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.
Notes
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.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.Rob Eshman’s sukkah Courtesy of Rob EshmanI 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 focussed 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 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.
