Rosh Hashanah Recap

I guess I stopped writing just after my birthday, so I missed filling you all in on my Rosh Hashana menu. I wanted to get inspired, early on, and try some new dishes but as usual, I got side-tracked and went with many tried and true but did manage a new one.
For starters, we went with a Mediterranean theme:

• hummus
• Babba Ghanoush
• stuffed grape leaves
• olives
• pickled vegetables

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All of the above I bought at Whole Foods on Friday.
For dinner we had:

• Matzo Ball Soup (aunt Sheila made the pea soup)
• Mixed Greens salad with Everyday Vinaigrette, glazed pecans (store-bought), and Gorgonzola (on the side b/c half the family doesn’t like cheese on their salad)
• Then I stole Chicken with Leeks and Figs from Amy. I was worried about making a new dish without taste-testing it first and so I was also going to make the Eggplant Parm Lasagna but my oven went on the Fritz on Saturday and I didn’t want to push my luck with its use. As it turned out, with the oven, I “trick” it into warming up and once it gets to the proper temp, it maintains it but I just never knew when it would die, so didn’t push it. Anyway, back to the Chicken, mine was a bit different than Amy’s because I used boneless, skinless chicken breasts (most of my family are white meat eaters; cooking for my extended family, by the way, can be problematic at best). So what I did was to keep the chicken breasts out of the concoction, after the initial browning, until the last 15 minutes when I added the figs, since I figured the thin breasts would cook quicker (oh yeah, I used the chicken breast cutlets). Anyway, this worked well. I also made it on Sunday and let it sit in the fridge until Monday, when I reheated it in the broken oven for about 30 minutes, covered, at 350-375 (hard to tell w/ the broken oven).
• Carrot Coins with Maple-Balsamic Browned Butter
• Standard Noodle Kugel (I had a craving)
• Raisin and Plain Challahs

For dessert, I kept it simple with a fruit platter, and Jewish Apple Cake (yes, it’s really called Jewish Apple cake, which reminds me of a story. At one of the first “family” gatherings I with Chris’s family, at his cousins’, they were bringing out the desserts, announcing them on at a time, until they reached Jewish Coffee Cake. After they said it, everyone turned to look at me, fearful of a faux pois (sp) I guess. I just smiled and said, “Funny, we usually have Catholic Coffee Cake at our house.”) Anyway, I guess it’s called Jewish Apple Cake because basically, every Jewish family I know has some derivation of this cake in their family repertoire (sort of like Italian Wedding Soup?). The one I made was a lightened version from Cooking Light. I simply served this with Cinnamon Ice Cream (a second batch) that the Sunday Slow Scoopers made a few weeks earlier.

Everything came out great, and there was plenty of food and no worries with the busted oven.