Rosh HaShanah a look at the food from the last couple of days

For me, the foods for Rosh Hashanah are not about the novel and the creative but about recreating the memories of my childhood.

Despite my being more adventurous with the spicing than my mother ever was, ( High praise from my mother was "Mild and delicious".) both dishes struck exactly the right notes for me.

I made chicken in my last minute neurotic worry that there wasn't enough food, (We will be eating tzimmes long past the Tishrei holidays and stuffed cabbage through Sukkot.)

The chicken was a surprise hit of the table. It was flavored with fresh lime juice, coffee hawaij,

dried lime powder and I stuffed some medjool dates into the chicken cavity. After the chicken was cooked I de-glazed the pan with lemon juice and water and poured the results over the chicken when I served it. It's a more Middle Eastern take on the deep dark flavors of Eastern European tzimmes and cabbage. You can buy this brand of coffee hawaij online. You can add the spice mix to coffee but it is just a great mix to add to sweet baked goods. Soup Hawaij

is curry adjacent and is also a nice thing to have in your pantry. I use the Lior brand. Pereg also makes a soup hawaij.

So for the next segment of this post you need to use your imagination. Unfortunately, there are no photos.

My daughter baked us a batch of deeply flavored honey cakes. Unfortunately one of the cakes broke apart when she took it out of the pan. She said that the broken cake was delicious. I suggested that I make a coffee custard and that we toast the cake crumbs and serve the toasted cake bits over the coffee custard. I had most of a pint of coconut based "heavy cream" in the fridge that could serve as both the fat and much of the liquid content of the custard.

We served that for dessert for the first night. It was hands down delicious.

As we cleaned up form dinner first night, I remembered a New Orleans thrifty use for stale cake. it is a dish called Russian cake. You pack broken cake and bread bits into a plastic wrap or parchment paper lined, pan and add custard to the to the busted cake and then wrap up the cake and top with a weight for a day.we served the "Russian cake" as part of our dessert second night and it was a favorite of the table. I have used the "Russian Cake" fix for fallen cakes, ugly cakes and all manner of baking disasters.It's a good thing to know about.

The isolation of COVID makes me appreciate the pleasure of having actual humans join us for holiday meals. It is a gift to be able to sit down with friends and family at the same table.

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sarah in nyc

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