Editor’s Note: This year, Tu B’Shevat is February 10. On the “New Year of Trees” it is a tradition to eat and enjoy nuts and fruits, especially new fruits, to celebrate the end of Israel’s rainy season and the beginning of the budding trees. Famed chef and cookbook author Levana Kirschenbaum offers up a fruit-filled feast for your Tu B’Shevat.
By Levana Kirschenbaum
I have been married to an Ashkenazi for more blissful years than I care to remember and have happily taken on all my husband’s customs for every holiday. And my family is delighted to sample all of my cooking, spanning the whole spectrum, with a welcome bias toward our Sephardi cuisine. But there is just one day I wax nostalgic for our Moroccan banquets: Tu B’Shevat. Ha, here’s one day I wish I could be a defector of sorts. Growing up, it was always a sumptuous feast. Is it any wonder I get a little wistful when my husband texts me every Tu B’Shevat morning, “don’t forget to get a new fruit!”?
Cooking with fruit, both fresh and dried, is not just something seasonal we do in honor of Tu B’Shevat, the celebration of Fruit Trees. In our Moroccan cuisine, cooking with fruit occurs just as often as baking with fruit, and produces countless wonderful easy soups, salads and tajines. Cooking with fruit is fun and healthy, and packs lots of flavor and nutrition. Wait till you taste the Moroccan Lamb Dried Fruit Tajine and Tropical Fruit Cake.
Moroccan Lamb Dried Fruit Tajine
Lamb-Shanks-Dried-Fruit-LevanaCooks
4 pounds lamb shanks, or lamb or beef cubes
8 cups water
¼ cup olive oil
2 large onions, thinly sliced in a food processor
2 tablespoons sugar
2 pinches saffron
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon grated ginger
3 sticks cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 ½ cups pitted prunes, packed
1 ½ cups dry apricots, packed
1 cup slivered almonds, toasted 15 minutes in a 300-degree oven
Instructions
Bring the meat and water to boil in a large heavy pot.
Reduce the flame to medium and cook, covered, 2 hours.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet. Add the onions and cook, on a medium high flame, until dark brown. Add the sugar and cook 1 more minute.
After the meat has cooked 2 hours, add the fried onions, saffron, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon sticks and ground pepper, and cook 45 more minutes. Add the ground cinnamon and dry fruit and cook 15 more minutes. Transfer the meat and fruit to a platter with a slotted spoon. If the liquid in the pot is too thin, reduce at high flame until thickened, and pour over meat. Just before serving, sprinkle the dried fruit tajine with almonds.
Makes 8 servings
Tropical Fruit Cake
Ingredients
½ cup preserved ginger (health food stores), packed
1 large navel orange, quartered, skin and all, seeded
1 lemon, quartered, skin and all, seeded
1 cup oil
¼ cup dark rum
1 ½ cups sugar
4 eggs
3 cups all-purpose, whole wheat pastry, or spelt flour
1 cup old-fashioned oats
2 teaspoons baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup pineapple juice (or 1 cup canned unsweetened crushed pineapple, juice and all)
1 ripe banana, diced small
1 cup golden raisins
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Finely grind the ginger in a food processor, pulsing. Do not allow it to get mushy.
Add the citrus and pulse until finely ground but not mushy. Set the mixture aside.
In the same food processor bowl, cream the oil, rum, sugar and eggs. Mix the flour and the oats with the baking soda and salt in a bowl.
Add the flour mixture alternatively with the juice, pulsing only until well combined. Add the reserved citrus mixture, the banana and raisins, and pulse just until combined, 1-2 times.
Pour the batter into a greased 10-inch tube pan. Bake 1 hour or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Unmold and invert to cool.
Makes 12 simple servings
Levana Kirschenbaum, aka the Jewish Julia Child, is a cooking teacher, best-selling cookbook author, co-owner of the former Levana Restaurant, and pioneer in kosher upscale dining. She does cooking demonstrations throughout the country. www.levanacooks.com.
