This Rosh Hashanah Menu From the Gefilteria Will Guarantee a Sweet New Year

Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz, co-founders of The Gefilteria and authors of the new cookbook The Gefilte Manifesto, share their go-to recipes for a fall holiday feast.
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Photo by Lauren Volo

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Rosh Hashanah was always one of the best parts of growing up Jewish. We were lucky enough to have a double dose of New Year's Eve celebration. There was the mainstream stay-up-til-midnight and gorge on hors d’ouevres party on December 31st, of course. But a few months earlier, we'd celebrate the Jewish New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah (which literally translates as "head of the year") in autumn. Since Rosh Hashanah coincides with the start of the school year and the transition from summer to fall, it always felt like the perfect time to celebrate a year-to-year transition. And the holiday has real meaning, too: Rosh Hashanah sets the stage for a time when we wipe our spiritual slates clean and start the year off with a pure heart.

Yoskowitz and Alpern's new book, devoted to reviving and reinventing Jewish food.

Living on the East Coast, the transition to fall brings lightly chilled September days, the peak of apple season and the beginning of the winter squash harvest, with all its autumnal colors and flavors. Warming spices like cinnamon and cloves are back in fashion, and the crisp air gives us permission to go a bit heavier (but not too heavy) with our meals. This year Rosh Hashanah falls in early October, a bit later than usual, which means even more autumn goodness to incorporate into the holiday feast.

Much of what excites us about Ashkenazi Jewish cooking is how the traditional holiday foods, at least in eastern and central Europe, as well as the Northeast and Midwest of the United States, operate in tandem with the seasons. The climate in New York is not unlike that of eastern Europe—just a bit more temperate—which means similar fall crops. So we like to weave that seasonal bounty into our High Holiday brisket and autumn kale salad. And if there's anything that feels more like fall than honey cake, we haven't found it yet..

Add sweetness to your New Year (and your kale salad)

Liz: Something about this kale salad feels like quintessential fall. Perhaps that’s because when serving it at my table I’m reminded of my favorite forest green flannel shirt, with its speckles of orange and white. And, like my flannel, the various components of this Autumn Kale Salad are in heavy rotation just when the Jewish New Year arrives. The salad is nice and simple: Tender leaves of Lacinato (aka Tuscan or dino) kale, slightly sweet Delicata squash, and hearty roasted garlic. Crispy roasted nuts and the plump golden raisins add texture and sweetness, balancing out any hearty Rosh Hashanah feast.

Drench your root veg in flavor

Liz: I look forward to making this wine-braised brisket every New Year. It fills my house with that familiar "Jewish holidays" scent. After slow-braising the brisket and removing it from the pan, I cook root vegetables in the braising liquid, and then spoon it all over rice or kasha. As an Ashkenazi cook, I could never let a drop of that delicious flavor go to waste! If you’ve never made a brisket before, this is a great place to start. This recipe is easy to follow, with a short list of ingredients, and the cook time guarantees tender results.

Make your honey cake sing

Jeffrey: Each year, when the Jewish New Year arrives, I look forward to honey cake. It‘s not my favorite dessert, nor the one I like to bake the most, but it's distinctive in its layered and subtle sweetness, with warming spices and the unmistakable hint of burnt coffee. This cake symbolizes the kind of New Year we hope for: not overbearingly sweet, but just sweet enough.

I’ve come to believe that the measure of a true Jewish dessert is how well it pairs with conversations before bedtime over glasses of tea. There’s no better dessert for that than honey cake, which we eat when the whole family comes together—all of the generations. And since the honey keeps the cake moist for days, it means multiple sessions of storytelling, laughing, and whispering into the night.

Liz Alpern, cofounder of The Gefilteria, got her start in the Jewish food world working with acclaimed cookbook author Joan Nathan. She curates and cooks for pop-up events and gives lectures and hands-on classes around the globe about Jewish food and culture. She holds an MBA from the Zicklin School of Business at CUNY Baruch College. She has been featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for food and wine, as well as in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Saveur, and The Wall Street Journal.

Jeffrey Yoskowitz, cofounder of The Gefilteria, trained as a pickler at Adamah Farm, where he fell in love with the art of lacto-fermentation, and has worked in the food world as an entrepreneur and a consultant for food businesses, as well as a writer. He grew up visiting New York’s finest Jewish food institutions and has written on food and culture for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, and Gastronomica. He frequently speaks to audiences around the world and teaches workshops about Jewish food and culture.