The High Holidays - A Festive Meal

This year I decided to host our Rosh Hashanah meal.

My brother–in-law and his roomate have taken to celebrating holidays at least in so far as they join with various family members for the festive meal. They have also discovered, after recent birthday meals, a sincere appreciation of my cooking. So this year we decided that the family they would celebrate with would be ours.
Of course it was also given that my parents would join us for a meal. As usual I left it to the last minute to inform them and they had already invited a friend. This was great news as she was also a friend of ours.
However there were now nine people to seat round our table that comfortable accommodates six.
Problem solved – I would cook the meal but the venue was moved to my parents’s house or rather their patio. This also meant I could waste less time on my least favourite occupation (housecleaning) and devote more hours to the pleasures of cooking.

Although I cook a meal most days and can create a decent dish from whatever I find in the cupboards, for celebratory meals I indulge in ‘extreme cooking’. Just when most is at stake I try new and totally untested recipes.

In this meal I wanted to include pomegranate, apple and honey – the three main culinary elements of a Jewish New Year.

For once I was organised and started to make the dessert on Thursday. The honey is normally eaten in the form of a honey cake but despite my fondness for spices I find traditional honey cake boring to eat and even duller to make. Fortunately a previous year’s googling had uncovered a spiceless apple cake flavoured with honey that is light to eat and easy to make.
Naturally in the spirit of ‘extreme cooking’ I also tried two new recipes – for appleflap jacks and honey biscuits.
The flapjacks were a little disappointing, though nobody else seemed to mind. I think it might have been the quality of the oats that let me down.
In contrast the honey biscuits were just as I desired. A golden ball of a biscuit that crumbled in the mouth with an explosion of honey aroma.

Our family doesn't indulge in the traditional gefilte fish because my husband is allergic to fish, my mother hates gefilte and my father is from Algeria so it isn’t actually our tradition.
I eliminated the first course altogether as I surmised, correctly, that after the Rosh HaShanah service we would all be ravenous and eager to tuck in.

For the main course I stuck to the Israel classic chicken. To provide for nine people required two chickens and as my father doesn’t like sweet sauces I decided to make two dishes – both newly discovered.

One set of chicken pieces I decided to roast in a honey mustard sauce. On my shelves I had a choice of frankfurter mustard which is only edible when drowned in ketchup or Colman’s English mustard powder which is liable to permanently damage the tongue cells of those not used to its strength. I opted to purchase a decent Dijon.
The honey resident in my cupboard was produced by bees fed on avocado flowers, which gives it a surprisingly strong taste. Insread my festive foray to the supermarket provided a more neutrally flavoured honey.

The second chicken I casseroled in pomegranate juice. I countered the sharpness of the juice with spices and some wine rather then add more honey.
Luckily for me both recipes turned out well, the honey mustard sauce was quite delicious and the meal was a success.
The weather had cooled pleasantly but there wasn’t the blustery wind that so often signals the start of the Israeli Winter and causes havoc in my parent’s garden. Everyone joined in the blessings over the honey, pomegranates and other symbolic foods and partook of the meal while the wine and conversation flowed until we realised with a shock that it was past midnight and time to go home.

ES