L ifestyle /C ulture
Spring Chicken Dinner
F OO D
KERI WHITE | JE FOOD COLUMNIST
SPRING HAS ARRIVED
in earnest, and that means a
new crop of seasonal produce
is at the market. I was thrilled
to find a batch of fiddleheads
and promptly planned a spring
chicken dinner around them.

Now, I realize the term
“spring chicken” is often used in
the negative to convey precisely
the opposite, as in “She’s no
spring chicken,” but I’m setting
that impression aside for this
meal — which is seasonal,
delicious and perfect for a cool
spring evening when you want
something comforting but
not heavy.

The chicken dish is ideal for
this time of year: We are not
quite to the warm weather, grill
everything stage, but we have
are in the traditional “roast
chicken” palate, therefore no
moved away from the hearty chili or cumin, curry powder
or coconut milk, it is likely to
stews and roasts of winter.

One technique I recently appeal to even picky eaters.

learned from a cooking maven
friend that put a spring in my SPRING CHICKEN WITH
step—“cleaning” or “fresh- GRAVY
ening” the chicken with lemon. Serves 4-6, depending on size of
She swears by it, claiming that chicken pieces
it really does make the chicken
taste better. The results are If the chicken pieces are large,
beyond reproach, so when I you can cut them. I used split
make this dish I will certainly breasts and cut them into
factor in that step, and will three pieces each. This ensures
integrate it into other chicken quicker, even cooking and
recipes. allows the flavors to permeate
The other great thing more thoroughly.

about this dish is that it cooks
quickly; depending on the
For the chicken:
size of the chicken pieces, it
6 bone-in chicken pieces of
can be done on the stove in
equal size (thighs/breasts/
about 30 minutes with its own
legs) gravy ready to splash over rice,
½ lemon
noodles or potatoes as desired.

2 tablespoons oil
And because the f lavors
2 cups chicken stock
1 onion, chopped
2-3 tablespoons flour
2-3 tablespoons water
SHOP THE
HOUSE FROM
YOUR HOME.

For the seasoning:
1 tablespoon dried thyme
2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
Chopped fresh parsley for
garnish, if desired
Shop your groceries,
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20 MAY 20, 2021
Clean the chicken with
fresh slices of lemon by
rubbing the cut sides of the
lemon over the entire surface
and squeezing juice on each
piece. Set aside.

Mix all the seasoning ingre-
dients together in a small
bowl or measuring cup. Coat
the chicken lightly with the
seasoning mixture, sprinkling
it over each piece, and allowing
it to sit for a few minutes or a
few hours.

Bring the chicken to room
temperature before cooking.

Heat the oil in a pan on high
heat until shimmering. Lower
the heat to medium-high.

Add the chicken, bone-side
down, and cook it for about 5
JEWISH EXPONENT
Spring chicken with gravy
minutes (take care not to smoke
or burn). Flip the chicken to
skin-side down and cook until
the skin is crispy and golden,
about 5 minutes more. Remove
the chicken from the pan and
let it rest. Cover the chicken
tightly with foil. (It will not be
fully cooked at this point.)
Lower the
heat to
medium-low and add the
onion; sauté it for about 5
minutes. While the onions
cook, mix the flour and water
to form a thin paste; set it aside.

When the onions are translu-
cent, add the chicken broth,
raise the heat and bring it to a
boil, scraping the browned bits
and incorporating them into
the broth.

Return the chicken and any
juices to pan (skin side up),
cover and simmer on low heat
for about 15 minutes or longer,
depending on the size of your
pieces. Check the largest
piece for doneness. The liquid
should be reduced by about
one-quarter. Remove the chicken from
the pan, keep it warm and add
the flour mixture, whisking
constantly. Bring it to a boil
for one minute to thicken the
gravy, whisk it again and shake
the pan a bit to ensure a consis-
tent texture throughout the
gravy. Taste for seasoning.

Put the chicken back in the
pan, or plate it atop rice or
Photo by Keri White
noodles and top it with the
gravy and fresh parsley.

FIDDLEHEADS Serves 4
These lovely coils are the
culinary embodiment of spring
— green, fresh and fleeting.

The farmer who sold them
to me advised that I blanch the
fiddleheads in boiling water for
a few minutes and then cook
them in a white wine reduc-
tion. So I did.

If you want to add a bit of
richness to the dish, depending
on what else you are serving, you
can put a tablespoon of butter,
margarine or olive oil into the
wine reduction before adding
the blanched fiddleheads.

2-3 cups fresh fiddleheads,
rinsed well
½ cup dry white wine
Salt and pepper to taste
Bring a large pot of salted
water to a boil. Drop the fiddle-
heads in, and cook them for
about 7 minutes.

While the fiddleheads boil,
heat the wine in a skillet with
the salt and pepper, and bring
it to a boil to allow it to reduce,
about 5 minutes, Drain the
fiddleheads and dump them
into the reduced wine. Sauté
them briefly to coat, about 1-2
minutes, and serve. l
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



L ifestyle /C ulture
‘Final Account’ Visits an Uncomfortable Place
FI L M
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
“FINAL ACCOUNT,” a new
documentary from recently
deceased English director Luke
Holland, is as straightforward
in its presentation as it is compli-
cated in its subject matter. For
90 minutes, elderly Germans
look into Holland’s camera
and describe their former lives
as Nazis.

The interviews, which
began in 2008, proceed
more or less chronologically,
beginning with the interview
subjects’ time in Hitler Youth
and Jungvolk and continuing
along a path that audiences
are familiar with: the prewar
mania of nationalistic fervor
and Hitler-worship, the
escalating oppression of Jews,
Communists, the disabled and
other minorities, the vener-
ation of violence and racial
purity, the march to war, the
initial victories, the open secret
of the concentration camps,
and then, finally, the slow-mo-
tion defeat of the Nazis.

The story of Allied victory
over fascism doesn’t have that
same neat structure when the
story is being told by Germans
with varying degrees of
attachment to the defeated
political regime.

Most of them express some
sort of regret for having been
in the Wehrmacht, the Waffen
SS or other armed bodies of the
Third Reich. But not all do, and
even among those that do feel
that what happened in Nazi
Germany was unequivocally
wrong, there is a strong feeling
that they had no choice but do
what they did.

From bookkeeper
to concentration camp guard, the
impression one gets from the
collected testimony is that there
wasn’t a single genuine Nazi in
all of Germany. If they weren’t
too young to speak up, they say,
then they didn’t have the power
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Archival footage in “Final Account,” by director Luke Holland
to resist the social current, or
didn’t have the inner courage
to accept death as a conse-
quence for disobeying orders
(whether that calculation was
borne out in reality is unclear.)
On the less repentant end
of spectrum, among those
who have dispensed with the
self-preservation of a filter
in their old age, the inter-
view subjects caress their old
medals from a special box in
the closet, or wax poetic on
the irreplicable camaraderie of
their units.

In perhaps the most
harrowing interview in “Final
Account,” one man comes
clean: The project may have
failed, he says, and it may have
gone awry in some places,
but the animating goals were
noble. “The ideas were correct,”
the man says, his neck flapping
a bit above a tightly-knotted tie
and a banana-colored sweater
vest. This humanitarian is
willing to say that the Jewish
population of Germany should
have simply been compelled to
leave, rather than killed.

Holland’s hand is light,
sometimes frustratingly
so. There’s no voiceover, no
narration, almost nothing to
let viewers know the salient
fact that Holland learned
later in life that his mother
was a Jewish refugee from
Vienna and that his maternal
grandparents died in a concen-
tration camp. He intersperses
the interviews with archival
footage of German life during
the Nazi era, along with some
information here and there to
give context to the next round
of questions or the subject
matter being discussed.

Aside from a pivotal scene
toward the end, the movie
consists primarily of uninter-
rupted testimony. Holland
does push at times, and as
the movie reaches its galling
final interview, the questions
get more pointed, and he
presses on despite the apparent
hostility and discomfort, one
mark of a good interviewer (or
interrogator). But from beginning to
end, Holland operates with
JEWISH EXPONENT
Courtesy of Focus Features
no part in? Why does Werk fear
the contemporary reignition
of the impulses that brought
about Nazism, the student
presses on, when he should be
afraid that he’ll be killed by an
Albanian migrant on the train?
“You should be afraid of
that, but not of your own kind,”
the student says.

Werk tries to remain calm,
to maintain the distance from
his own actions that he did
during his interviews with
Holland. But the student has
disturbed him.

It’s one thing to put some
distance between yourself and
your actions in an interview,
a sealed space where you can
imagine that the only receptor
for your signal is your inter-
locutor and an audience you’ll
never meet. But what happens
when a whole generation
distances themselves from
their actions in that way? What
dark signal does that send to
the generations that follow?
The answer comes in the form
of the student who castigates
Werk for his lack of pride.

The whole scene lasts about
seven minutes and is incredibly
uncomfortable to watch. It’s also
the centerpiece of the movie.

In “Final Account,” Holland
lifts up some deeply-wedged
stones to take a look at some
loathsome creepy-crawlies. But
Holland doesn’t expose that
wriggling evil in a righteous
mission to stamp it out, nor
does he aim to give his audience
a cheap gross-out (“Look how
disgusting this is!”).

Instead, he puts the creepy-
crawlies under a microscope
to show us something. Those
markings, that antennae, those
pincers: You don’t necessarily
have to go around flipping
rocks to find them. Check your
backyard. The film begins showing at
the Ritz Five on May 21. l
tremendous restraint toward
those whose early lives were
dedicated to eradicating that
impulse. Most of the time, this
restraint seems humane, the
solemn mission of a dedicated
historian, one who just wants
to get the information out
there. Other times, I wonder
if Holland was simply stunned
into silence by what he heard. I
certainly was.

There is one scene where
Holland announces his inten-
tions in a more obvious way,
and the movie is better off
for it.

Hans Werk, a Waffen SS
veteran from Berlin, addresses
German students at the villa
where the Final Solution was
devised. He describes the
shame that he feels about his
past with “the murderous
organization,” but he’s soon
embroiled in a shouting match
with one student who accuses
Werk of offloading his own
shame at being German onto
younger people. Why should
he feel any shame, the student jbernstein@jewishexponent.com;
asks, about something he took 215-832-0740
MAY 20, 2021
21