Celebrating Rosh Hashanah with three favorite recipes.

by Jamie Hausman

In my family, Rosh Hashanah is a holiday on which we hit “reset.” It always comes after the flurry of summer has died down and after the hectic beginning of the school year. It allows us an evening to come together, take a breath and restart. We enter the new year celebration with residual stresses, anticipation, worries, and we come out of it with sweet memories and fresh goals for the coming year. I would argue that non-Jews also feel these emotions around the same time of year. When the seasons change, we all feel inclined to let go of the last season.

The Jewish High Holy Days are my favorite days, and Rosh Hashanah is chief among them. I credit my love of food to my heritage and ancestry of amazing Jewish cooks, and now that I live far away from my family, I try to recreate the meal we’d normally share together. Inevitably, we end up in a dinner table FaceTime session for good measure. Our meals during this holiday revolve around sweet flavors and fall produce. Here’s a look at a typical Rosh Hashanah dinner menu at my house:

• Sweet and sour meatballs
• Matzo ball soup
• Apples and Honey
• Brisket
• Sweet Challah
• Cakes

You’d think we’d all have a toothache by the end of it, wouldn’t you? But the salted soup and vegetable side dishes and appetizers round out the meal, not to mention plenty of wine.

Jewish meals drip with symbolism. We dip sweet challah and apples in honey to toast to a sweet and healthy new year. The meatballs, which are normally savory, are drenched in a combination of chili sauce and grape jelly for even more sweet tidings. The brisket is also cooked in a sweet, tangy sauce, and the challah, usually a savory egg bread, is baked with cinnamon sugar, raisins or apples. That’s all before we even get to dessert. The shapes of each dish are also important. Notice meatballs, matzo balls and challah are all round. Typically, challahs are braided long, but on Rosh Hashanah, we braid them in rounds or form the dough into spirals. The roundness of the foods symbolizes time and the seasons and the way they move in a cyclical pattern. It also symbolizes longevity; if we keep passing our traditions and customs in a circle, they will last forever. After thousands of years and countless crises, the traditions live on.

Here are some recipes that I’ve used this year so you, too, can enjoy a sweet and healthy new year. The first recipe, my Grandma Lee’s sweet and sour meatballs, is incredibly simple and always a huge hit. My Grandma Lee was our Bubbie, my mom’s mom and the reason my middle name is Lee. She was the family’s best cook and spent her last few years on this earth teaching me how to replicate the recipes of our family. The second recipe, Smitten Kitchen’s holiday brisket, is pulled from my favorite cookbook and written by Deb Perelman. Her recipes are easy to follow and full of interesting notes. The last recipe, Jamie’s sweet challah, is a combination of Deb Perelman’s apple and honey challah and my Grandma Cookie’s recipe. Cookie was my father’s mother and gifted at making sweets, as her name suggests. The reason I forgo her original challah recipe these days is that it yields three loaves, and I just don’t have enough challah-lovers nearby to feed. I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as I have this year. L’Shana Tovah, Happy new year.

Grandma Lee’s Sweet + Sour Meatballs

Ingredients:

2 lbs lean ground beef

2 large eggs

1/2 cup of breadcrumbs or matzo meal

1/2 cup of water

Salt, Garlic Salt, Pepper to taste

Sauce:

2 bottles of Bennett’s Chili Sauce

1 cup of grape jelly

Juice of 1 lemon

Yields approximately four dozen meatballs.

Instructions:

1. Combine all ingredients for the meatballs and form the mixture into small balls approximately one inch in diameter.

2. In a large pot, mix together ingredients for the sauce over medium heat until melted.

3. When the sauce is melted and mixed together, add in the balls of meat.

4. Bring the contents of the pot to a simmer, cover and let simmer for one hour.

Note: I almost always make these ahead of time. They freeze exceptionally well. All you have to do is thaw them for a day in the refrigerator and then reheat.

Smitten Kitchen’s Sweet + Sour Holiday Brisket

Ingredients:

4-to-5-pound first cut brisket

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more for seasoning the meat

Freshly ground pepper

1 cup beef stock

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1/4 cup brown sugar, light or dark

1/2 red wine vinegar

4 teaspoons paprika

2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

1/8 teaspoon red chili flakes

1 teaspoon garlic powder

3 tablespoons onion powder

Yield: 10 to 12 Servings

Instructions:

1. Season meat generously on both sides with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.

2.Whisk all remaining ingredients in a medium bowl.

3. Place meat in slow-cooker, pour sauce over it and set to cook on low for 10 hours.

Note: I always use a slow-cooker. It makes a perfect brisket every single time. If you don’t have one, I suggest you run to the nearest store and buy one.

Another note: Brisket tastes best when it’s rested. Make this before you go to sleep (the night before your dinner), keep it submerged in sauce in the fridge all day and simply reheat in the oven just before the meal.

Jamie’s Sweet Challah

(adapted from Deb Perelman’s Apple and Honey Challah)

Because my honey is allergic to apples (see what I did there?), I swapped the apples out of this Smitten Kitchen recipe and replaced them with the cinnamon sugar my Grandma Cookie’s recipe calls for. I almost always make her spiraled challah, but it yields three loaves and I just don’t have enough challah-eaters in the local area. This takes a good bit of time, but it’s easy and results in one gorgeous loaf of sweet goodness.

Ingredients:

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (1 standard 1/4-ounce packet)

1/3 cup plus 1 teaspoon honey

1/3 cup canola oil, plus more for the bowl

2 large eggs plus 1 large yolk

1 1/2 teaspoons table salt (I forgot to add mine and it came out just fine)

4 1/4 cups all-purpose or bread flour, plus more for your work surface

Cinnamon sugar filling:

1/8 cup granulated white sugar

1/8 cup ground cinnamon

Egg wash:

1 large egg

Instructions:

1. Whisk yeast and 1 teaspoon honey into 2/3 cup warm water and let stand until foamy, 5 minutes.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together yeast mixture, oil, remaining honey (1/3) cup, eggs and yolk. Add flour all at once and stir with a wooden spoon. A craggy mess of uneven dough will form. Turn it out onto a floured counter and knead the dough for five minutes. Use as little flour as necessary when kneading the dough, as it will harden with too much flour.

3. Transfer the dough to a large oil-coated bowl, cover with plastic wrap and set aside for one hour or until almost doubled in size.

4. Turn dough out onto a floured counter and gently press it into a flat, oblong shape. The shape doesn’t matter so much, just spread it out. Then, sprinkle half of the cinnamon sugar mixture over one half of the flattened dough, fold the other half over the cinnamon sugar and press down, flattening the dough. Spread the remaining mixture over half of the folded dough and fold it over again. Your dough will be sort of square, so fold the corners under and form it into a round. Turn your empty bowl over onto the dough and set it aside for another 30 minutes.

5. (Refer to the Smitten Kitchen link for photos of this weaving method). Divide the dough into four pieces, roll and stretch each one as carefully as you can into a rope shape, about 12 inches long. Arrange two strings in each direction, forming a plus sign. Weave them so that one side is over and the other is under where they meet. Take the four legs that come from underneath the center and move them over the leg to their right, jumping it. Then, take the legs that were to the right and jump over the leg before, to the left. Repeat these jumps until you run out of rope, then tuck the corners or odd bits under the dough to form a round.

6. Transfer the dough to a parchment or foil-covered baking sheet. Beat the egg that was set aside for the wash and then brush it over the challah. Let the challah rise for another hour. 45 minutes into the last rise, preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

7. Before baking, brush the loaf one more time with egg wash. Bake it in the middle of the oven for 40-45 minutes until perfectly bronzed. If it starts browning too quickly, cover the top with foil. When a thermometer is inserted into the center of the loaf and reads 195 degrees, it’s done. Cool on a rack before serving.

[hr style=”striped”]

Jamie Hausman writes our Whisk ‘Til Combined column. She’s a Chicago native, Mizzou graduate and a resident of Atlanta, Ga. She adores her adopted home and spends her time writing, editing and pitching stories to local and national online publications, as well as exploring new neighborhoods and restaurants. Check her out on Twitter @jamiehausman.