As the saying goes, Jewish holidays are always either early or late. They’re never on time!
Hanukkah sneaks up on us early this year. We’ll begin lighting candles at sundown tonight, Dec. 7, so prepare for an oil crisis, and I’m not referring to the price of gas. Who knew when Judah Maccabee’s tiny flask of oil miraculously burned for eight days that for thousands of years Jewish families would celebrate by frying.
It wouldn’t be Hanukkah without latkes, those crunchy, addicting fried potato pancakes, and plans are already in the works at Temple Beth Tikvah of Fullerton for a Latkes and Vodkas Karaoke night on Dec. 12. (Other festivities for the holiday include a Lunch and Learn with Rabbi Mati on Dec. 8 and a cookie exchange on Dec. 13.)
For Jews of Eastern European heritage (the majority in the United States), including potato latkes on the menu is sacrosanct, but this holiday is all about the oil, not the potato, so why not add something new to your repertoire? I found a recipe for Algerian Meatballs in a new cookbook, “Shabbat” (Avery, $35), by Adeena Sussman, whose first solo cookbook, “Sababa” was named a Best Fall Cookbook by The New York Times, Bon Appétit, and Food & Wine. Here, the meatballs are fried in olive oil, our nod to the Hanukkah tradition, before being bathed in a rich, fragrantly spicy tomato sauce.
The recipe comes from Alex and Rebecca Mandel’s French-Algerian mother, Roxane. Alex is Sussman’s friend and neighbor in Tel Aviv, and when Rebecca visited last summer, they arranged a Zoom cooking session with Roxane, who demonstrated “her famously tender, juicy Shabbat boulettes (meatballs), and I could hear some of her stories,” writes Sussman. “Over the next few hours, I learned about Roxane’s enchanted childhood in Algiers, living close to the Mediterranean Sea and drying off with monogrammed towels brought home from her father’s textile factory.”
By the late 1960s conditions were less idyllic for Jews in…
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