OUT LIKE A LAMB AND LAMB CELEBRATIONS, AND LOSSES TOO

Ah, the last day of March, sliding past lamblike, on sunny warming feet - skipping past might be a better way to put it. There's a dense little patch of brilliantly purple crocuses in the back yard that open and glow in the sun; as shade reaches them in the afternoon they retreat into almost-anonymity.

Last Sunday as I had hoped I spent the afternoon making matzoh with Dawnthebaker. We made it from spelt and all-purpose (local organic unbleached, natch!) and flavoured it slightly with a touch of maple syrup and some lime juice. Delish! and not at all kosher for Passover, but fine for those like our friends who are attentive but not following strict rules.

We also made kibbeh for a crowd, nearly thirty servings, for the next day's seder. Kibbeh is a brilliant combo of lamb and grain and more lamb. It is usually made in round or in long bullet shaped patties. The outer shell is ground lamb and soaked bulgur in almost equal proportion by volume, salted and with some onions, kneaded into a firm dough. (We added a generous amount of lemon zest to give the bulgur-lamb mixture a lift.) The inside can vary wildly. For specific instructions on kibbeh have a look at Claudia Roden's classic Book of Middle Eastern Food, or another solid eastern Med cookbook, say something by Anissa Helou.

Our fillings were two, because Dawn had planned to use chopped almonds but then learned that one person at the seder was allergic to all nuts. So we made the non-nut ones first. The filling was ground lamb, sauteed chopped onion, tea-soaked prunes coarsely chopped, sumac powder, lemon juice, salt, and lots of chopped fresh mint. It was NOT precooked. The other filling had cinnamon and allspice in it, as I recall, and ground lamb and plenty of onions, and chopped almonds, all gently cooked beforehand.

You take about a golf ball-sized batch of bulgur mixture, shape it into a ball or bullet, poke a hole in it with your finger or thumb, fill the hole with filling mixture, seal it over, and set it on a baking sheet. When all the non-nut ones were done, we fried them in oil, oil deep enough that they were nearly covered. Dawn's lovely man Ed did the frying. The shell turned a warm brown with a firm crisp texture; the insides were moist and aromatic. The next day, just before the seder, it was easy to preheat them in the oven and serve one of each kind on a plate with a little glazed carrot....

Having promised in my last post not to go on and on about restaurants or food, here I am giving you detailed instructions! But I thought the kibbeh was so special that it deserved to be passed on. And this weekend a lot of people will be eating lamb for Easter. What better idea than kibbeh as another approach to honouring the wonderfulness of lamb?

The week is momentous for many people, with Passover and Easter following the full moon. But for some the momentousness comes another way:

Since I last wrote there have been two deaths of parents in my circle of friends: the mother of one good friend and the father of another, both beloved, both far into their eighties. The loss of a parent, at no matter what age, is so momentous that it's as if the world stops. It does stop in fact, as we slowly try to breathe outselves back to life, a different life now that the sheltering idea of that intimate lifelong relationship has turned into history and a memory. It doesn't matter that perhaps the parent has dementia or is being cared for by the child. The loss is still so profound that the planets shift in their orbits and the world is a changed place, changed forever.

And both my friends are valiant and wonderful women who will be enriched even as they grieve. I feel so lucky to know them...

ODDMENTS AND THOUGHTS ON SPRING AND TRADITION

I'm a little late posting this week.  My apologies.  This business of re-entry is quite distracting, is one excuse I can give.  But the truth is that it is easy to lose track of the days.  The young people in the house, Dom and Tashi and Ian, have papers due and exams coming up, so they are extremely aware of each day and the obligations that face them.  I on the other hand have taxes and paperwork kinds of things, and images to send off to a magazine, but no fixed schedule, so I tend to lose track... And perhaps the changing weather of spring with its cold and warm and sun and rain, makes it tempting to just live day to day?

There's an update on my last post:  Chris our neighbour went and checked the house and pipes: no leaks he says, and the pump room was warm, but the pump seems to have lost its prime.  Now I've called Sandy Hamilton, the guy who knows all about plumbing, and he will get the pump primed and check the pipes, etc.  I can't wait to be up at the farm seeing it emerge with its winter-faded colours,and with the warm hints of fresh life colouring the trees, especially the dark red of the scrub willows in the wet patches.

And on the general subject of neighbourliness, another gift came my way this week: My cousin Jennifer, who takes on technology with intentness and intelligence, and knows all about digital photography (if you've been to immersethrough.com you'll have seen her name mentioned with gratitude), has offered to drive to Toronto to help set up digital photo files and help generally get the digital photo library organised.  I am so grateful!  She arrives tomorrow.  Wish her luck, please, because I tend to get impatient with the technology.  I think the impatience is my way of dealing with feeling intimidated and out of my depth!  I have promised my kids that I will be calm...

Heading into this next week, with its load of significance for western Christians and for Jews, I wonder at that weight of the yearly religious cycle.  Some people are sustained or held together by it - by the certainty? the sense of identity and community? the continuity?  Others are oppressed by the weight of organised religion, and the sense of received thought and the bigotry and entrenched ideas of good and evil, insiders and outsiders, that seem an inevitable part of religion, especially in the west.  

Speaking of ritual and tradition, it's the time of year for Easter music.  And this year Taffelmusik, the wonderful baroque orchestra that my friend Dina enticed me into subscribing to almost ten years ago, performed Bach's St Matthew's Passion. We heard it on Thursday evening, a stunning performance. There was the orchestra and then a small (nine only) group of singers that together call themselves Les Voix Baroques.  Who needs a choir? we felt by the end, when such a wonderful balance is possible, and extraordinary suppleness too.  

On another subject entirely: I finally sent in the last article I owed for the Oxford Companion to Southeast Asian Food: highlanders and forest peoples.  It was difficult to do, for I am not used to working from anything but primary sources and my own experience.  Books are useful to confirm or help explain, but I am not used to relying on other people's writing for basic information.  But here I had to, for though I have spent a fair amount of time paying attention to local food and agriculture in various parts of southeast Asia, I still have huge gaps.  The trick was to find an organisation that felt comfortable and clear, and then to feel confident enough about what I  was saying.  And the other trick was to make the entry readable rather than stiff and didactic.  Roger Owen gave it a deft little edit, and now it's done and I am relieved!  He and Sri Owen have taken on a huge task in editing the Companion.  We are now all eager to see it published... I think in 2010.

Made crackers, and non-shmura (= not kosher for Passover) matzo with Dawnthebaker yesterday afternoon.  They're all crisp now and ready to be delivered to good friends, for their First Night seder on Wednesday.  Rolling out the doughs and cutting them into crackers, bending to the oven, to put them in and take them out - over and over, for crackers are repetitive labour - felt like bending to tradition. 

So here I am (having turned in circles in this post) back at the subjects of tradition and continuity, though with a twist.  These are far from traditional matzo as people think of them. We used whole Red Fife flour for one batch, spelt flour for another, a blend of barley and spelt for another, etc etc.. You get the idea.  We even made a spectacular sweetened-with-maple-syrup version that is aromatic with ginger.  Some will be offended by the novelty; others will enjoy exploring new possibilities for an ancient tradition.  And that's the idea, right?