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It’s not too late to win at Sukkot dinner.
Sukkot, if you didn’t already know, is the best Jewish holiday. You eat outdoors in homemade, temporary shelters. You gather together, maybe drink a little, and enjoy good food and conversation in the company of nature.
I married into Sukkot. In our Reform household, we marked the Big Three (High Holidays, Passover, Hanukkah), and if I learned about the other holidays in Hebrew school, I figured they were for real Jews, or extra credit.
But Sukkot was always a part of my wife Naomi’s life, and it would be part of ours. The first year I figured I could build my own sukkah. I knew what a bamboo hut looked like: I’d seen every episode of “Gilligan’s Island.”
We had a few new friends over, I made sweet corn tamales, and halfway through dinner, the sukkah listed north and collapsed. The next year, I bought a prefab sukkah kit and focused on cooking, not construction.
The sukkah goes up for just seven days to symbolize the temporary shelters of the Israelites as they wandered the desert. But very few of us actually dwell in our sukkahs. What they really are is temporary dining rooms. Sukkot dinner is the original pop-up, like, 2,000 years before pop-ups.
And in that spirit, it’s also a time I like to try new dishes for a new year. This year for Sukkot, which ends Sunday evening, Oct. 16, I’m rolling out a carrot salad with fresh ginger, a dash of harissa and a date dressing, and a fragrant tagine that cooks fish (or fried tofu) on a bed of sliced potatoes or zucchini under a bright green, fragrant Moroccan sauce called chermoula.
Add a round honey-glazed pumpkin challah and maybe some flan for dessert, and enjoy another beautiful evening outside.
Carrot Date Salad
Ingredients
- 4 medium carrots grated
- 1 cup parsley chopped
- 1 cup cilantro chopped
- 1 lemon juiced
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 tsp fresh ginger chopped
- 5 dates pitted
- 1/2 tsp harissa
- 1/2 tsp salt
- pepper to taste
Instructions
- Place carrots, parsley, and cilantro in a serving bowl. In a blender or food processor, add dates, lemon juice, ginger, salt, pepper, and harissa. Puree.
- Add dressing to carrots and toss well. You may need to add more dressing, or thin with some oil. Serve.
Moroccan Fish Tagine
Ingredients
Chermoula
- 2 cups cilantro leaves
- 2 cups parsley leaves
- 4 garlic cloves
- 1/2-1 tsp fresh red or green chili pepper chopped
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp sweet paprika
- 1/2 tsp ground corriander
- 1/2 cup olive oil extra virgin
- 1/4 freshly squeezed lemon juice
Fish
- 2 lbs fresh white fish fillets (halibut, cod, snapper)
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 onion sliced thin
- 4 cloved of garlic crushed
- 2 potatoes peeled and sliced 1/8 inch-thick
- 2 zuchinni sliced into 1/2-inch thick rounds
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Place all chermoula ingredients in a blender or food processor and process until well-blended. It can have some texture if you like, but it should be closer to a puree.
- Heat olive oil in the bottom of the casserole or tagine dish. When hot, add onions and garlic. Let cook until fragrant and slightly brown.
- Add the vegetables to make a nice bed. Spread some chermoula over the vegetables. Salt and pepper the fish filets on both sides and lay them on top of the vegetables. Add a cup or more of the chermoula and rub over the fish. Sprinkle with more salt and pepper.
- Cover the dish tightly and cook over medium-high heat on a gas stove, or in a preheated 375-degree oven, about 20 minutes. Keep warm until serving.
- Serve with lemon slices.
