Since 2005 we’ve been hosting the family feast for Rosh Hashanah. And what is a traditional holiday dinner without an excuse to do some cooking.

Rosh Hashanah occurs in September or October and so it’s traditional to include fall produce, particularly fruits which symbolize the hoped for sweetness of the new year. To this effect we made a huge run on the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market and picked up nearly all of the fruits and vegetables for the meal, including this apples.

When you have to slice two dozen of them, the slicer helps. These are served with honey (also from the market).

A traditional first course is the chicken McNugget of the fish world, Gefilte Fish. We made ours from scratch using this recipe.

As we have a beet dish, we used the beet greens as garnish.

You can see some of the appetizer plates prepped and ready to go.

And the fish plated with the greens and horseradish sauce (using Atomic Horseradish naturally).

Second course was a dish we’ve been working on this fall. Jose Andres‘ Gazpacho (recipe here). This is the garnish of homemade croutons and various vegetables from the farmer’s market.

And with the soup added, dressed with a bit of olive oil and toasted pinenuts. You can see the chef’s own version at my recent é outing.

Then the main course is served buffet style. Here is the finished spread.

It includes farmer’s market mixed potatoes in olive oil, salt, and garlic.

Roasted.

And in their final form.

This beet salad (recipe here). We adapted it for buffet style serving (chopped everything finer).

Here with dressing.

My brother’s homemade couscous with various farmer’s market vegetables, mint, etc.

Brisket is one of the traditional meats for the dinner. This is one of two giant slabs of beef we cook up.

We used this recipe (more or less). Which involves slow cooking (for a long time) with carrots and various fruits.

And here is the finished and dressed version. At some point in the middle the brisket is pulled out, sliced, and put back into the stew.

A more conventional “autumn salad.”

The bottom of “Wendy’s Kugel.”

And extracted. I’m not generally a big kugel fan, but this one tastes like a cinnamon, so I’m very partial to it.

And my gluttonous plate.

Then the dessert spread.

My mom generally makes a fruit crumble out of whatever is in season. This year we picked up at the farmer’s market these lovely nectarines.

And added some fresh blackberries.

Here dabbed in flour to prevent them getting too damp.

The crumble itself is a mixture of crisco, nuts, flour, cinnamon, and sugar.

You just sprinkle it on top of the fruit.

And bake.

We also made a traditional seven layer cake. You bake seven very thin cakes.

Make butter-creme icing.

And then layer them up one by one.

And add some finishing touches!

There were snacks and a lot of wine too, but I’m too full to get into it.