So, whatever, I am like an eighth Jewish and sometimes my Jewisher friends like to tease me about it. Then I have to prove myself by doing things like eating chopped liver by the pound. I am only bummed that because my oven is broken, I had to buy Zabar’s challah and couldn’t make honey cake from scratch, but I’ll atone for it on Yom Kippur.

Apples & honey, for a sweet new year.

An ENTIRE FISH, because I’m hardcore. This apparently has to do with Rosh Hashanah literally translating to the ‘head of the year’, and also something about being ‘the head and not the tail’ - leaders rather than followers (the shiksa blog claims this appears in Deuteronomy. I grew up going to Unitarian church where we were busy making bird feeders out of pinecones and not learning this stuff, but I can tell you that an entire tilapia can be purchased at Pioneer for three dollars, that it’s a very impressive presentation, and that with a little olive oil, salt and lemon, it tastes pretty darn good.)

Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads.

KASHA VARNISHKES! I love kasha varnishkes. Kasha varnishkes from the 2nd Avenue Deli got me hooked, but this was the first time I’d tried making them from scratch. They are fairly impossible to screw up, containing four main ingredients - buckwheat groats, onions, farfalle (which my boyfriend pronounces “farfle”) and olive oil or schmaltz. I knew they’d be better with schmaltz, but I couldn’t figure out where to buy it - anywhere legit enough to sell me some was closed today - so I did them with olive oil and The New York Times recipe. My Polish great-great-grandmother Loewenstein would’ve been proud.

Challah from Zabar’s. The round kind, braided into a circle, represents the cycle of the year. The way this particular loaf tasted reminded me how excited I am for Christmas panettone. We had it with Trader Joe’s honeybear honey and kosher cabernet. 

Apples & pomegranate - new fruit.

My boyfriend is in the midst of finals for law school, which sometimes makes him a little bit…cranky. I’ve found that the best cure for a miserable-holy-terror-of-crankiness-verging-on-panic-attack is a really good dinner. So tonight on my way home from work, I bought him a one pound dry-aged locally raised boneless ribeye (hey, it’s payday).

I’ve lately been reading a lot of Rozanne Gold, whose three-ingredient recipes inspired the Minimalist columns in the Times. Her focus on technique, quality, and simplicity of form is as revolutionary now as when she began publishing cookbooks over fifteen years ago. This dinner required only four ingredients, salt and pepper, and some good bread. The steak was worth every penny, with some of the most tender bites reaching Alderspring levels of transcendence. Sweet yellow onions caramelized in a little butter with salt and wilted spinach, and a challah bun toasted in the steak pan juices: a plate full of proof that less is absolutely more.