Jewish cuisine, from all points of the compass

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins at sundown Sept. 18, with a festive meal of traditional dishes.

One almost universally followed tradition dictates serving a round (not braided and oblong) challah made with raisins, and dipping a slice of apple in honey to symbolize hope that the coming year will be sweet.

But other traditional recipes and ingredients are largely dictated by the point of emigration for each family's ancestors.

Just as Jewish history is a story of expulsion and migration, Jewish cuisine incorporates ingredients, spices, and cooking styles from lands where Jewish communities once flourished.

In broad terms, Ashkenazim, who make up the bulk of Philadelphia's Jewish population, fled from France, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and other parts of Eastern Europe; Sephardim from the Iberian Peninsula, the Caribbean, South America, and North Africa; and Mizrachim the Middle East.

But those lines are blurry, especially between Sephardim and Mizrachim. And everywhere they lived, Jewish cooks adapted the local cuisines that abutted their own, creating delicious hybrids.

The biggest shift in American Jewish cuisine has occurred gradually in recent years as people with Ashkenazic roots began to appreciate the flavors and health benefits of Sephardic recipes.

Those dishes are lighter in fats and carbohydrates and richer in spices such as saffron, cumin, turmeric and coriander. The recipes use basmati rice or couscous instead of potatoes, more olive oil and less butter.

They emphasize citrus, especially preserved lemons. They put figs, pumpkin, olives, almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, and chickpeas in the pantry of cooking staples. And they introduce elements such as harissa, a spicy paste made from hot red peppers, and haloumi, a mildly salty cheese that holds up well to grilling.

A number of notable cookbook authors bring this more global perspective to their recipes, giving us a rich trove of classic cookbooks from which to draw ideas for our holiday dishes.

"In a way, every meal is a religious ceremony that has helped preserve both faith and family," Clarissa Hyman wrote in The Jewish Kitchen.

Hyman, whose parents owned a Jewish deli in her home city of Manchester, England, jokes that she was brought up in a pickle barrel, with "schmaltz in my veins."