New take on the new year
Young Jewish cooks revamp menus for Rosh Hashanah
Brisket with roasted potatoes and carrots, freshly baked challah, matzo ball soup… ❚ If you celebrated Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) growing up, these were probably mainstays on your holiday table. Move over, Bubbe (Grandma) and step aside, Mom. A new generation of Jewish cooks is revamping holiday menus and making Rosh Hashanah foods that are fresh, flavorful and fun. ❚ Growing up in Bayside, Jodie Honigman has fond memories of holiday meals hosted by her mother, aunt or grandmother. But Honigman’s religious observances mean that she now hosts the 10 members of her extended family, including her 96-year-old Zayde (Grandpa). ❚ “My husband Dan and I are Shomer Shabbos, so we don’t drive on the Sabbath or on the Jewish holidays,” she explained. “We invite people to our house…we can’t always go to other people’s houses because it’s too far to walk. My mom comes over and cooks at our house.
She still contributes to the meal.”
No meat? No problem
Honigman and husband, Dan Fleischman, are both vegetarian, so traditional matzo ball soup is replaced with squash soup, and brisket is replaced with bourekas, Israeli savory pastries stuffed with potatoes, cheese or vegetables.
“I became vegetarian at 22,” Honigman said.
“It forced me to cook differently than my mom had. Most of what she cooked was chicken or meat or fish, (so) being vegetarian forced me to think outside the box.”
Thinking outside the box is an enjoyable task for Honigman and Fleischman, who love to incorporate international Jewish food traditions into their cooking.
“We both had the opportunity to travel, which has broadened our culinary palate and exposed us to different Jewish communities,” Fleischman said. “I spent Sukkot (another Jewish fall holiday) 13 years ago in India, and Jodie spent a Shabbat in Tunisia.”
Honigman and Fleischman like to include flavors and spices from different places they’ve explored.
“There’s the harissa and cumin, and we have a Tunisian eggplant filling for one of the bourekas, so that’s Middle Eastern and North African, and these incorporate spices and flavors from places we’ve been,” he said.
Foods with meaning
On Rosh Hashanah, it’s customary to eat foods that symbolize elements of the New Year. In Hebrew these symbolic foods are called simanim.
According to Miri Rotkovitz, author of “Bubbe and Me in the Kitchen: A Kosher Cookbook of Beloved Recipes and Modern Twists,” “There are certain foods that, over the years were imbued with meaning and a feeling that if you included these, it would be a totem for a good year.
“Many foods have this special place at the table for Rosh Hashanah.”
The traditional apples and honey to symbolize hope for a sweet new year are the most common simanim. Honigman, the Jewish life coordinator and Jewish studies teacher at Milwaukee Jewish Day School, incorporates symbolic Jewish foods from other cultures.
“I had learned all these traditions of Rosh Hashanah, and certain foods are supposed to symbolize abundance,” she said. “We were looking at the cookbook ‘Olive Trees and Honey’ by Gil Marks, it’s vegetarian Jewish recipes from around the world. We use squash and leeks to symbolize the abundance of the New Year, so we make pumpkin squash soup.”
“Squash and pumpkin are symbolic of Rosh Hashanah because of the many seeds,” added Fleischman, vice president of Jewish Family Services. “Seeds represent mitzvot (good deeds), abundance and good things.”
Full-circle foods
Author Rotkovitz grew up cooking with her grandmother.
“Even though she passed away when I was 10, I have vivid memories of her in the kitchen,” she said in a phone interview. “When I was in graduate school, I revisited her recipe collection in its original green tin recipe file.”
There, Rotkovitz discovered that many of the foods her grandmother encouraged her to try were becoming popular again and Rotkovitz used her training as a dietitian to create new versions based on her grandmother’s traditional recipes. “There are several recipes I created that were inspired by memories of my grandmother and foods that I had at her table,” Rotkovitz said. The roasted beet salad is one example.
“My grandmother tried get me to taste beets, she would tell us how they were so rich in iron and so healthy, but I hated them. Then when I was older and tasted roasted beets, I said, ‘I get it.’
“I’m a clinical dietitian by training and I love seasonal fresh produce. We feel like this is a new concept, but it’s really going back to our roots.”
Hosting Rosh Hashanah often means feeding a big group, and for that Rotkovitz’s marmalade roasted chicken is a perfect choice.
“The chicken recipe is adaptable, and you can make more for a lot of people,” she said. “If you’re afraid to make chicken on the bone and it’s daunting, a lot of stuff gets thrown into a roasting pan and it comes out nicely. It’s a good one for entertaining and it reheats well.”
For dessert, a whole-grain sunken peach and raspberry cake is a variation on a traditional loaf-shaped apple cake.
“The base of this cake is very similar to the cake batter in apple cake, but it’s going into a 9-by-9 pan with the fruit on top,” Rotkovitz said. “And I do a version of the cake with whole grain — that’s not that far from how our great grandmothers were cooking.”
A vegetarian Rosh Hashanah menu is fine for the under-40 set, but how does the rest of Honigman’s family feel about it?
“Some of them like it better than others,” Honigman said. “My Zayde (grandfather) likes the soup, and my parents have gotten used to it; they don’t like all of our recipes, but they like these.
“We’ve had good results. We have homemade challah and lots of things for everyone to eat. My mom sometimes brings salmon so the older people could have a protein and my parents are eating a lot more diverse ethnic food than when I was growing up.”