph very well: the bite-size orbs of gefilte fish, the puree of who-knows-what soft and smooth, its pearly grayness flecked with orange bits of carrot. At least the vibrant beet and cardamom pickle on top, reminiscent of horseradish, looked nice.”

Social MediaLiverJewish FoodFood CombiningKimchiPhotographic
Book:Best Served Hot
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“I pulled over my half of the latke appetizer. It seemed pretty simple, a lacy-edged potato pancake fried until plush in the middle and golden-brown around the crispy edges. Like nachos, the toppings were what really made it. The chef had played off the traditional latke toppings of applesauce and sour cream (#teamapplesauceforever), pairing her potato latkes with a spicy apple chutney, with chunks of both meltingly sweet cooked apples and crunchy tart raw apples, and a thick cucumber raita that reminded me of sour cream.”

ApplesJewish FoodApplesauceSour CreamLatke
Book:Best Served Hot
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“By 1938, Scotland had for nearly 200 years lived within a classic peripheral identity assigned to it by the artists and ideologues of the great European core cultures through the mode of Romanticism and their control of the means of (ideological) production. However, the brute fact of subsequent uneven economic development compelled the Scots to bring into collision with that historically assigned identity a new-fashioned identity more appropriate to a dynamic modern nation. Great national moments of self-presentation, such as the Glasgow Empire Exhibition of 1938, were the occasions when the ongoing dialectic of modern/urban against rural/ancient emerged in its most public and delirious form. Such occasions therefore hold a political lesson. The process of speaking with two voices - the fissures; the uncertainties; the grating shifts of gear from one discourse to another - assert once more, the fluid, unstable character of national identity. Such occasions proclaim that national identity is not a set of inborn, natural characteristic in a people, but the product of that people's history. With the realisation of instability comes the realisation of the possibility of change.”

ScotlandRomanticismNational Identity1938Uneven DevelopmentGlasgow Empire ExhibitionPeripherality
Book:Popular Culture and Social Relations
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“In SMT Magazine and Scottish Country Life, Alastair Borthwick informed would-be visitors that 'Facing you as you enter... are the Cascades - seventeen waterfalls pouring 400 feet down the hillside - and the Grand Staircase, which is a double flight of steps running on either side of the cascades'. Soaring above these at the crest of Bellahouston Hill was the exhibition's 'sensational and symbolic centrepiece' - the 300-feet-high Tower of Empire which Thomas S. Tait designed with assistance from Launcelot Ross and from structural engineer James Mearns... In height, it was equivalent to a skyscraper - a building type most Scots would have known only from illustrations in newspapers and magazines - but the effect of slenderness Tait achieved also made it suggestive of some sort of futuristic scence fiction fantasy structure that might be used to tether airships, for example. Its design captured the imaginations of all who saw it and it was undoubtedly the exhibition's one truly awe-inspiring building.”

Glasgow1938Art DecoBellahouston ParkBritish Empire ExhibitionThomas S TaitTower Of Empire
Book:Art Deco Scotland: Design and Architecture in the Jazz Age
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“The outbreak of war and the hiatus in non-essential building that it necessitated meant that the Empire Exhibition came to be looked back upon as a period ensemble, rather than the springboard to a new Scotland that those who planned it had hoped for. The international political situation meant that the demolition of the tower was not unexpected, and the imminent war was causing more pressing worries. By the time thar economic and political will for radical updating returned in the 1950s, concepts of what was modern in architecture and planning had moved on. Nonetheless, several of those subsequently involved in Scotland's post-war development would have been visitors, retaining memories of spaciousness, cleanliness, coordination and colour.”

DevelopmentScotlandWorld War 21938Glasgow Empire Exhibition
Book:Art Deco Scotland: Design and Architecture in the Jazz Age
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