L'shanah tovah! There are many ways of celebrating, but all of them definitely involve food. In this case, I decided to embrace my Sephardic roots and cook a Middle Eastern feast with a special focus on Moroccan food. (My Mom is Moroccan and my grandmother cooked Moroccan food at many family meals growing up.) You'll find a veggie-heavy meal full of Middle eastern flavors, but served alongside some challah, Jewish apple apple cake, and chocolate honey cake to connect to a few Ashkenazi and traditional Rosh Hashanah dishes.
I served the meal across three courses - and the recipes included below are in italics. A few aren't listed since they are elsewhere on the site or were my husband's creations instead of mine.
We started with appetizers:
Roasted Eggplant with Garlic Confit (pictured above)
Matbucha
Hummus
Pita
(paired with some manchego, brie, and crackers)
We moved on to the main course:
Yemenite-Spiced Cauliflower with Schug Labneh
Roasted Citrus-Pomegranate Glazed Carrots
Egyptian Moussaka
Moroccan Lamb Shoulder
Couscous with Dates and Pistachios
Round Challah (challah is elsewhere on blog... just make it round instead of braided)
And we finally ended with dessert:
Tut (marzipan)
Chocolate Honey Cake
Jewish Apple Cake (elsewhere on blog)
We started prep the night before and I'll note below where I did that and then started cooking about five hours before dinner time. I'll note the time for each recipe below, but you won't find a total time for this meal since each piece may add up differently and not all recipes are in full detail below. Most importantly, though, it was absolutely delicious and everyone had a great time. Here is a to a good next year!