All the family memories accentuated with delicious dishes.
When it comes to Jewish holidays, we either feast or fast. When Yom Kippur ends, Jews around the world over will prepare for the joyous feast of Sukkot, which begins at sundown on October 16, by constructing booths (sukkot) within which we are commanded to eat and sleep during the week-long festival. Also called “Z’man Simchateinu” (Season of Our Rejoicing), Sukkot is the harvest festival mentioned in Leviticus 23:34-39. The temporary shelter of the sukkah recalls our 40-year wanderings in the desert after receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Lying closer to the heavens, generations of our ancestors rejoiced to enjoy the fruits of their labors as the growing season culminated in bushels of plenty.
Ron Arazi tells a heartwarming story of the Sukkot celebrations of his childhood in “The Jewish Holiday Table” by Naama Shefi and the Jewish Food Society with Devra Ferst (Artisan, $36). The book is filled with treasured holiday recipes of families around the globe, what Shefi calls “the backbone of Jewish cooking,” as well as the stories behind them.
Arazi writes of his grandparents who “were very enthusiastic Zionists and moved from Morocco to Israel when my mom was little, settling in Be’er Sheva, where my grandfather Aharon worked as a mechanic. He kept pieces of our family sukkah in the garage alongside his tools for all but one week of the year, when the metal poles and bright green tarp was set up in the front garden and decorated with an etrog, pomegranates, fresh yellow dates, and art my cousins and I made.”
He fondly recalls holiday celebrations in his grandparents’ tiny apartment where they had an “open door policy” for their huge family. “All of us would converge in the sukkah for the multi-day open house my grandparents hosted.” His grandmother Rachel’s cooking was especially beloved, her traditional recipes inherited from her mother’s family. The Sukkot menu included a variety of salads—carrot with cilantro, charred long hot chili peppers, roasted red pepper salad, tomato salad with argon oil—and at the center of the table, her comforting fava bean soup, which she called talachsa. All day long his grandfather would grill pita for the neighbors and friends who joined the family throughout the day. Today Arazi and his wife carry on the tradition, building a sukkah in their Brooklyn backyard every year. “We want to pass down the tradition to our kids, along with the family soup recipe and pita. As my wife, Leetal, likes to say, we’re holding onto that with two hands.”
“The Jewish Holiday Table” is divided by holiday and features 135 recipes and family stories: a Persian Rosh Hashanah feast, a Ukrainian-Mexican Seder, an Iraqi spread for Purim. The book is the natural outgrowth of the work of the Jewish Food Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating Jewish culinary heritage from around the world. You can listen to some of these stories on their podcast, Schmaltzy. (See jewishfoodsociety.org.)
Among the over one thousand recipes and their connected stories recorded in the archives of the society you will also find my grandmother’s Maple Walnut Cake as well as my reminiscences of its history. My mother and her three sisters all made it. It was their company special—even for each other! And if my Aunt Sally had not painstakingly recorded the recipe in her handwritten notebook, I would never have had it.
When I was growing up, my large, boisterous family would gather in my grandparents’ tiny apartment in Belle Harbor, New York, for festive holiday meals. Papa Harry, who had emigrated from Russia in 1906 as a carpenter, would extend the dining table with boards reaching practically to the walls. The arrival of the aunties with their foil-covered dishes signaled the beginning of the holiday feast, a menu that seldom varied.
Over at the children’s table, a gaggle of cousins, raised practically as siblings, chattered, spilled soup, shouted, squabbled, hiccupped with laughter, fought over drumsticks, dropped crumbs, clamored for seconds, and ran around, as far as one could run in such tight quarters, until a withering look from one of the aunties brought a temporary attitude adjustment, and then it was back to the merriment.
Here in Southern California the calendar tells us it’s fall while the thermometer begs to differ, but Mama Hinda’s Maple Walnut Cake, with its sweet maple flavor and intoxicating aroma of walnuts toasting, reminds me of idyllic autumns past.
Mama Hinda’s Maple Walnut Cake
Soft and spongy, this cake reminds me of fall, with its sweet maple flavor. My mother and the aunties are gone, but I can still smell the aroma of walnuts toasting.
Note: To measure flour properly, spoon lightly into a measuring cup and level.
Yield: 12 servings
Vegetable oil or unflavored vegetable cooking spray, for greasing pan
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting pan
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup cold brewed coffee
2 1/2 teaspoons pure maple extract
7 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 cups walnut halves and/or pieces, toasted and finely chopped
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 13 x 9-inch baking pan, dust with flour, and tap out excess.
2. Stir flour and baking powder together in a bowl, and set aside.
3. Combine oil, coffee, and maple extract in another bowl, and set aside.
4. Beat egg yolks and brown sugar with electric mixer on high speed, scraping bowl several times, until very light and thick, 3 to 4 minutes. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture in three additions, alternating with oil mixture in two additions, beginning and ending with flour.
5. Using clean, dry bowl and beaters, beat egg whites on medium-high speed until soft peaks form. Add granulated sugar, a tablespoon at a time, beating 10 seconds after each addition. Then raise speed to high and beat until stiff peaks form, about 6 minutes total. Stir one fourth of beaten egg whites into batter to lighten it. Then add remaining whites in three additions, folding them in until incorporated. Fold in chopped walnuts.
6. Scrape batter into prepared baking pan and smooth top. Bake on center oven rack until top is golden brown, cake springs back when lightly touched, and cake tester comes out clean, 55 to 65 minutes. Let cake cool in pan set on wire rack.
7. Cut cake into squares, and serve warm or at room temperature.
Source: “Cooking Jewish” by Judy Bart Kancigor
Fava Bean Soup with Harissa
Fava beans are mild, but the soup gets a garlic harissa-based topping that you add to each bowl just before serving. Dried split beans are nutty tasting and quick cooking since their outer skin has already been removed. Don’t confuse them with whole dried beans, which take much longer to cook, require peeling, and won’t yield the creamy consistency you want for this soup.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
1 tablespoon extra–virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
5 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
3 cups dried split fava beans, rinsed
7 cups water
3 tablespoons harissa
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Kosher salt
1. Heat olive oil in Dutch oven or other large heavy-bottomed pot over medium–high heat. Add turmeric and 2 tablespoons of the garlic and cook until aromatic, about 1 minute. Add fava beans and water and bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer, covered, until beans are completely tender, 30 to 35 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, in small bowl, stir together harissa, canola oil, lemon juice, remaining 3 tablespoons garlic, and 2 teaspoons salt; set aside.
3. Transfer beans and cooking liquid to blender, add 1 tablespoon salt, and purée until smooth. You may need to do this in batches.
4. Return soup to pot, taste, and add more salt, if you like. Serve in individual bowls, garnishing each one with a spoonful of harissa topping. To make ahead, store soup and harissa topping separately in refrigerator up to 2 days and reheat soup before serving.
Source: “The Jewish Holiday Table” by Naama Shefi and the Jewish Food Society with Devra Ferst
Jlife Food Editor Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of “Cooking Jewish” (Workman) and “The Perfect Passover Cookbook” (an e-book short from Workman), a columnist and feature writer for the Orange County Register and other publications and can be found on the web at www.cookingjewish.com.
