Rosh Hashana memories

When I was growing up, my large, boisterous family would gather in my grandparents' tiny apartment in Belle Harbor, N.Y., for the festive Rosh Hashana meal.

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.

For the forshpeis (appetizer), Aunt Estelle's homemade, lovingly shaped gefilte fish served with Uncle Lou's horseradish, hand-grated on the back porch to keep out the fumes.

Aunt Irene's golden chicken soup and ethereal matzo balls were followed by Mama Hinda's roast chicken and brisket with oven-browned potatoes and Aunt Sally's tsimmes (sweet carrot stew).

The centerpiece of the table was Mama Hinda's grand spiral challah, round for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, a symbol of the endless cycle of life. Only for this holiday would she add raisins, a sweet embellishment to enjoy a sweet New Year.

Rosh Hashana begins this year at sundown on Monday and ends at nightfall on Oct. 1.

Sweet notes echoed from the beginning of the meal, as all assembled dipped apples in honey, to the dessert platters wedged onto Mama's groaning sideboard: Aunt Irene's dark, dense honey cake; Aunt Estelle's mile-high sponge cake; Aunt Hilda's chocolate chip mandelbrot (twice-baked cookies); and Aunt Sally's apple strudel and taiglach, crisp cookie balls slowly simmered in honey.

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.

Or so I'm told. We were never there!

My parents were singers, and as I recall the Jewish holidays of my childhood, no idyllic scene of family gatherings comes to mind. Dad was also a part-time cantor, and we spent Rosh Hashana at New York's Riverside Plaza Hotel where Dad, along with a rented rabbi, conducted his magnificent services, complete with choir (including my mom's glorious contralto) for a congregation that had lost its building in a fire and had never rebuilt. We took our holiday meal, not with the family, but at places like Jack Silverman's Old Romanian restaurant on Allen Street on the Lower East Side, where Dad performed club dates throughout the year, joining the ranks of such legendaries as Julius La Rosa, Joey Adams and Myron Cohen.

By my late teens, my parents' holiday gig had moved to the Windsor Hotel in the "borscht belt," New York's Catskill Mountains.

How to describe the Catskills of the '50s and '60s? A Jewish land cruise — the breeding ground for so many entertainers, glamorous, fun-packed, the buffet that never ended. And as the children of headliners Lillian and Jan Bart, my brother, Gary, and I basked in their reflected glory.

With my dad's death, at age 52, in August 1971 — and our move just a few weeks later to California, where my brother and his family had already settled — the party came to a screeching halt.

Rosh Hashana 1971 is a blurred memory. Mom had come with us, and for the first time, instead of sharing the holiday meal with hundreds of rollicking vacationers, we set a table for eight in our Tustin apartment.

With no memory bank of our own holiday recipes and 3,000 miles away from the family, Mom and I had to create our own traditions. Sure, the aunts sent us their recipes. Brisket and chicken were no-brainers, but we took one look at the gefilte fish and headed for the Manischewitz. Ditto the horseradish. (In later years, the food processor made fast work of both.) A round challah we found at Poul's in Tustin. Our mile-high sponge cake climbed a few inches and collapsed in defeat. And strudel and taiglach? You've got to be kidding!

But Aunt Irene's chicken soup beckoned. Maybe it was the tears of grief, but Mom's first attempt comforted, nurtured, soothed and succored — chicken soup truly is a brew for the soul.

As the years passed, Mom's soup morphed into a four-day project. You see, my mother adheres to the "if some is good, more is better" school of cooking. Her secret? The whole produce market goes into that pot ... or, should I say, pots!

"You're messing up the kitchen anyway," she taught me, "so you might as well make lots and freeze some for later. You never know when someone might catch a cold."

Now in her 90s, Mom's not yet ready to hand over the mantle. Sure, these days I chauffeur her as she shops and try to be patient as she sniffs each dill sprig and inspects every parsnip. We scrape carrots and clean chickens together now, and as we do, we reminisce.

More than a course, Mom's soup is our link to holidays and celebrations past — a memory in every spoonful.

Mom dishes out wisdom as she ladles her soup, teaching me more in the process than how to clean a kosher chicken. This is a woman who never complains ("What do I have to complain about? I have the best family in the world!"), who doesn't even own an aspirin ("But I don't have a headache!"), who accepts with grace all of life's challenges ("I may be alone, but I'm never lonely.")

While Mom's chicken soup is the immutable staple of every holiday meal, for the rest of the menu, my M.O. each year is to try recipes from recent cookbooks.

Since Rosh Hashana celebrates the birth of the Earth, I'm irresistibly drawn to "Food to Live By: The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook" (Workman, $21.95) by Myra Goodman, co-founder of Earthbound Farm, the world's largest grower and purveyor of organic produce. (Food writer Linda Holland and chef Pamela McKinstry are co-authors.)

This city girl became a farmer by accident when she and her husband, Drew, tended a small raspberry patch in Carmel to raise money for graduate school. "We fell in love with living off the land and growing food," she said.

As a child, Goodman spent holiday meals with her father's only sister to survive the Holocaust and her Orthodox family in Brooklyn's Boro Park. "People who went through the Holocaust either got more religious or less," she reflected. "My parents weren't really focused on Jewish traditions, but now that I have kids and live in a community with a very small Jewish population — and really being into food as our family anchor — I want to give them a sense of their religious heritage and set traditions through the pleasure of food."

• Lillian Bart's Chicken Soup

Yield: About 6 quarts

8-10 pounds carrots, trimmed, peeled

1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into fourths

1 green bell pepper, cored and seeded, cut into fourths

3-4 large onions, peeled, halved

1 large bunch celery, washed, separated

3 large parsnips, trimmed, peeled

1 large bunch parsley

6 cloves garlic, peeled

1 large turnip, peeled and cut into fourths

1 piece flanken, about 3⁄4 pound; see cook's notes

4-5 kosher roasting chickens, cleaned and cut into fourths, divided use

Bottled water

2-3 large bunches fresh dill

Optional: 2 kosher chickens, cut into fourths

For serving: matzo balls, lukshen (thin noodles) or mandlen (puffy spheres)

Cook's notes: Flanken are strips of beef from the chuck end of short ribs. Broth can be frozen or stored in refrigerator up to two days. When reheating broth that has been refrigerated for two days, bring to boil and boil five minutes.

Procedure

Divide vegetables, flanken and 2-3 chickens between two large soup pots. Add enough bottled water to barely cover ingredients. On high heat, bring to simmer; reduce heat to maintain a simmer. Skim foam. Simmer until chicken is cooked and tender. Remove cooked chicken and place in bowl to cool. Add more uncooked chicken and repeat process until all chicken is cooked. Add dill last 30 minutes of simmering. Refrigerate cooled, cooked chicken. (Nibble on flanken or, heaven forbid, discard.)

Remove and reserve carrots. Strain soup through large sieve, pressing down firmly on vegetables. Discard any vegetables pieces left in sieve. Refrigerate broth. Fat will congeal on top of broth during chilling.

Remove fat from broth. If desired (to supercharge broth with chicken flavor), return broth to pots. Add optional chicken and simmer until chicken is thoroughly cooked and tender. Remove chicken. Strain broth through sieve.

Return broth to heat. Taste and if needed add pepper or salt (remember, kosher chicken tends to be salty). Slice carrots and add to broth. Add matzo balls and either cooked lukshen (thin noodles) or, on Passover, mandlen.

• Streusel-Stuffed Baked Apples

Yield: Six servings

3⁄4 cup all-purpose flour

3⁄4 cup dark brown sugar

1⁄2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick-cooking or one-minute type)

6 tablespoons (3⁄4 stick) unsalted butter or margarine, melted

3 medium red apples, such as McIntosh or Cortland

3 medium green apples, such as Granny Smith

1 cup apple juice

1⁄2 cup honey

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Thick caramel (recipe follows)

Ice cream or whipped cream, dairy or pareve (optional)

Procedure

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Prepare streusel filling: In a medium bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, oats and melted butter or margarine. Pinch to form coarse crumbs. Set aside.

Wash apples and, with a melon-baller, carefully scoop out the core, creating a "bowl" about 2 inches in diameter. Be careful not to go all the way to the bottom or to break the sides. Fill each apple with the streusel filling, stuffing apples to their tops. Arrange apples in a shallow 9- by 9-inch baking dish.

In a small bowl, stir together apple juice, honey and cinnamon. Pour into the baking pan. Bake, uncovered, for 25 to 30 minutes or until apples are tender. If streusel starts to burn, loosely cover with a piece of foil. Carefully remove apples to a platter or to individual dessert dishes. Drizzle apples with pan juices or Thick Caramel and serve warm with a scoop of your favorite ice cream or whipped cream.

• Thick Caramel

Yield: 11⁄2 to 2 cups

1⁄2 teaspoon food-quality Dutch-process cocoa powder, such as Droste brand

2⁄3 cup nondairy whipping cream, such as Richwhip brand

1 cup light corn syrup

1⁄2 cup water

3 cups sugar

11⁄2 teaspoons lime juice

1 tablespoon margarine

3⁄4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Procedure

In a medium bowl, whisk cocoa powder in whipping cream until completely dissolved, smoothing out any lumps. Add corn syrup, whisk again, and set aside.

In a medium heavy-bottomed pot, combine water, sugar and lime juice. Over medium-high heat, bring mixture to a boil, stirring constantly until sugar dissolves. With a pastry brush soaked in water, brush sides of pot clean to remove splatters. Cook without stirring.

As water evaporates, bubbles will become bigger and slower; start watching for caramel color to appear. Swirl or turn pot to avoid scorching and to evenly mix syrup. Simmer until mixture is amber colored. Go by the color as the heat will differ from stove to stove. Don't allow caramel to burn and work carefully so as not to burn yourself.

Whisk in whipping cream mixture. The caramel will bubble profusely and may clump. Keep stirring until caramel is smooth in color and texture. Simmer for two to three minutes or until slightly thickened. Remove from heat and stir in margarine and vanilla. Caramel will be extremely hot, so exercise caution as you carefully transfer caramel to large bowl and refrigerate. Caramel will thicken as it cools. To use as topping, reheat in the microwave until syrupy.

Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of "Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family" (Workman, $19.95) and can be found on the Web at www.cookingjewish.com.