December 22, 2011 A Real Chanukah Dinner

December 22, 2011 A Real Chanukah Dinner

Although I was raised Jewish, I don’t recall ever having attended a real Chanukah Dinner, where the celebration of the Festival of Lights is united with a wonderful meal of traditional Jewish foods.

But that has all changed now.  We were invited by Carole Levitt and Mark Roesch to their Chanukah dinner.  When I walked in I saw Rob Koonce, who I recalled had said that he made wine and so I asked Mark if he had any of Mark’s wine that I could try, Mark said yes. So we went to the kitchen area and opened two of Rob’s wines.  Rob likes to make fruit wines with a dry yeast that gives them a dry flavor.  We tried a beige colored fruit mead that Rob said he had used 11 cups of honey in, which we all agreed was not very good.  Then we opened a red grape based wine that did not have much fruit flavor but tasted clean and dry, although it had a slightly hollowed out flavor, like something had sucked all the grape flavor out of it.  Rob said it was not good also, but I disagreed, perhaps because we like to drink grape wines that are fully fermented and dry.  As Suzette and I drank more of it the wine opened up more, which means that the alcohol/wine component began to dominate the hollowed out flavor through oxidation.   After about an hour the wine tasted like many of the grape wines we drink with our meals and its clean flavor went well with the slightly sweet, heavily sauced pot roast.

I would describe the pot roast recipe as: roughly potatoes and onions and lots of baby carrots piled on a brisket covered with BBQ sauce and cooked for a long time with some additions of water to keep the mass of food from drying out and skimming off the fat.  The result was a delicious mass of caramelized, softened vegetables and slices of cooked brisket deeply flavored with the flavor of the vegetables and BBQ sauce.  The only other accompaniment to the pot roast were platters of fresh potato latkes (pancakes) fried in oil by Mark and Carole as we ate the brisket and vegetables.  The latkes were served in the traditional Jewish manner with sour cream and apple sauce.  For dessert one of the other dinner guests, Karen, had made a lovely spice cake with egg nog and pecans in a bunt cake form with stars of David stenciled on the top with white sugar.

The Roesh/Levitt’s house and table were an impressive display of items with Chanukah related iconography.  Strewn on the table were chocolate coins of all types, some the traditional gold foil wrapped coins, others were covered with white foil more like poker chips with images of dredals.  The item that topped things off for me was the blue cotton table cloth covering the table decorated with menorahs woven into the pattern.

I loved it all.  After four hours of talking, eating and drinking with the four couples (Stan and Cynthia, and Jim and Karen, Rob and Kim and Mark and Carole) in the bright, warm  Roesch/Levitt home, Suzette and I happily took our Chanukah gelt (literally – money, but in this case, foil covered chocolate coins) into the snowy, winter night.  I shall remember this happy evening of eating, drinking and saying prayers in front of the three brightly burning candles for a long time.

Bon Appètit