Jewish Dopers- what are you having for Rosh Hashanah?

Cafe Society
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Rosh Hashanah is next week- super early this year. My in-laws are coming to our house this year, and I’m working on a menu. We celebrate two days, and we like to have different things each day. I’d like to hear what some of you are going to be doing.

One thing we’ll be having is leek and mushroom savory noodle kugel (I’m not a big fan of sweet noodle kugels).

I’m also planning to make a zucchini kugel (from Healthy Jewish Cooking, though I can’t find the recipe online). I read the Rashi’s Daughters books this past year, and in one of them, the characters mention that it is good luck to eat fast-growing foods for Rosh Hashanah- the idea is that your money or possessions will grow fast like those foods. They didn’t eat zucchini (they couldn’t, it was bred from a New World squash in 19th century Italy), but zucchini is infamous for being prolific.

We don’t have any kids coming, but I’m planning to make my roasted carrots with honey. Really simple- you get baby carrots, you stir them up with some olive oil, salt, cinnamon, and honey, and you roast them for about an hour and a half in a 375 oven. This dish was a hit with my three year old niece last Thanksgiving.

I’m going to make my kreplach/wonton soup. You use wonton wrappers, which means you don’t have to make or roll out kreplach dough.

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I should mention that I don’t actually believe that what foods you eat for Rosh Hashanah will have an effect on what the rest of your year is like. Coming up with “good luck” foods is just a fun creative challenge for me, a way to make this more like Iron Chef and less like household drudgery.

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We’ll be eating by my mother’s house, so I don’t know what the exact menu will be, but we’ll have the usual array of “good luck” foods.

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I’m not Jewish but I may eat zucchini on Rosh Hashanah anyway!

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That’s really interesting about the fast growing foods. I’d never heard of that! I’ll have to think of something…

I’m not too sure what we’re going to be making yet. I usually make apple-cherry challah for Rosh haShana, and right now, that’s the only sure thing. I usually make some sweet potato-apple-cranberry dish and apple pie, but I’m disappointed that we won’t have fresh picked apples this year, so I’m not too motivated for this stuff.

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It runs from sunset on September 8 to sunset on the 10th this year.

Zucchini is also a good thing to eat during Rosh Hashanah, especially this year, because it’s in season (if you’re in the northern hemisphere). Vegetables in season are generally cheaper, better, and easier to find than out-of-season ones. We try to do seasonal vegetables at our holiday meals for this reason.

The first Rashi’s Daughters book, Jocheved, mentions a traditional stew made of “squash, beets, and leeks”, and says:

We are going to be having leeks, too. I’m making a leek and mushroom kugel for one day, and a leek, mushroom, and sage (with sage from our herb garden) stuffing for the other. The leek, mushroom, and sage stuffing is my standard stuffing for turkey, because Mr. Neville doesn’t like the traditional stuffing with celery (he can’t stand celery).

I suppose mushrooms also grow rapidly, and appear seemingly overnight (it would be nice if money did the same in one’s bank account). Pennsylvania is a big mushroom-growing state, so we can get nice mushrooms here. I’ll have to make non-mushroom versions of those things too, though, because my father-in-law hates mushrooms.

I’m not real sure what kind of squash they would have had in 11th or 12th century France, since the squashes we eat now originated in the New World, AFAIK.

I make no-knead bread. I tried making no-knead challah, but it didn’t really turn out. So our challah will come from our synagogue’s bake sale.

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Um…

Apples and honey?

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In my family, we have one hard and fast rule for the Jewish holiday meals: brisket and potato kugel.

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My grandmother taught me how to make potato kugel. Get out some potatoes. Put them on the kitchen table. Sit down. When someone walks into the room, stand up and peel potatoes. When they leave, sit down again.