Happy Jew Year

So if you’re not aware, last weekend saw the celebration of the Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashanah, when we, the chosen ones, welcome the start of the year 5770. Yeah, we’ve been around a while. And it’s basically just a complete and utter eat-a-thon.

My parents are overseas and it’s tradition that you don’t stay home and mope on your own, so I was adopted by three beautiful groups of friends. The resulting gorging, in part preparation for the upcoming day of atonement (Yom Kippur) when we don’t eat or drink for 24 hours, was mammoth. And it reminded me how wonderful, varied and colourful Jewish food can be.

The standard Jewish meal (if you’re Ashkenazi) consists of a smorgasbord of starters, a soup, mains, a dessert, cakes and biscuits. On Jewish New Year apple and honey (which are like mascots; honey for a sweet year to come and apple because it’s round like a year) take pride of place on the table, both independently and as part of other dishes.

Here is a list of the most likely contenders you might see on the table.

Starters:
-Gefilte fish – Fish patties, fried or boiled and served cold, topped with a piece of boiled carrot and served with horseradish
-Chopped liver – don’t freak out because it’s called liver – it’s pâté
-Dips – Eggplant often makes an appearance!
-Challah – plaited loaf used in the Sabbath ceremony. Has too many variations to list, but on Jewish New Year it is usually round and sweet.
-Herring
-Dill pickled cucmbers

Chicken soup, accompanied by one or all of the following:
-Egg noodles (lokchen)
-Meat dumplings (kreplach)
-Matzoh balls (kinda like a pasta ball, made of ground up matzoh, which is like a water cracker).

Main course can be almost anything but usual includes some roast meat and lots of vegetables and salads. One traditional beauty is cholent, a slow-cooked stew that is made over a 12-to-24-hour period. Another often-seen side dish is tzimmes, or carrot cooked with honey and a this one has many variations, with possible example additions including prunes or sesame seeds.

Dessert is usually a pudding of some description or sometimes compote. Cake and biscuits make an appearance with tea and coffee. One of the most important things to hit the table on Jewish New Year is honey cake. It’s awesome.

All Jewish festivals start at sundown. So if the festival is on a Monday, it actually starts on Sunday at sundown and then ends on Monday at sundown. The first night of Rosh Hashanah was last Friday and it saw me picked up and ferried to my beautiful friend and yummy mummy Nelly’s house to celebrate with her gorgeous husband, adorable kids, sexy sister and her wonderful and welcoming parents. Everyone was so warm -  it was just the way it should be. And it was doubly as exciting because being of Russian extraction, this family introduced me to a whole lot of culinary offerings I had never tried before!

These guys didn’t let me down – vodka was on the table from before the food made an appearance. Meanwhile, some of the culinary highlights (all photos are in our gallery) were boiled eggs with caviar, pickled tomatoes (they’re beautiful – green, crunchy and delicious) and a lovely chopped herring salad. Nell’s mum’s soup was beautiful, golden and clear (clarity is one of the most important aspects of the Jewish penicillin) and in a fantastic twist, her matzoh balls were stuffed with chicken meat!) We then had chicken legs stuffed with pesto and baby potatoes, followed by poached pears, followed by honey cake and honey cookies.

My honey cookies were a bit of a hit this year. I hadn’t made them before, but I was really proud  – they were in the Eastern European style, hard on the outside, soft in the middle with spices that made them taste a little bit like gingerbread. I made four batches over 48 hours. Watch for the recipe soon.

The second day’s lunch was with my friend Alana and her family who did the most wonderful sit down function for 40 of their closest relatives. Everything was delicious and mostly traditional, with lots of salads and a chocolate roulade filled with cream and blueberries that I’m still dreaming about. But the highlight was cooked tongue, made by Alana’s mother as a treat. It was soft and flavoursome – it’s best eaten with horseradish.

The second night’s dinner was with my close friends Mel and Jarrod, who were visiting from interstate, so not only did I get to welcome the new year with them, I also got to spend some serious quality time with them! No one has ever gone hungry in Mel’s mum Viv’s house – this year was no exception. There was enough food to feed a small army, but to be fair, they had welcomed a small army mishpucha (family). We had traditional starters, followed by beautiful soup with homemade kreplach (now THAT’s a treat) made by Mel’s grandmother and then lots of mains (of which the highlights were lamb cooked with couscous and chickpeas and a yummy brisket in a tomato-based sauce). Salads were key at this event and you might notice a Caeser salad with a topping looking suspiciously like bacon – it’s kosher garlic sausage in disguise! We call it facon. The dessert of berry pudding pavlova served with halva-flavoured persian fairy floss was divine.

So that’s it for another year chaps – may all of you, chosen or not, have a wonderful, happy and healthy 5770. I look forward to another 12 months of sucking my radish and I hope you will too.

-Master Radish