Shana Tova! I made a salad at my Rosh HaShanah dinner that I was quite proud of, and after a few more tries (and a lot of arugula), I got the recipe down enough to post it here. Here is to a 5780 in which we are prickly when needed – like arugula – but sweet like pears and rich like goat cheese.
Salad itself has a very long history for Jews – salted raw vegetables were common in the Roman Empire, and it is where we get the word “salad” from. However, like other raw vegetable dishes that were not pickled, salads begin to become much more popular with the advent of refrigeration, when raw vegetables became safer and more readily available. That said, they were somewhat common in the Middle East, and the early Zionists borrowed/took the Palestinian custom of eating salads – which may have been of relatively recent vintage – and christened it as “Israeli.” Since then, certain kinds of salads have been nigh-ubiquitous in Jewish communities – and have only grown more so as Jewish communal life has become more centered on Israel. Meanwhile, in Israel, many feel that no meal is complete without a salad.
As for arugula, I wrote about the Jewish history of arugula for the Jewish Daily Forward back in 2016. Shall we say that this salad may serve as a proverbial “pick-me-up?”
Arugula Salad for the Fall/Tishrei and Marcheshvan
For every 8 ounces/225 grams of fresh arugula, add:
½ cup finely chopped walnuts
½-1 cup crumbled goat cheese (to taste)
1 small-medium red onion, finely chopped
2 medium pears, cored and finely chopped (you can use any pear, I prefer D’Anjou)
Toss these together. Then, make a dressing of the following proportions. Double as necessary for every 8 ounces/225 grams of arugula.
1.5 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon strong mustard
1.5 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
A few dashes of table salt
Mix these together, then pour over the salad and toss. The salad keeps for three days but tastes best right after you make it.
