More fun with my grandmother’s cookbook
(for more about this book see my To Pearl from Gladys tag)
I was wondering what the Jewish Cook Book had to say about Rosh Hashanah, and here’s what I found. There’s considerable overlap with what I can remember her actually serving for a holiday, though we didn’t usually go to her for Rosh Hashanah in my childhood, she came to us until she wasn’t able to anymore and then went to my aunt.
The book’s recommended menu doesn’t include ritual foods, but the meal of course opened with kiddush, apples and honey, and challah, which I assume the writer doesn’t consider part of the menu proper.
Pearl, my grandmother, would serve a gefilte fish course followed by chicken soup with kneidlach, roast chicken, peas, a cooked green vegetable and maybe a kugel, a salad I don’t remember well because I have always hated lettuce, olives and pickles (she absolutely loved pickles and anything salty), and then cake and tea for dessert.
My mother would skip the fish course and open with the soup--kneidlach from Pearl’s recipe, not the one from my mother’s family, which she only makes on Passover--and then chicken or turkey depending on the size of the crowd. The sides are less likely to be peas and kugel and more likely to be asparagus and couscous. She’s not as devoted to pickles as my grandmother was. Cake and tea are the same.
I haven’t asked my mother what she’s making this year, when it’s necessarily just her, my father, and my sister. Surely chicken, but she’s more open to recipe variation than my grandmother was (understatement; my grandmother was an extreme creature of habit). My sister’s on a strict modified-keto diet, so there’s always avocado and cauliflower these days, and she gets gizzards in her soup instead of kneidlach.
And what am I making? We haven’t decided yet. We’re essentially 95% pescatarian at home, and in fact the fleishig dishes we rarely use were damaged in the move, so eating meat, which Jewish tradition often considers fancier, would require using paper plates. I’d rather match the atmosphere than the food. Before we had a son with sensory sensitivities we would make fish, but these days if we want him to eat with us and don’t want to make fleishigs it’s pretty much got to be cheese.
Image text (apologies for whatever a screen reader might do to the Yiddish words here):
MENUS FOR JEWISH HOLIDAY MEALS
NEW YEAR'S DINNER (ROSH HASHANAH)
It is customary to serve honey with the New Year's dinner, and to place upon the table some fruit which has not yet been eaten that year. Since New Year's, or Rosh Hashanah, comes in September or early October, a bowl of Concord grapes may be chosen. There is no tradition or special requirement for the menu itself, but a good choice is the following, which has come to be considered a typical Jewish holiday meal.
Grapefruit Halves or Fruit Cup
Gefilte Fish with Horseradish or Chopped Chicken Liver
Chicken Soup with Egg Dumplings or Matzo Meal Kneidlach
Roast Chicken or Squab, Raisin Stuffing Peas Potato Schalet
Kishkes. Lettuce and Tomato Salad
Rolls Olives, Radishes and Celery. Spiced Plums or Peaches
Strudel, Applesauce or Honey Cake. Brandied or Stewed Fruit
Tea
