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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/59130/full/59130/new-food-ideas-add-novelty-to-apples-and-honey-custom/ <br /><br /> <b>New food ideas add novelty to apples-and-honey custom</b> <br /> Thursday, September 2, 2010 | by edmon j. rodman <br /><br /><p>What flavor is your Jewish New Year?</p> <p>For most, Rosh Hashanah begins with apples dipped in honey, eaten to ensure a sweet new year. Over time this combination has become a ritual comfort food.</p> <p>But what if we like change? What if we don’t like apples, or honey, or find the mixture a drip too saccharine for our tastes?</p> <p>Maybe eating the same old thing portends we will have the same old year. Does habit have us singing, “Apples dipped in honey on Rosh Hashanah, blah?”</p> <p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 216px;"><img alt="RHhoney2" class="left" height="288" src="http://www.jweekly.com/images/uploads/y_photos_2010/q09_03_10/RHhoney2.jpg" title="Try substituting traditional apples and honey for offbeat favorites such as chow mein noodles and egg creams." width="216" /> <div class="caption">Try substituting traditional apples and honey for offbeat favorites such as chow mein noodles and egg creams.</div> </div> If what we are celebrating is sweetness, let’s revel in a different kind of sweet. Food dehydrators and molecular gastronomy aren’t necessary to come up with something better. We just have to follow our noses, taste buds, Jewish history and rituals.</p> <p>Before we say a blessing and eat, let’s consider what we want our food to represent. At this time of year, we dine on so much food symbolism. Two noteworthy symbols: round challah, for the continuity of the Jewish year (some are even decorated with wings or ladders anticipating our spiritual ascent); and pomegranates, their seeds representing the commandment to be fruitful and multiply.</p> <p>For a new year filled with as many new experiences as the seeds of the pomegranate, a new combination is in order. Unless someone is planning to open a Rosh Hashanah food truck, we will need to come up with our own.</p> <p>To start, let’s not stick with honey. According to Claudia Roden, author of “The Book of Jewish Food,” beekeeping is not mentioned in the Bible, and it is believed that every mention of honey in the Pentateuch refers to date honey.</p> <p>Since we want to bring more Torah into our lives at this time of year, let’s begin with dates. Many already use them as an ingredient in charoset on Passover. “Let me take hold of its branches,” says a verse in Song of Songs that refers to the tamar, the date palm.</p> <p>Pairing dates with another ancient food, ice cream — it goes back to 400 BCE Persia — provides a kid- and adult-friendly treat to begin 5771.</p> <p>So chop up a few dates and sprinkle them onto some vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt. Think of a refreshing new year with many satisfying acts of lovingkindness. Serve and say “L’shanah tova u’metukah,” wishing you a sweet new year.</p> <p>Another traditional approach to a sweet new year is eating taiglach, or “little dough,” small pieces of dough boiled in honey.</p> <p><img alt="RHhoney" class="left" height="298" src="http://www.jweekly.com/images/uploads/y_photos_2010/q09_03_10/RHhoney.jpg" title="RHhoney" width="360" />How about substituting another form of cooked dough, one with which many Jews are more familiar: crispy chow mein noodles? We already eat them on Christmas (apparently so does Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan). So why not on a Jewish holiday? For dipping, use the bright red sweet-and-sour sauce, of course.</p> <p>Moving beyond food, at this time of year we should be thinking about the land of milk and honey, and that sounds a lot like a drink. How about raising a glass for a sweet and healthy year?</p> <p>With their myriad ruby red seeds, antioxidant-rich pomegranates have a holiday significance, reminding us of both mitzvahs and fertility: all the good deeds and perhaps new babies we intend to surround ourselves with in the coming year.</p> <p>We can toast the year with a glass of pomegranate juice, sweetened further with a slice of orange on the rim of the glass. Pomegranates and oranges are agricultural products of modern-day Israel.</p> <p>Chocolate has all the right stuff to bring us Jewish New Year joy. For a Jewish connection, Rabbi Deborah Prinz, on her blog Jews on the Chocolate Trail, has amply demonstrated the involvement of Jewish traders and producers in the chocolate trade.</p> <p>Your favorite fruit or berries dipped in melted chocolate can easily introduce a sweet new year.</p> <p>But if I have my choice of chocolate-infused ways to bring in Rosh Hashanah, it’s a chocolate egg cream every time. A treat with a Jewish history, many historians say the drink dates back to early 1900s Brooklyn. Louis Auster, a Brooklyn candy store owner, is said to have created the fizzy chocolate concoction.</p> <p>To make a chocolate egg cream, traditionalists recommend using only Fox’s U-Bet, still made in Brooklyn. The ritual calls for a little milk and some chocolate syrup; add cold soda water and stir vigorously.</p> <p>The bubbles represent the sparkle we all need to begin a new year; their sweet effervescence can get us written onto that big menu of life. Chocolate mixed in seltzer on Rosh Hashanah, yes!</p>

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