My Family's Table: Rosh Hashanah

Now that the one-two punch of Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur has come and gone, I finally have enough peace and quiet to sit down and write a little.

I field a lot of questions during the High Holidays from friends, co-workers, and strangers. What is Rosh Hashanah? Why is the Hebrew calendar up to the year 5766? etc. etc. etc. I am not a particularly observant Jew, so the questions that are most likely to make me talk a little are the ones about food and family. What do you do on these holidays? What do you eat?

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish new year holiday and many of the traditional foods are foods that have a symbolic connection to the new year. Jews of different heritage will eat different foods to adhere to this symbolism. Apples dipped in honey, and tzimmes (a sweet carrot dish) are both very common to most American Jews as a symbol of the sweetness of the new year. Also, a circular challah is common as a symbol of the cycle of the year or the "circle of life". These symbolic foods are sometimes present at my family's table but they take a back seat to our traditional, yet less symbolic foods. Even so, this is one of the most highly anticipated meals of the year in my family. Here's a rundown of the typical Rosh Hashanah dinner that I've eaten every year for my entire life:

First Course: Gefilte Fish I adore this dense fish meatball. When I was younger, my grandmother made it from scratch using mostly whitefish and whatever other fleshy, white fish was available. It was served warm with a slice of carrot stewed in the same liquid and a large spoonful of red horseradish. Today, my grandmother has acquiesced to the fact that the jarred/canned varieties are "good enough". We now eat a piece served cold in the jelled broth that it is packed in. I am most partial to the Rokeach brand in the can. It is "good enough" but I don't ask for seconds anymore. I have to save room for:

Second Course: Kreplach Soup This is, by far, the most important course at our table. My grandmother has been making these dumplings by hand for decades and they are the defining food of my childhood, my sibling's childhoods, and my father and uncle's childhood. This year, my soon-to-be-bride spent a day at my grandmother's side, learning the craft.

The meat is generally a mixture of beef (chuck roast ground in a metal hand grinder), a bit of liver, and a bit of whatever else is on hand (usually chicken or turkey). The dough is simple and produced by sight and feel. There are no measurements, no recipes. For a normal Rosh Hashanah, she will make about 200 kreplach, each about two inches across.

My grandmother prepares the filling


The finished product



The beginning of this course is always identified by the question "How many?". Normally, when you order kreplach in a restaurant, you get one or two large doughy dumplings (Manny's comes to mind immediately as a typical bowl). These are smaller, a little stiffer, and if you ask for less than 10 you will get a strange look from grandma. When I was much younger, my father, grandfather, and uncle always got a bowl of 12 (barely any room for broth) and I would get six. Today I generally ask for ten (to avoid the scorn), although six would be more than enough.

Third course: Brisket and the other stuff This is the point in the meal when everything else is brought out to the table. A braised brisket, chicken or turkey, boiled potatoes, kugel, challah, kishke, tzimmes, and maybe a green vegetable to go with all that starch. In my experience, these are the staples of Eastern-European Jewish holiday cooking. I don't really yearn for much of it, but it is my soul food and it makes me feel at home. petit pois made the brisket this year, and it was excellent. (My uncle secretly admitted to her that it was better than grandma's).

Dessert: My grandmother is not much of a baker. Her claim to fame in the baked dessert world is an apple strudel that is dry as a bone and my family inexplicably goes nuts over. I do not. Instead, I go for her fruit compote which is nothing more than prunes, raisins, and apples, slightly boiled and then put in a jar with some water to develop a syrup. I am the only one in my family who loves this simple dessert, and I've been eating it since I was in diapers. As you can see from the picture below, my grandma is an easy audience, who's always pleased when I'm enjoying her cooking.

Enjoying fruit compote with grandma


This is the meal that signifies the Jewish new year for me, year-in, year-out. It is not far from the same meal that my great-grandparents ate as children in 19th century Poland. It is one of those special meals that tastes just a little better because of history, family, and timing.

Best. Kreplach. Ever.

Best,
Michael

Great post and pictures!

In my family, the quality of the New Year meal is measured by the gefilte fish, always chopped by hand on a cutting board. When done right, easier said than done, I fill up on gefilte fish even if there isn't much room for what follows. Ours is served chilled with congealed cooking juices and cold Red "Jewish wasabi". I usually make it a day or two before the meal.

Bill/SFNM

Michael:

Thank you very much for the fine post. Happy New Year.

Antonius

P.S. I'll take 12.

My family falls under the category of "Eating Jews" - that's the primary means of worship. RH/YK are among the only holidays where anyone goes to temple (a practice I've long since abandoned along with things like "faith" -- I tell people I'm beyond belief).

Rosh Hashanah this year was at my uncle's, with a few interesting items among an otherwise ordinary feast: gefilte fish "nuggets": cut small enough to pick up with a toothpick, and horseradish to dip them into, makes a nice cocktail appetizer if you can stand the stuff (as the anti-sushi, gefilte fish is something I avoid, even as a platform for horseradish). Brisket and kishke were brought in from somewhere, and both left something to be desired: the brisket had not yet reached the mash-with-a-fork stage that is neccessary (although the gravy was excellent), and the kishke lacked the crisp top, and the non-natural casing had shriveled to an unchewable ring at the bottom of each slice.

Yom Kippur is usually more of my kind of meal: usually all 'milkhutz' (dairy, or rather non-meat, as fish isn't considered meat), so bagels with lox and smoked fish are the name of the game. We had some excellent lox at my sister's house (have to ask her where she got it from), plus kugel, potato blintzes (mmm starch wrapped in starch), jello with cherries, and more bite-sized pastries than you can shake a stick at, including some deadly ones from MrsF such as the three-layer shortbread/fudge brownie/carmel pecan death bar.

For many years, holiday was at my house and the family gathered around. I made my own gefilte fish from a recipe from my husband's grandmother that said use whitefish, pike and buffalo. Grind fish Cook bones and head with onion and carrot mix fish with ground onion, egg matzo meal form into balls and cook. No amounts were given and it was all guess work. When fish became expensive and there always was too much left over I started buying it in the jars. We ate it cold with home grated horseradish. I also made chopped liver, learned many years ago from the way my uncle's deli made it. Of course there was soup with matzo balls and on Rosh Hashanah Turkey. It lasted two nights and fed alot of people. Tzimmes was also a recipe from the same grandma. Yom Kipper eve was a roast (my husband would not eat brisket for many years thanks to the way his mother made it), sweet and sour meatballs for an appetizer and chicken soup of course. After Yom Kippur to brake the fast our family tradition probably going back to Russia was pickled herring, pumpernickel bread, hard boiled eggs and boiled potatoes. At some point by request of VI we added kugel.

My daughter has since taken over the cooking for holidays as my apartment is too small and we live to far away from services as my son-in-law is senior rabbi at Temple Beth El. The traditions haven't changed much, she still serves the same foods although now the chopped liver is bought and few newer dishes have been added, this year she made carrot souffle instead of tzimmes. The breakfast still has the herring etc but lox and bagels, blintze souffle and smoke fish have been added.

So I guess things have remained very much the same since I was a child because this is what we did and this is what we still enjoy.
Paulette

Like it is not kosher to cook the calf in its mother's milk, right --

So why can you dip a chicken in egg yolk then flour it and fry it in chicken fat and be kosher,

But you can't dip that same chicken in milk, flour it and fry it in butter --

Because an egg is parave which means that it is either milk or meat depending on what you do with it. Fish is also parave so you can serve gefilte fish at a meat meal and salmon at a dairy meal.
Paulette

SGFoxe wrote:So why can you dip a chicken in egg yolk then flour it and fry it in chicken fat and be kosher

Is a puzzlement.

All the rest of the kashrut laws at least have some basis in health reasons: methods of slaughter to prevent blood from remaining in the meat, avoiding 'unclean' animals... This is the only one that has its basis in the interpretations not the written laws.

But if you think that's silly, go read the last page of this week's Time magazine. Amish in Pennsylvania are trying to get approval from their church on cell phones because they don't require wires to be brought into their homes.

SGFoxe wrote:So why can you dip a chicken in egg yolk then flour it and fry it in chicken fat and be kosher,

Doesn't matter to me. Everything's kosher as soon as it hits my mouth.

I personally have never met a cheeseburger or a pig that I did not consider kosher.

SGFoxe wrote:So why can you dip a chicken in egg yolk then flour it and fry it in chicken fat and be kosher,

Hmmm, I've never thought of the chicken and egg problem in that way

Is the converse ok too - frying an egg in chicken fat?

sazerac wrote:

SGFoxe wrote:So why can you dip a chicken in egg yolk then flour it and fry it in chicken fat and be kosher,

Hmmm, I've never thought of the chicken and egg problem in that way

Is the converse ok too - frying an egg in chicken fat?

Yep. As paulette said, an egg ain't meat or dairy.

Frankly, anything fried in chicken fat sounds mighty ok to me.

I had scrambled eggs and potatoes fried in duck fat. That was okay!

We're "building a wall around the law" as perscribed in Pirkei Avot (Avoth 1:3, I think, anyway it's somewhere in the begining of Avot Aleph). Actually until about 300 years ago, chicken was also parve. It was only when that became the primary Shabbat meal that chicken became fleichick (or meat-ick as I prefer to say), since you were (and are) required to eat a rich meal (defined as one with both fish and meat) for Erev Shabbat.

Anywho, my Rosh Hashanah dinners, as well as those surrounding Yom Kipur were severely lacking. Ah well, food at college was never advertised to be the pinacle of gourmet cooking (now, gourmand cooking, that's another question entirely), even if Tufts (where I'm currently a student) was ranked number two the year before last. However, when I'm at home, we start out with a bit of boiled gefilte fish (the spiecies pisces gefiltius to be precise), hand made by my grandmother and mother according to the family recipe. And Rokeach, Manechevitz, and all the other canned and jarred varieties are completely and utterly inferior, indeed, I feel inedible, compared to my Bubby's (and how many Mitzvah Points do you think I got for that one?). My mother hand makes the khraine (horseradish sauce), likewise according to the old family recipe. And she makes it STRONG! It makes wassabi look like library paste. Apparently, the trick is to freeze the horseradish just before grating it. Then comes home made chicken soup with kreplakh. The secret here is the sherry peppers which give the soup the slightest burn as it slides down your throat. You can find sherry peppers at Trimminghams in South Hampton, Bermuda (making it a traditional Jewish food, of course!), and that's about it, though I think they may have just started importing it. And, of course, the kreplackh are the best part. I usually have two, but they're huge (though, believe me, I'd take 12 if I had the option). Incidentally, we start with the khalah (two, and homemade by my mother), and don't have it with the meal. We also drink decent kosher wine (and that does not include Maneschevitz or any other beverage made from concord grapes), usually a product of Alfasi (a nice Chilean wine). For our main course we have brisket and turkey, the brisket is the family's three day recipe, and the turkey is usually either my mom's recipe, or an old recipe from my father's side. We also have two varieties of kougel, the light and the dark, always accompanied by my father's comment "And G-d came unto Moses saying, Say unto the Children of Israel that they shall have two kougels on My holy day: a light and a dark. And the Dark shall be unto you as the sweet, it is law. And the light shall be unto you as the plain, it is an edict. And this statute shall be unto you as a decree for all time." (For Geirim, and others, who are not familiar with the Torah, especially Vahyikrah/Leviticus, much of it is in that form.) We also have tzimus, AND mashed sweet potatoes, and often twice-baked potatoes, and peas. Desert is usually an apple pie made by my mother, a parve choclate mouse pie and angel food cake made by my grandmother, and then usually a large selection of smaller tortes. Okay, I'm hungry now, and I just finished dinner. Take care all. Stay Jewish. - Rob (Bonus points if you know where the "Stay Jewish" comes from!)

Apparently, the trick is to freeze the horseradish just before grating it.

Ah! That sounds like a good idea. I remember a time my mother grated enough horseradish in the food processor that we had to leave the house! Freezing it might keep the volatiles out of the air.

Rob wrote:(Bonus points if you know where the "Stay Jewish" comes from!)

The viewing of The Hebrew Hammer (along with It's a Wonderful Life) is an annual Hannukah/Christmas tradition in my house.

JoelF wrote:Ah! That sounds like a good idea. I remember a time my mother grated enough horseradish in the food processor that we had to leave the house! Freezing it might keep the volatiles out of the air.

Years ago, I had an end-user in the Soviet Union who was Chemist. He noticed a horseradish root in my kitchen I originally intended to grate in my 220V Cuisinart. He luckily informed me of the folly of my intentions. He then proceeded to described a Rube Goldberg closed-system he had built to make horseradish at home without the tearful outcome. I ended up giving him the horseradish root and wishing him good eating.

Regards,

When growing up the grating of horse radish was my uncle's job. He hand grated it outside so that no one else was affected. When I was first dating my husband and he had his first Rosh Hashanah meal with us he had never had homemade horseradish. He took a heaping forkful with his gefilte fish and we all started to laugh as he slowly turned red with sweat running down his face.
I have personally never grated horseradish by hand but have burned out a couple of blenders making it (This is why I now have a professional Waring Blender). This was all before the time of the processor which I have never used for that job.

Oh as an aside, the kosher laws state that an egg is to be broken in a separate dish and if blood is present you are to discard it.
Paulette

My mother, who is now retired, graciously made our entire Rosh HaShana dinner. Sometimes I am responsible for the challah, and sometimes I am responsible for the gefilte fish. I learned to make both from an old family friend who passed away about 9 years ago. While her daughters have the challah recipe, I am the only one with her gefilte fish recipe. I use three types of fish in the mix, and it was stressed to me that the fish should be as white as snow when it is done. My kids always complain because it smells up the house when I am in full gefilte mode, but the end result is worth it. There's nothing like homemade. My mom made the frozen variety this year, which I thought was overly sweet. I'll be making the homemade stuff for Passover.

We are not a kreplach eating family -- it's matzah balls all the way. My grandmother made kreplach occasionally when she was still alive, but my mom's matzah ball soup is the best I've ever had.

Brisket, tzimmes and broccoli rounded out the meal, followed by my mom's honey cake and her famous cinnamon apple cake and plum kuchen. The next day she supplemented the dinner with a chicken as there was not much brisket left over.

Yom Kippur was a repeat meal, with the substitution of turkey breast for the brisket. We always have a huge break-the-fast party at friends of my parents. It's always a dairy dinner, with plenty of lox, bagels, kugel (four kinds this year!), salad, fruit and desserts. Everyone brings something.

Having grown up in Chicago without the benefit of lots of relatives around, my family tends to make up their own family out of friends and neighbors. This year, my Minnesota brother and his kids made it for Rosh HaShana dinner, making it extra special for my parents.

Suzy

paulette wrote:
Oh as an aside, the kosher laws state that an egg is to be broken in a separate dish and if blood is present you are to discard it.
Paulette

WHen was the last time you saw blood in your chicken egg?

Steve Z. gets the bonus points! Actually, apparently the freezing makes it even more bitter, in addition to helping with the eyes. Not sure why. Maybe it dries it out slightly, thus intensifying the flavor? That's my guess.

I don't remember seeing blood in eggs recently but that is the rule. By the way.

As another aside, my husband always complained of the smell from the fish cooking.

Also, when I was growing up, matzo balls were for Rosh Hashanah and kreplach were for Yom Kippur. Tried making them once by hand. Swore never again until I got a pasta machine. My bubbe must have really had arm muscles. That dough was hard to roll by hand. Also remember when I made that my aunt told me you need lungen which as you can imagine is lung. Never so that at the local mega store. I think I used chuck but really can't remember. Now I go to Max and Benny's or Kaboff and buy them adding them to my soup.
Paulette

[/quote]

Ready for Rosh Hashanah, 2007

Cookie and I spent the weekend working on making about a gross of kreplach for two different meals this year. Hard work, but rewarding.

This is about half of the total:




Looking forward to the holidays.

Best,
Michael

Those are beautiful! I wish I knew how to make kreplach that good looking.

My wife and younger daughter (who is home from college for the weekend), did their yearly "holiday bonding" this morning. My freezer now holds 150 homemade kreplach...

The baking will take place next Sunday after Selichot as will the making of the soup and kneidlach. The hand crank grinder will be in full operation to make the chopped liver.....

I can never figure out why my wife is so tired when we're in shul erev Rosh Hashanah...

Thank you all for this gem of a thread, with its history and wisdom and good food. I am humbled in its presence.

Shanah Tovah

Those kreplach are GORGEOUS!!! I've never tried to make them, mom did once and they were not successful.

We're more a matzohball family as well. My mom always managed to make them firm and flavorful while my aunt's are always light and feathery. Guess which kind I prefer?

I usually make gefilte fish once a year, more likely for passover; amazes me to think my grandmother used to make it every week. One of our prized possessions is the videotape we made of my nana teaching me how to make the fish, this was about 10 years ago. Thankfully, my husband LOVES the smell of the fish juice so as long as I discard the bones quickly, I'm golden.

Lots of fun reading this thread, thanks for starting and bumping it.

I'm also the gefilte fish maker of the family, more so for Passover than Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur. My kids hate the smell of the fish broth and beg me not to stink up the house with it. The woman who taught me to make it died a few years later. I don't think she ever taught her daughters how she makes it and I've lost touch with them.

I also got this woman's challah recipe. When we were kids, she would drop off a fresh challah every year at the holidays. I'll probably be making it with my kids next week.

On a funny note, one year we had a racoon trying to get into our house via a hole in our roof. In order to lure him out, I borrowed a humane trap from a friend and put some of the fish guts from my gefilte fish broth in the trap to entice the raccoon. I caught every stray cat in the neighborhood. The raccoon never came near it. The cats would still get in the trap even after I stopped putting the fish in the trap.

Suzy

I'm also the gefilte fish maker of the family, more so for Passover than Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur. My kids hate the smell of the fish broth and beg me not to stink up the house with it. The woman who taught me to make it died a few years later. I don't think she ever taught her daughters how she makes it and I've lost touch with them.

I also got this woman's challah recipe. When we were kids, she would drop off a fresh challah every year at the holidays. I'll probably be making it with my kids next week.

On a funny note, one year we had a racoon trying to get into our house via a hole in our roof. In order to lure him out, I borrowed a humane trap from a friend and put some of the fish guts from my gefilte fish broth in the trap to entice the raccoon. I caught every stray cat in the neighborhood. The raccoon never came near it. The cats would still get in the trap even after I stopped putting the fish in the trap.

Sorry to get OT -- the kreplach look lovely. I'm sure they will taste as good as they look!

Suzy

stevez wrote:Those are beautiful!

Absolutely beautiful! And I imagine they taste as good, if not better, than they look.

Funny, I too am the last in line to receive gefilte fish wisdom but I don't make it enough to feel entirely comfortable. My mother never made it from scratch so I learned from her best friend a few years before the friend died. I do, however, make her plum cake every fall and am proud that it can remain a staple of our Rosh Hashanah table.

I only dream about making kreplach as beautiful as the ones you've posted.