A feast of flavors
Traditional, seasonal on Rosh Hashana
The Rosh Hashana cook faces the same dilemma each year: Do you introduce new dishes at the holiday table or stick with the tried and true? For the Jewish New Year, which begins Monday evening, there is usually a round challah to symbolize the eternal nature of life, and apple wedges to dip in honey as hope for a sweet year ahead. The rest of the meal depends on family culinary traditions - or not.
Jane Wolfman's holiday menu rarely varies. The Lexington cook makes time-tested favorites, including chicken soup with matzo balls, carrot tzimmes with honey, kasha varnishkes (buckwheat groats with bow-tie pasta), roast chicken, and green beans. A friend brings a braised brisket. Dessert is always "Bubbe Kate's rugelach," crescent-shape pastries filled with raisins, walnuts, and cinnamon-sugar, as well as her apple pie. Bubbe Kate, Wolfman's maternal grandmother, died five years ago, but her recipes live on.
"I tend to go more traditional for the holidays," says Wolfman, 48, who is a rep for a New York clothing designer. She explains that it's as if her late mother and grandmother "come in their recipes."
Other cooks, while respectful of tradition, favor seasonal ingredients. With Rosh Hashana's place on the secular calendar falling amidst the autumn harvest, some menus include the waning crop of native tomatoes, corn, and leafy greens or heartier vegetables like roots, squashes, and cabbage.
Fresh produce inspires Anna Gershenson, a cooking teacher, recipe developer, and, as she says, "avid supporter of local farms." Gershenson, 61, who recently moved from Sudbury to Pittsfield, waits until the last minute to create a menu based on what looks good. "My guests know to look for new things each year," she says.
She might make a vegetable mash with squash, rutabaga, parsnips, celeriac, and carrots. Salad usually includes roasted beets, fresh herbs, and greens. If peaches are still available, she'll add those, otherwise tomatoes or apples are folded in. A soup will "honor the fall harvest," she says - this year it's a puree of squash and leeks. For the main course, Gershenson plans to roast chicken with dried fruits, balsamic vinegar, honey, and spices. An apple pie, honey cake, and plum-pear compote will grace the dessert table.
Tradition plays a small but meaningful role on her menu. "The special foods my mother made will always be on my table," says Gershenson, who came here from Riga, Latvia, when she was 28. One dish is her mother's teiglach, which are cookies tied into little knots and simmered in honey. "When she died 10 years ago," says her daughter, "I decided the dessert has to be on our table in memory of my mother." She also serves her family's beloved stuffed cabbage and a challah.
"It's too much fun to try new things," says Phyllis Katz (pronounced cates), 65, an interior designer who lives in Sudbury. So she begins by looking through magazines and her favorite cookbooks. "We just don't eat as traditionally anymore," she says. Instead of roast chicken, she's serving Cornish hens on a bed of grilled radicchio and fresh corn fritters with sauteed shiitakes. "Before local corn goes, I have to give it another shot," she says. For dessert, she's deciding between a fresh peach or fig tart or a plain pound cake with roasted peaches, plums, and blackberries. She also plans to bake a family favorite: flaky apple strudel with currants, walnuts, and coconut.
It's not that Katz doesn't value tradition. But she cooks differently now than she did when her children were young, when she ran a small dessert business for 10 years, producing meringue mushrooms, croquembouche, buche de Noel, and other fancy confections. Today, the new grandmother has simplified the menu. "People are more health conscious," she says. Even her chopped liver is gone, replaced by hummus.
Healthful and seasonal menus also appeal to Wolfman, the Lexington cook - just not for the holidays. Wolfman, her husband, David, who is a rabbi, and their three daughters, ages 16 to 22, gather around the table and share foods that evoke memories. Without Bubbe Kate's rugelach, the new year wouldn't be as sweet. 