23 Gluten-Free Recipes for Rosh Hashanah

By Shannon Sarna on The Nosher for MyJewishLearning.com

Holidays can evoke such a sense of warmth and happiness just by their sounds, smells and tastes. For me, the smell of chicken soup and brisket reminds me of my grandmother’s house and there is nothing quite like it.

But for those who have dietary restrictions or have chosen particular eating styles and cannot indulge in traditional holiday foods, this time of year can be anxiety-ridden or even feel sad.

Jewish food can be lots of things including healthy, vegetarian and even gluten-free. And this round-up of traditional food and sweet treats is for our gluten-free friends. Hope this helps make your New Year a little sweeter.

Got a favorite recipe? Please make sure to post below.

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One Pan Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Carrots

By Shannon Sarna on The Nosher for MyJewishLearning.com

Simple roasted chicken is one of those dishes everyone wants to make perfectly, including me. And while I think I’ve done a pretty decent job in the past with my citrus and herb roasted chicken, I wanted to make it better, with a moist, flavorful inside, crispy outside and maybe even a side dish all wrapped into one pan. I wanted it all.

As I was working on this dish the past 6 months, I was getting frustrated that things just weren’t turning out the way I envisioned. The skin wasn’t quite crispy enough, and sometimes the inside was still pink. And so my husband came home one day with Roasting: A Simple Art by Barbara Kafka. I really love this book, and not just for her tips on roasting chicken.  But the tip I took to heart most of all was the cooking temperature.

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Jewish Krakover Bagels / Polish Obwarzanki Krakowski

By Barbara Rolek, Eastern European Food Expert, From aboutfood

This recipe for egg-free Jewish Krakover Bagels (Krakover Beyglach) is also known as Polish Obwarzanki Krakowski and is from Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg's "Inside the Jewish Bakery: Recipes and Memories from the Golden Age of Jewish Baking" (Camino Books, 2011). This book took second place in the 2012 About.com Readers' Choice Awards in the category of Favorite Jewish Cookbook.

Street food vendors sell these twisted ring breads from colorful carts throughout Poland, but especially in the main market square of Kraków. Smaller, untwisted rings are threaded on a string and many children wear them like a necklace, munching as the spirit moves them. The Polish bagel is crustier and not as dense as the water bagels so popular in New York City and other American cities.

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Kindli

From sbs.com.au

This traditional cake comes from northwest Hungary. This is another family favourite saved for special occasions. This makes four rolls: two with a poppyseed filling and two with a nut filling.

To make the dough, dissolve the yeast and a pinch of the sugar in the warm water and set aside to bubble for 5 minutes. Work the margarine into the flour with your fingers until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the yeast mixture, egg yolk, orange juice, the remaining sugar and a pinch of salt, mixing by hand to form a dough. Knead the dough, bringing it in from the edges with your fingers, and pushing it down into the centre of the bowl with your knuckles. The dough should be firm but elastic. If it is too stiff, add a little more orange juice. Continue to knead for 5–6 minutes, then cover and set aside to rest in a warm place for 30 minutes.

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The Black-and-White Cookie's Curious History

by Robert Sietsema for New York Eater

No pastry — except perhaps the cheesecake — is more closely associated with New York City than the black-and-white cookie. This flattened dome of fine-textured cake, with a coating of chocolate and vanilla fondant bisected in the middle to keep the flavors apart, is really not a cookie, but a "drop cake," as William Grimes points out in a 1998 New York Times article. Many believe it was descended from a cookie popular for over a century in upstate New York called the "half moon." This baked good has a cookie-shaped base of chocolate cake (vanilla is a common variation) with a fluffy layer of actual frosting on top, with the same chocolate and vanilla demarcation as the black and white, but with a thicker layer of chocolate frosting. Wikipedia and other suspect sources contend it was invented in Utica by Hemstrought's Bakery early in the 20th century, but the archaic form of the cookie and the iconography suggest the half moon is much older.

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