Rosh Hashanah is my favorite Jewish holiday. What can I say, I'm a sentimental gal, and I love the idea of new beginnings, freeing ourselves to walk along new paths, and embarking on exciting new adventures.
A while back I was invited to speak at a conference here in Tuscany, and my presentation was dedicated to Jewish food in italy. This fascinating subject doesn’t receive nearly enough attention as it deserves. It often surprises me how many Italians consider Jewish food to be something foreign, almost exotic, when in reality, jews have been living in Italy for well over 2000 years, even before christianity came to this country. Many popular dishes in Italy today are made with vegetables that Jewish-Iberian merchants brought over in the 16th century (mainly tomatoes and eggplants), and many recipes that have entered the collective Italian cookbook, so to speak, have in fact deep Jewish roots (for example - sarde in saor, the iconic fish dish from Venice) and only later became famous among the general population.
What are the classic Jewish-Italian dishes for Rosh Hashanah?
With my talk in that conference in mind, I wanted to find a way to incorporate at least a few traditional Italian Rosh Hashanah dishes into my usual Rosh Hashanah Seder. So, I began my menu-planning by leafing through some of my favorite Jewish-Italian recipe books, featuring well-loved classics, such as polpette di pollo con sedano (chicken meatballs with a tomato and celery sauce, traditionally made by Roman jews), stroncatelli (a long pasta, similar to spaghetti, typically made by jews from the city of Ancona in eastern Italy), calzonicchi (half-moon shaped pasta), triglie alla mosaica (red mullet fillets, cooked in tomato sauce), and zucca fritta (fried pumpkin, typically served with honey).
Many of these traditional recipes were born in times of need and struggle, and were designed to make the very best of a rather limited selection of ingredients.
Today, we are lucky to live in a time of greater abundance, and this allowed me to expand the selection of dishes on offer, and highlight some delicious and seasonal Tuscan dishes, too (September really is the best month here in Tuscany!). Finally, I wanted each dish on the menu to represent one of the traditional simanim (signs) of the Rosh Hashanah seder: squash, leeks, honey, pomegranate and apples, are all symbolic marks of this holiday, and are always served.
Delicious Italian cheese
Though cheese has nothing to do with Rosh Hashanah, I am after all a certified cheese taster, and I did just come back from the incredible Bra cheese festival 2019… :) This bi-annual event organized by the slow food movement hosts hundreds of producers from all over Italy, and many countries in Europe, too. How could I deprive my guests of the stunning cheeses that I had bought there? That would be cruel... :) So for our antipasto, I prepared some dried apricots, soaked in port wine and then filled with Roquefort cheese, as well a tagliere of grapes and figs, (locally sourced, organic and 100% Tuscan, of course), along with six award winning cheeses from some of my favorite artisanal producers in Tuscany and Piedmont (piemonte).
Fare La scarpetta
For the traditional fish dish, instead of making my grandmother’s gefilte fish or serving the usual over-baked salmon with herbs, I made polpette di baccalà, cod-fish balls, a slightly modified version of a traditional dish from the city of Livorno, on the Tuscan coast, and served them with a rich tomato sauce. The correct way to eat the sauce, by the way, is to “mop it off the plate” with a piece of challah bread :) The Italians call this movement of soaking up the sauce and mopping the plate clean - “fare la scarpetta”, which literally means “to make a little shoe”.
Keep it sweet
The traditional honey-drizzled pumpkin dish was fine-tuned and turned into a delicate pumpkin-cream galette, infused with nutmeg and cinnamon, and topped with a generous sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds.
Since one of the highlights of any Rosh Hashanah meal is leek fritters, I was not going to give those up! They take some work, but they are very much worth it. Finally, no Rosh Hashanah in my house is complete without roasted onions, stuffed with rice, lentils, pomegranates and a mix of spices, and a traditional honey cake.
Shana tova from Tuscany, everyone!