1,000 Jewish Recipes (98 page)
Read 1,000 Jewish Recipes Online
Authors: Faye Levy
1.
Prepare strawberry sauce.
2.
Chill 4 parfait glasses, wine glasses, or other glasses of about 1 cup volume.
3.
Mix
3
â
4
cup strawberry sauce with sliced berries. Spoon 3 tablespoons strawberry mixture into each glass. Top each with
1
â
4
cup vanilla yogurt. Spread to an even layer to edges of glass. Chill about 10 minutes in freezer.
4.
Divide remaining strawberry mixture among glasses, using about 3 tablespoons for each. Top with remaining yogurt, using about
1
â
4
cup for each. Chill in freezer 5 minutes. Spoon remaining
1
â
4
cup strawberry sauce on top. Garnish each with a strawberry and serve.
Shavuot is known as the Festival of the First Fruits, because of the harvest of early fruits in ancient Israel. I like to prepare a salad of the first fruits in our markets. My husband and I have young peach, apricot, and nectarine trees and raspberry vines in our back yard. We look forward to when they will bear fruit so we can celebrate the holiday with our own first fruits.
This salad is terrific on its own or as a fresh, colorful accompaniment for cheesecake.
3 peaches or nectarines, sliced into wedges
3 apricots (optional), sliced into wedges
1 pint strawberries, quartered lengthwise
1 cup blackberries
1 cup raspberries
2 to 3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons clear raspberry brandy or 1 tablespoon strained fresh lemon juice
1.
Put peach slices and apricot slices, if using, in a bowl. Add strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries.
2.
Sprinkle fruit with sugar and brandy. With a rubber spatula, mix ingredients as gently as possible. Serve immediately, or cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Serve this refreshing, nonfat dessert as an accompaniment for Shavuot cheese blintzes, with frozen yogurt, or as a healthful sweet on its own.
1 tablespoon apple or orange juice
1 tablespoon peach or cherry liqueur or kirsch
1 tablespoon sugar or honey (optional)
2 large ripe peaches or nectarines, sliced into wedges
2 cups cantaloupe or honeydew melon balls or dice, or 1 cup of each
Mix juice, liqueur, and sugar, if using, in a small cup. In a large bowl, gently mix the peaches with the cantaloupe. Pour syrup over the fruit and mix gently again. Refrigerate 30 minutes or longer. Serve cold.
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
ROSH HASHANAHâTHE JEWISH NEW YEAR
Rosh Hashanah is celebrated for two days in September or October. It occurs on the first days of Tishrei, the first month of the Jewish calendar. This date not only inspires a theme of hope for a great year, but because it also coincides with the beginning of the agricultural year in ancient Israel, Rosh Hashanah is a celebration of the season's bounty, with wishes for a plentiful harvest.
In the holiday meal, these two themes are seen in the emphasis on sweet foods (for a sweet year) and in the important role vegetables and fruits play.
Jews throughout the world begin the Rosh Hashanah dinner with a tasting of apple wedges that are dipped in honey. In some Moroccan, Greek, and Turkish homes, sweet cinnamon-scented quinces also begin the meal.
Preference is given to sweet vegetables. Sweet potatoes, winter squashes, and beets are popular. Perhaps the best loved of all are carrots; not only are they sweet, but when sliced in rounds, they resemble coinsâsymbols of prosperity.
For modern cooks, plenty of other naturally sweet vegetables can be applied to this Rosh Hashanah theme. Sweet corn and red and yellow bell peppers are just two examples. They don't appear in old holiday recipes from Europe or the Mediterranean because these vegetables originated in the New World.
Even onions and leeks are appropriate for holiday dishes because, although they are sharp when raw, they become mellow and sweet when cooked slowly in oil because their natural sugars caramelize. The same thing happens to cooked parsnips and turnips.
Fruit is also essential on the Rosh Hashanah table. During the celebration, a special blessing is said over a new fruit that is tasted for the first time in the year, often a pomegranate, date, or fig, because these are fruits of ancient Israel.
Another sweet food that is tasted at the beginning of the meal is challah, the traditional Jewish holiday bread, which many people dip in honey. Bakeries as well as home bakers prepare a different kind of challah for Rosh Hashanah; instead of the common braid, it has a round or dome shape and often is sweetened with raisins.
On most tables a fish course appears as an appetizer, to represent abundance and fertility. A fish served with its head intact is another symbolic food: "Rosh" in Rosh Hashanah means "head" and the fish head represents a favorite Hebrew expression that "we would rather be a head than a tail." After the fish, most families enjoy a chicken or meat entree.
With honey such an important holiday ingredient, it's not surprising that it is used to sweeten Rosh Hashanah desserts. Honey cake, originally a Rosh Hashanah favorite among Ashkenazic Jews, now appears on most tables. Sampling a slice of honey cake is a much-loved way to express the traditional holiday greeting, "Have a Good and Sweet New Year."
In addition to food customs shared by most Jews, different communities have special foods and flavors they cherish. Although the custom of beginning the Rosh Hashanah feast with apples and honey seems to be just about universal, cooking sweet dishes for the rest of the menu is emphasized more in Ashkenazic homes. Recipes accentuate the sweetness of vegetables by cooking them with honey or sugar. Vegetables are cooked with fruits in an Eastern European Jewish casserole called tzimmes, which includes carrots, prunes, sweet potatoes, honey, or sugar, and sometimes beef as well.
Specific foods have other symbolic roles on Sephardic menus. Spinach and Swiss chard, long-time favorites on the Sephardic table, stand for the hope for plenty of vegetables at the harvest. Rice and black-eyed peas stand for abundance. The Hebrew names for leeks (
krayshah
) and beets (
selek
) recall divine protection from our enemies, and those vegetables appear on many tables. In some homes, small portions of these foods are tasted in a ceremony, with a blessing said before each, similar to the Passover Seder.
= Pareve  
= Dairy  
= MeatSALADS, APPETIZERS, AND SOUPS
The sweetness of fresh corn and red bell peppers makes these vegetables ideal additions to the traditional Rosh Hashanah sweet foods list. Together with green beans, they make a colorful, tasty appetizer salad.
1
1
â
2
pounds green beans, ends removed, halved
2 cups fresh (2 large ears) or frozen kernels
2 large red or orange bell peppers, cut into strips
1
â
4
cup minced green onion
2 or 3 tablespoons vegetable oil or olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon fresh lime or lemon juice or dry white wine (optional)
1.
Cook beans and corn in a saucepan of boiling salted water about 5 minutes or until beans are crisp-tender. Rinse under cold water until cool and drain well. Transfer to a large bowl. Add red pepper, green onion, and oil. Season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
2.
A short time before serving, add lime juice, if using, and add more seasoning if necessary. Serve cold or at room temperature.