Olive Oil Challah Wreath (of sorts)

Almost like clockwork, the fall equinox happened last week and suddenly I have to film in the dark. Now nobody wants to eat on the rooftop. The air conditioning feels a little too cold. I am constantly craving apples. No longer do people come into my apartment hot and sweaty from the subway.

Don’t expect my dinner parties from this point until April to look like sun-light, golden hour little heaven scenes. We’re going for moody and lamp-lit. Try to hear the jazz noir playing in the background. I’ll do my best to not catch myself on fire with the candles burning all around my kitchen (unlikely).

If you don’t celebrate, Rosh Hashanah was last week. The Jewish new year. When we cast away the past and set ourselves up for a refreshing, exciting, and luck-filled next year. I’ll spare you the religious aspect and just focus on the food (isn’t that why we’re here?). You’re supposed to eat sweet things for the new year, hence apples dunked in honey, apple cake for dessert, brisket braised in a slightly sweet broth (most likely from coke and Heinz chili sauce…idk don’t ask me).

As you all can probably assume, I love sweet things. Rosh Hashanah dinner should be my jam (pun intended). Maybe this year I’m feeling cynical, or my sweet tooth deactivated recently, but I didn’t feel like making a dessert with dinner. Sue me! Having apples and honey at the dinner table felt sweet enough. And dunking a massive amount of homemade challah into the honey as well felt doubly sweet enough. So this is what the menu ended up looking like:

• Mint-encrusted lamb chops with pomegranate molasses drizzle
• Tarragon roast chicken breasts
• A challah wreath, or possibly a shofar, or possibly a croissaint
• Apples and honey (but I infused the honey with rosemary and Aleppo pepper)
• Radicchio salad with roast squash, fennel, and apple
• Steamed broccoli with butter

You can see how the sweetness pops up in bits and pieces but doesn’t overwhelm the menu. Much more palatable in my opinion. Like a sweet new year that doesn’t hit you over the head, one where you have to find the sweetness buried underneath the surface. A coffee with one packet of sugar, not four.

And a special note on the challah. I actually wanted it to be a ring. Rosh Hashanah challahs are supposed to be a circular loaf, but I find this form doesn’t give the dough enough room to proof and expand, resulting in denser bread. Personally, I don’t want my new year bread to be dense. So I thought a ring or wreath could be a good work around. Then I could fill the center with sliced apples as a center-piece decoration of sorts. Unfortunately, I made the crucial mistake of opting for a 6-stranded braid and didn’t have enough length to fully make a circle, which is how we ended up with a croissaint-shaped loaf (still round enough if you ask me). If you want to make an actual challah wreath, I would divide the dough just into thirds and do a normal braid, which you can loop back onto itself and bake as a circle.

Happy new year (to some) and happy fall to all,

Ryan