A festive and crowd-pleasing appetizer for Rosh Hashanah or your Yom Kippur breakfast: an apples and honey themed cheese board! And in keeping with the Jewish tradition of not mixing meat and dairy, this cheese board is completely vegetarian. Thanks to Cabot Creamery Co-operative for sponsoring this High Holiday recipe. Rosh Hashanah begins ...
King Cake Babka
Imagine a cinnamon babka topped with sweet icing and decorated with sprinkles in classic Mardi Gras colors of green, gold and purple. It's a King Cake Babka! Are you a fan of King Cake? My daughter has a friend whose mother is from New Orleans and every February when the girls were in elementary school, this mother would bring in an ...
Spinach, Leek and Cheddar Mina for Passover
A vegetarian and dairy dish perfect for a family Passover meal: a mazto pie or mina made with spinach, leeks and lots of Cabot cheese. Thanks to Cabot Creamery Co-operative for sponsoring this Passover recipe. The Jewish festival of Passover begins at sundown on April 8. This eight-day festival - which commemorates the Jews’ exodus from Egypt in ...
Pearl Barley with Figs, Apple & Pomegranate for Tu B’ Shevat
Celebrate Tu B'Shevat with a sweet and nutritious grain salad made from Biblical ingredients like barley, figs, apple and pomegranate seeds. Tu B’Shevat is a minor Jewish festival at the beginning of the Biblical agricultural cycle known as the New Year for trees. In ancient times, worshippers brought fruit offerings to the temple on this ...
Savory Baked Pumpkin Pastries (Pumpkin Bishak)
Get global inspiration for pumpkin season with these savory baked pumpkin pastries, known as pumpkin bishak -- a specialty of Jews from Central Asia! This fall, I want to introduce you all to some new ways to use pumpkin -- particularly in savory dishes because I think it is easy to use pumpkin in sweets. First, I shared a recipe for ...
Apple Cranberry Cheese Blintzes
For autumn Jewish holidays like Sukkot and Simchat Torah, a festive and seasonal meal of traditional cheese blintzes smothered in sautéed apples and dried cranberries. This week marks the end of the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot and also the holiday of Simchat Torah, a celebration of ending one and beginning another annual cycle of ...
Break the Fast with a Semolina Cake
Break your Yom Kippur fast with basbousa, a simple, elegant semolina cake soaked in a sweet syrup, a tradtional favorite of Egyptian Jews. Yom Kippur begins this Friday at sundown. The most solemn day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur is marked by fasting, prayer and contemplation. At the end of the long day, during which observant Jews ...
Pumpkin Challah with Cinnamon Honey Butter
Saffron-colored pumpkin challah with sweet cinnamon honey butter will be the hit of your Rosh Hashanah celebration! Fall is pumpkin season and Rosh Hashanah is a fall holiday. So pumpkin dishes on a Rosh Hashanah menu is a no-brainer. Indeed, pumpkin is a traditional food for Rosh Hashanah, especially among Sephardic Jews, but not only ...
Leek Patties for Rosh Hashanah
Leek patties, or keftes de prasa, are a classic Sephardic holiday dish. This vegetarian version is a perfect appetizer for your Rosh Hashanah table. Keftes de prasa, or leek fritters is one of those dishes that is beloved throughout the Sephardic world, especially Turkey, Greece and Romania, but little known in America, where most Jews are ...
Honey-Glazed Chicken Thighs for Rosh Hashanah
Quick-cooking chicken thighs in a sweet-tart honey and lime juice glaze. Easy enough for a weeknight but special enough for Rosh Hashanah. When planning the menu for your Jewish holiday meal, it's easy just to say "brisket" for the main course and be done with it. My family certainly expects me to serve brisket for Hanukkah...and ...
Roasted Beets and Carrots with Burrata
A striking fall salad of roasted carrots and beets with creamy burrata and hazelnuts. Perfect for entertaining, a light lunch or as part of your Rosh Hashanah celebration. The combination of roasted beets and burrata has got a hold on me and it won't let go. A few days ago, I posted a recipe for roasted beets, blackberries and burrata over ...
Beets, Burrata & Blackberry Salad for Rosh Hashanah
A beautiful and balanced early fall salad with earthy beets, creamy burrata and tart blackberries over arugula in a honey vinaigrette. Perfect for your Rosh Hashanah table! Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, begins at sundown on September 20. Like many new year celebrations, it is joyous and festive. All over the world, Jews will gather ...
Stone Fruit Ketchup
Ketchup isn't just for tomatoes anymore. Try this sweet-and-sour peach and nectarine ketchup on chicken, turkey burgers and, my favorite, sweet potato fries! Last week, I returned home to find a box of softball-sized peaches and nectarines on my doorstep courtesy of the Washington State Stone Fruit Growers. This year I am serving as a ...
Queen Esther’s Poppyseed Cake with Meyer Lemon Glaze
A delicate, tender poppy seed cake drizzled with a tart lemon glaze. Perfect for serving with coffee or afternoon tea. A fitting dessert for the Jewish festival of Purim. This poppy seed cake comes to me from my mother. I cannot tell you how many times she served this cake when I was growing up. So many that when I asked her for the recipe, ...
Applesauce Cake with Brown Sugar Frosting
So much of my Rosh Hashanah menu is set in stone. We have to start the meal with kreplach in chicken soup. The main course is brisket obviously. And a beautiful braided round challah is the centerpiece of the table. But what about dessert? I have never quite found the Rosh Hashanah dessert. The one I want to serve year after year. The ...
Roasted Carrots with Pomegranate Molasses for Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year celebration, begins at sundown on October 2. All over the country, Jewish families, including mine, will gather with friends and family to recite the holiday blessings, break bread and wish one another “L’shana tovah:” a sweet new year! With less than a month to go, it is not too early to start planning your Rosh ...
Passover Meal Ideas
Are you looking for dinner ideas that are kosher-for-Passover to get through the rest of this week? Me too. I have combed through my archives to find some of my favorite wheat-free recipes to make your Passover meal planning easier. This is also a great list of gluten-free meal ideas for those times you are hosting friends or family who avoid ...
Matzo Ball Soup
Passover begins this Friday, April 22nd, at sundown and Jews all over the world are preparing for their Seders. The Passover Seder is the most widely celebrated ceremony in the Jewish year. Even Jews who do not observe any other religious ritual will host or attend a Seder. There is something magical about the idea that Jews all over the world ...
Chocolate Teff Cake for Passover
Teff it out! When it comes to Passover desserts, I have a new favorite flour: teff. What's teff? An ancient grain native to eastern Africa, teff is most familiar to Americans as the basis for injera, the spongy, slightly sour (because it's fermented) pancake-like flatbread served at Ethiopian restaurants. Teff is considered to be kosher for ...
Sweet Potato Latkes with Harissa Yogurt
This week, Jewish families around the world will gather together to celebrate Hanukkah, the festival of lights. Hanukkah commemorates the victory of a small group of Jews, the Maccabees, over the army of the Greek King Antiochus in the second century BCE. After the Jews drove the Greeks out of Judea, they attempted to restore their temple, which ...
Rosh Hashanah Recipes: Kreplach
If you think the matzo ball is the ultimate Jewish soup dumpling, let me quickly disabuse you of that notion. As much as I love a fluffy matzo ball, my heart truly belongs to kreplach, the meat-filled pasta triangle known affectionately as Jewish tortellini and served during the High Holidays. Never heard of kreplach? You are not alone. While ...
Mexican Matzo Brei
For many people observing Passover, breakfast is the hardest meal of the day. Oatmeal is out. Cereal seriously not okay. Toast verboten. Granola a no-go. So, what is left to eat in the morning? On weekdays, my husband downs some yogurt and an apple, which is a very healthy, but maybe not the most satisfying, breakfast. The truth is, for those ...
Brisket for Passover
With Passover only a few days away, it is time once again for me to share my brisket recipe. Brisket is just about the ideal food to serve a crowd, which is exactly what I am expecting for our Seder. What makes brisket so perfect for large meals? First, it is an inexpensive cut of meat. Second, you can do all the work in advance. Not only ...
Passover Dessert: Mini Pavlovas with Lemon Curd
This is the dessert that I wish I had made for my Seder last year: bite-sized meringues shells filled with luscious lemon curd and topped with a juicy strawberry. The dessert that I actually made was saucer-sized meringues filled with sliced, macerated strawberries and topped with a dollop of lemon curd. They looked great . . . but there was too ...
Passover Menu: Chicken with Dried Fruit
The Jewish festival of Passover begins next Friday, April 3, at sundown. Fridays are busy nights around here so I am planning to host a Seder on the second night of Passover, which thankfully is somewhat traditional. It’s still hectic to host what amounts to a large dinner party, so I am already starting to prepare some of the dishes ahead of time ...