alexist

For Rosh Hashana dinner tonight I made koresht-e fesenjan, which is Persian chicken stew with walnuts and pomegranates. It was very nice. Some people have a tradition not to eat nuts on Rosh Hashana (for reasons involving the similarity between the Hebrew words for nut and sin); my family doesn't, so I felt free to make it. :) Pomegranate is one of the traditional foods for Rosh Hashana, as a good sign for the new year. (The others are dates, fish, beets, leeks or cabbage, fenugreek or carrots [the Talmud says fenugreek, but Jews in Europe switched to carrots, as their Yiddish name also means 'increase', just like fenugreek's does in Aramaic], pumpkin, and a sheep or fish's head. Plus the apple and honey.)

It was very nice though :) Persian food is interesting--the Persians developed many of the techniques we now know from Indian food, such as layered rice dishes, kebabs, tandoor breads, etc, but it's much more lightly spiced. They also prefer sweet and sour (more sour than sweet) dishes, and lots of meat and fruit combinations. This makes it easy to like for a Polish Jew like me :-)

I'll definitely be trying some more recipes from the Persian cookbook I bought...

from marnanel

( another Q&A )

I came home from holiday to the first set of materials from my OU course.

It included video tapes! And CASSETTES!!

What do you do if you don't have a cassette player any more?!

I think the OU should offer a choice of DVD/VHS or CD/cassette... they can do CD-ROM, surely they can at least press audio CDs!