Rosh Hashanah: Israeli Chef Shares Family Holiday Recipes

Rosh Hashanah meal by Chef Avi Turgeman. Photo: David Citadel Hotel, Jerusalem

(September 6, 2018) – As Rosh Hashanah (September 9-11) approaches, Executive Chef Avi Turgeman of the luxurious David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem is happy to share his family holiday recipes with you and your readers. A native of Israel, Chef Turgeman has 23 years of professional culinary expertise.

 

Lamb Osso Buco

Ingredients:

  • 10 lamb chops
  • 100 gr potato flour
  • 2 medium purple onions, chopped
  • 3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
  • ¼ of a head of celery, peeled and chopped
  • 1 medium leek, chopped
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 2 garlic gloves, chopped
  • ¼ cup of olive oil
  • 2 pitted tomatoes, sliced into halves
  • 2 cups of white wine
  • 2 table spoons of red wine vinegar
  • 1 table spoon of sugar
  • 4 liters of veal stock
  • 4 sage leaves, chopped

 

Preparation:

  1. Heat a large stainless- steel pot that can contain all meat chops in one layer, and add olive oil once the pot reaches medium heat.
  2. Coat the lamb chops in flour and season with salt and pepper. Cook the lamb chops for about 10 minutes until they turn brown on all sides. Remove the lamb chops from the pot and add the onions, carrots, celery, bay leaves, garlic and sage, and continue cooking the pot for another 10 minutes until the ingredients become brown. Put the meat back into the pot, add the white wine, vinegar and sugar, and reduce the liquids until the mixture becomes a syrup.
  3. Add the veal stock so that it covers the pieces of meat, and cook for about an hour and a half, or until the meat becomes tender.
  4. Remove the lamb chops from the pot, strain the gravy and place it in a new pot with the Osso Buco. This dish should be served hot.

 

Yerushalmi Kugel

Ingredients:

Kugel

  • A 20-cm pot for the kugel (a Kibbeh pot), with the interior covered with parchment paper, and a lid on the top
  • 1 package of thin Osem or Meshubach noodles- 400 gr (not the extra- thin ones that are meant for soup)
  • 200 gr of sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 spoon/table spoon of salt
  • 1 spoon of black pepper

 

Caramel

  • 200 gr of sugar
  • Half a cup of oil

 

Preparation:

Kugel

  1. After cooking the noodles in the usual manner, re-cook the noodles in 1L of water for about 5 minutes.
  2. Put the noodles into a colander to filter the liquids.
  3. Return the noodles to the pot after all the liquid has gone through.

 

Caramel

  1. Preparing the caramel requires patience and skill. It takes time for the caramel to form. The process usually starts when the sugar forms into white pieces. Then you have to move the mass inside the pot by shaking it, so that the hot oil reaches the entire lump of sugar and melts it. The trick is to cook exactly to the right extent.
  2. Boil the oil in a pot with a thick bottom (a pot with a thin bottom will burn the caramel quickly.) Add the sugar. Mix the contents of the pot with a wooden spoon, until the sugar becomes brown and turns into caramel.
  3. Carefully pour the caramel on the noodles and wait for 5 minutes.
  4. After that, mix the noodles until they become brown.
  5. Mix the sugar, the salt and the pepper.
  6. Mix the eggs in a cup thoroughly.
  7. Add the eggs and mix them well (so that we don’t get a surprise omelet in the kugel.)
  8. Pour the mixture into the pot (interior covered with parched paper) immediately, squeeze it down with a wooden spoon and mix it to prevent air bubbles from forming.
  9. Cover and insert the kugel into the oven, in a 160 degrees heat, for 50 minutes. Then remove the cover, and cook the kugel in the oven for another 20 minutes to achieve the dark shade on the top.

 

Grandma’s Gefilte Fish Cutlets

Ingredients:

Cooking Sauce

  • The head and bones of the carp
  • 2 large onions, cut in to quarters
  • 2 large carrots
  • 1.5 L of water for the sauce
  • Salt and pepper as you see fit
  • Half a cup of sugar

 

Gefilte Fish Cutlets

  • 1 kg of chopped carp fish (the head and the bones should be put aside for the sauce.)
  • 5 fresh eggs
  • 100 gr of fresh onions
  • 200 gr of steamed onions
  • 100 gr of sugar
  • 20 gr of salt
  • ½ a spoon of black pepper
  • 100 gr of matzo meal (or alternately, chopped potato)

 

Preparation:

Cooking Sauce

  1. Put the sauce’s ingredients into a large pot: the fish’s head and bones, the onion, carrot, spices and water.
  2. Cook on a medium fire for about an hour and a half. Meanwhile, start preparing the cutlets.

 

Gefilte Fish Cutlets

  1. Put the chopped fish into a bowl. Put the onions and eggs into the blender and grind them until an even mixture is achieved, add the mixture to the chopped fish, and mix them well. Then add the matzo meal and mix it again. put the new mixture aside for about half an hour.
  2. Then prepare cutlets with your hands, rolling the mixture into a medium-sized ball and squashing it to create a flat cutlet. Add the cutlets to the sauce that was prepared in advanced, and cook them in the sauce for two hours, until they are ready- made.
  3. Put the pot aside to cool down for about an hour. Carefully extract the cutlets from the pot, without the sauce. Filter the sauce with a colander and keep it separately from the other ingredients. Take the carrots out of the sauce, cut them into rings, and put them on top of each cutlet for decoration and taste. Serve it with horse radish.

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