Happy... New Year?

This weekend heralds the arrival of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year! All Jewish holidays are accompanied with a feast of some sort (Jewish culture, like any culture, of course, revolves around its flavors and spices), but the Rosh Hashanah meal is particularly lengthy and elaborate, with a multitude of symbolic foods and a vast variety of familial recipes for preparing each of the dishes. When I was a child my family always spent Rosh Hashanah with the family of one of my closest childhood friends, Miriam, and the noisy, joyous melding of our two families remains one of the warmest memories of my youth.

The Jewish New Year meal centers around a set of traditional ingredients, each symbolizing a special hope for the near year: apples, raisins or dates, honey, a squash or sweet potato, beets, leeks, and black-eyed peas. The most well known, of course, is the apple and honey - a sweet apple dipped in syrupy honey in honor of our wish for a "sweet" and joyous coming year. This year I was feeling a bit fancy, so I drizzled the apples with lemon juice and dusted them with cinnamon before passing the plate around for us all to grace a slice with dripping honey and toast the new year!

A lesser-known Rosh Hashanah food is the bright red beet. The Hebrew word for beet, "selek," somewhat resembles the Hebrew word "she'yistalqu" (if you use a bit of imagination), which means "that they will be removed." Thus, beets during the new year celebration traditionally symbolize the wish that any troubles or pain that might find us in the coming year will be rapidly removed by God's mercy.

Indeed, I wish this for us all...

Returning to the beets themselves, this year I decided to have a bit of fun with the ability of beets to color everything in sight (including the white shirt I so unwisely wore while chopping them...), and created a fluorescent pink couscous salad!

Stay tuned for more traditional Rosh Hashanah foods... and Happy Jewish New Year, y'all!

Pink Couscous Salad

4 beets, each well washed and cut into approx. 3/4" chunks

2 1/2 cups vegetable broth

1 onion, chopped

2 T olive oil

1 T red wine vinegar

1 tsp lemon zest

2 cups whole wheat couscous

~ Place the beets in a microwave-safe bowl, pour in the broth, cover with a paper plate (or anything else suitable to prevent beet juice from spattering all over the microwave), and microwave for 15 minutes.

~ Meanwhile, in a large saucepan or pot, saute the onion in the olive oil over medium-high heat until the onion is limp and translucent. Turn off the heat.

~ When the beets have finished cooking, pour the beets, and all the broth, into the pan with the onions. Stir in the red wine vinegar and lemon zest, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

~ Turn the heat back on, bring the broth to a boil, and quickly stir in the couscous. Cover, remove the pan from the heat, and let the couscous sit for 5 minutes.

~ Fluff the couscous with a fork, season again to taste with salt and pepper, and serve it all its bright pink glory!