Jerusalem hotels, restaurants, attractions, tours & events. Helping since 2008

There is some truth to the age-old joke that every Jewish holiday can be summed up with "When do we eat?" Many of the holidays can be encapsulated by a traditional symbolic food eaten, be it matza for Passover, cheesecake for Shavuot, or hamantaschen for Purim.

Sukkot is more about where you eat (the sukkah, duh) than what you eat, but the holiday is, in English, sometimes called the Feast the Tabernacles for a reason. Menus for the holiday tend to skew toward autumn-themed flavors, and many ingredients (pomegranates, apples, honey, fish) from Rosh Hashanah, just two weeks prior, still make prominent appearances.

In honor of Sukkot, three of Jerusalem's hottest chefs have shared their favorite fall holiday recipes with GoJerusalem.com - easy enough to make at home, but fancy enough to fool people into thinking that you too are an award-winning kitchen master.

Kohinoor's pomegranate and barley salad

Rina Pushkarna, the daughter of a Sikh Indian father and a Jewish Iraqi mother, is co-owner and chef for the Kohinoor-Tandoori chain of Indian restaurants, along with her husband Vinod.

Sukkot, Rina says, is her favorite holiday of all, and this recipe passed down from her grandmother to her mother to her has become a Sukkot tradition in her own home. "It's easy to prepare and comes out fresh, with beautiful colors and is low in calories," she tells GoJerusalem.com.

Ingredients

1 large bag of barley

1 pomegranate, seeded

1 teaspoon of salt

1 scallion (green part only), minced

1 teaspoon of lemon juice

2 tablespoons of finely chopped cilantro

Preparation

Soak the barley in water for two hours.

Add salt and bring the barley to a boil.

Once cooked, drain the barley.

Place the barley in a bowl and liberally add the pomegranate seeds.

Add the cilantro, scallions, lemon juice and more salt to taste.

Mix all together and serve.

Montefiore's goat cheese and mushroom ravioli in a porcini sauce

Dudu Biton, the chef at the helm of Montefiore, tasted this dish for the first time while in Florence. Returning to Israel, and to his restaurant in the very oldest part of Jerusalem's new city, he recreated the recipe by trial and error, until he got it just right.

Overlooking the Old City walls and evoking the memory of eponymous city benefactor Moses Montefiore, the restaurant's Italian fare is known for keeping closely to the real deal, and this recipe, featuring a number of kinds of mushrooms and fresh pasta, is no exception.

Ravioli ingredients

500 grams of durum flour

8 egg yolks

1 whole egg

5 grams of butter 

5 grams of white flour

Ravioli preparation

Place all of the ingredients in a mixer for about ten minutes until a tough dough is formed. Enclose the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour. Use the ravioli setting on a pasta machine and roll out squares of dough.

Filling ingredients

250 grams of finely chopped onions

250 grams of finely chopped champignon mushrooms

50 grams of finely chopped porcini mushrooms (rehydrated and drained prior to chopping)

150 grams of goat cheese (Sainte-Maure de Touraine)

Salt 

Black pepper

Filling preparation

Saute onions until translucent.

Add the porcini and champignon mushrooms and the goat cheese.

Season with salt and pepper.

Cut the pasta sheets and make the ravioli.

The ravioli can be frozen in advance. 

Sauce ingredients

50 grams of finely chopped porcini mushrooms (rehydrated and drained prior to chopping)

25 grams of butter

Salt 

Black pepper

A pinch of Nutmeg

180 milliliters of cream

Final preparation

Saute the mushrooms in butter, add the cream and seasoning, and reduce until the mixture is thick. 

Add 6 raviolis to the sauce and cook one minute and a half on each side.

Plate and serve with grated parmesan. 

1868's apple mille-feuille (napoleon)

The restaurant 1868 isn't only a fancy foodie's dream, but also locavore's heaven, with recipes emphasizing local ingredients. The use of fresh apples with honey in this case is a nod to the sweet treats associated with the fall season, symbolic of our hopes for a sweet year. Though primarily identified with Rosh Hashana, it is traditional to continue eating these ingredients through the Sukkot holiday.

To Jacob Turjeman, the chef at 1868, a pink lady apple-based napoleon represents the perfect convergence of the fall holiday sweets tradition and the hyper-local ingredients tradition. "The use of phyllo dough on classic puff pastry sheets in this kind of recipe, mixed with lavender honey from the Jerusalem Hills together with amazing apples soaked in brandy, yields a dessert that at its core is simply the way to create a harmony of elegant tastes in your mouth," he explains.

Dough ingredients

3 sheets of phyllo dough 

Olive oil

Powered sugar

Dough preparation

Brush the phyllo dough with with olive oil and sprinkle the powered sugar. Repeat three times, layering the sheets of dough on top of each other.

Cut into squares measuring 4X4 cm.

Bake in the oven at 220 degrees Celsius, for about four minutes, until brown and crisp.

Cool to room temperature.

Filling ingredients

2 pink lady apples

1 shot of brandy

1 tablespoon of powered sugar

Filling preparation

Core the apples and slice into pieces 1 cm thick.

Mix the apples well with brandy and sugar.

Place on a baking tray and bake in the oven at 240 degrees Celsius, until apples are cooked but still somewhat firm.

Cool to room temperature. 

Cream ingredients

1 heaping tablespoon of honey

1 pinch of dried lavender 

3 tablespoons of water

1 vanilla bean, split

Half-cup of whipping cream (pareve whipping cream is a good alternate for those serving meat at the meal and observing kashrut laws)

Cream preparation

Bring the honey, lavender, water and vanilla to a boil.

Mix well and add the cream. 

Sauce ingredients

1 teaspoon of grenadine

2 tablespoons of fig liquor

Half-cup of sugar

Half-cup of water

Sauce preparation

Bring the ingredients to a boil and chill.