Bountiful blessings

Rosh Hashanah — the Jewish New Year — begins at sundown Wednesday. Although the menu for our New Year dinner has settled in nicely through the years, I thought I would prepare a few unique dishes.

Claudia Roden is the author of several cookbooks. To me, she is the Julia Child of Jewish cooking. She was born to a family of Sephardic Jews in Cairo, educated in Paris and moved to London, where she still lives. Her tome, The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York ($35, Alfred A. Knopf, hardbound, sepia photographs and illustrations), was the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook of the Year. It includes more than 800 Ashkenazic (Central and Northern European) and Sephardic (Spanish, Middle Eastern and Portuguese) recipes.

Gefilte fish is a traditional Ashkenazic Rosh Hashanah appetizer. It is made with ground carp that is rolled into balls, mixed with matzo meal and beaten eggs, then simmered in boiling water. The traditional condiment is horseradish. Roden offers an interesting twist with her recipe for Sephardic fish balls in tomato sauce. The dish has roots in Egypt and Morocco.

I don’t usually serve salad for the New Year, but when I came across Roden’s recipe for black-eyed pea salad, I instantly wanted to try it. Sephardic Jews from many nations enjoy black-eyed peas during Rosh Hashanah. Ironically, Americans throughout the South traditionally eat black-eyed peas on Jan. 1.

Chicken soup with matzo balls is de rigeur in the Stein-Novack home. I make it year-round. But for something different, Roden offers a recipe for yellow split-pea soup mixed with pumpkin, a Moroccan specialty. In Tunisia and Morocco, Jews eat pumpkin to symbolize a New Year filled with prosperity.

Our family must have a 9-pound capon, raised by Farmer Bolton and purchased from Godshall’s in the Reading Terminal Market, on the first night of the holiday. For the second night, I will make Roden’s sweet-and-sour chicken, an Indian recipe with roots in Bombay. We sometimes enjoy sweet-and-sour meatballs during the holidays, so why not sweet-and-sour chicken?

Here are recipes for Rosh Hashanah. L’Shanah Tova! Happy New Year!

Fish Balls in Tomato Sauce
Boulettes de Poisson a la Sauce Tomate

For the sauce:

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 large tomatoes, peeled and chopped
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon sugar, or to taste
1 hot, fresh chili pepper or 1/4 teaspoon cayenne

For the fish balls:

1 pound ground whitefish
4 tablespoons dry white breadcrumbs or matzo meal
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
Good pinch of nutmeg
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons freshly chopped coriander or Italian parsley
1 lemon, cut in wedges, to serve with the fish balls

Directions:

To make the sauce, in a large pan, fry the garlic in oil until the aroma rises. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, salt and chili pepper or cayenne. Add about 2 cups of water and bring to a boil. If you leave the chili pepper in throughout the cooking, the sauce might end up too hot for you, so taste the sauce and remove the pepper when you feel the sauce is hot enough.

For the fish balls, mix all the ingredients together and work to a firm paste with your hands. If you use the food processor to grind the fish, do so very briefly or it can turn into a creamy pur�e. Take lumps of paste the size of a small walnut and roll them into little balls. Drop them, one by one, into the sauce and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes, turning them over once.

Serve with lemon wedges.

Serves four.

Note from Phyllis: You can use carp or a mixture of carp and whitefish to make the fish balls. Some people add some pike. Recipe can be easily doubled. I always use imported-from-Italy tomato paste packed in a toothpaste-like tube. Keep one in the refrigerator at all times.

Black-Eyed Pea Salad
Lubia

Ingredients:

1 pound black-eyed peas, soaked in water for one hour
Salt
1 mild red onion, chopped, or 2 garlic cloves, minced
4 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley
Black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin, optional
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon

Directions:

Boil the drained peas for about 20 minutes or until tender, adding salt toward the end. Drain, then add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.

Serves six to eight.

Note from Phyllis: Recipe can be easily doubled. You can substitute canned, well-drained black-eyed peas for the fresh. Roden says you can substitute brown or green lentils for the peas.

Yellow Split-Pea and Pumpkin Soup
Potakhe de Potiron

Ingredients:

1-1/4 cups yellow split peas
1 large onion, chopped
2-3/4 quarts chicken stock
Salt and pepper
4 tablespoons sunflower oil
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon saffron
1 pound fresh pumpkin, cubed
3 tablespoons finely chopped Italian parsley<

Directions:

Put the yellow split peas and the onion in a pot with the stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for a half-hour or until the split peas are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste, the oil, cinnamon, ginger, saffron and the pumpkin. Simmer until the pumpkin falls apart. Sprinkle with flat-leafed parsley before serving.

Serves six.

Note from Phyllis: Recipe can be easily doubled. You can substitute one (1-pound) can unsweetened pumpkin puree for the fresh pumpkin.

Sweet-and-Sour Chicken with Onion Sauce
Chittarnee

Ingredients:

2 pounds onions, finely chopped
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 or 3 cloves garlic, crushed in a press
1-1/2 teaspoons grated ginger
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1-1/2 teaspoons coriander
3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
A good pinch of cayenne or red chili powder, or to taste
2 bay leaves
6 boneless and skinless chicken fillets, cut into small pieces, about 2 pounds
Salt
1 pound tomatoes, peeled and chopped, or 1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes
2 to 3 tablespoons wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar, or to taste

Directions:

Put the onions in a large pan with the oil and cook very gently with the lid on, stirring occasionally, until they are very soft and golden. This may take up to a half-hour. Add the garlic, ginger, spices and bay leaves and stir for five minutes.

Put in the chicken pieces, season with salt and saut� for 10 minutes, turning them over once. Add the tomatoes and simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes, or until all the excess liquid has dried out and the gravy glistens with the oil. Finally, stir in the vinegar and sugar, and cook 10 minutes more.

Serve hot with rice.

Serves six.
Note from Phyllis: Recipe can be easily doubled. You can use a mix of boneless chicken breasts and boneless thighs. I would serve this dish with steamed asparagus or green beans on the side.