Carrot tzimmes, a sweet fruit and vegetable stew, is a dish Carol Ungar’s mother always made for Rosh Hashana. The golden carrot coins signaled prosperity, recalls the cookbook author; what more appropriate dish to mark the Jewish new year, the two-day holiday that began this year at sundown Sunday?
Rosh Hashana foods are traditionally as rich in symbolism as they are in flavor. Apples dipped in honey may be the most familiar dish of the holiday, but don’t forget the role vegetables play on the table.
“The whole thing about Rosh Hashana is sweetness: Honey, fruits, root vegetables, for a sweet new year,” Marlena Spieler, an American-born food writer and cookbook author, wrote in an email from her home outside London. Roasted carrots are a constant, but she also cited a North African seven-vegetable couscous that some communities make for the holiday.
Yet, in other families, veggies sometimes get shortchanged. “Eastern European Jewish cooking isn’t really vegetable centric, and that definitely extends to holiday cooking,” Leah Koenig, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based author of “Modern Jewish Cooking,” wrote in an email.