Tzimmes. Hard to pronounce, easy to eat. Especially topped with tahini pesto and pomegranate!!!
How was your Labor Day?? Did you booze it up, watch football or, like me, actual labor? Whomp. But don’t feel bad. I was busy prepping ModernTribe for Rosh Hashanah, and finalizing the details of my cookbook tour! Woo hoo! Hope to see you if I come to your city.
Some say Labor Day is the official end of summer, and I’m okay with that because I love fall! Football (well, tailgating at least), pumpkiny things (watch out for a new pumpkin recipe next week), sweaters, and snuggling while watching Halloween movies. And Halloween!
Tzimmes is such a fall recipe. A sugary stew of sweet potatoes, dried fruit, carrots and sometimes brisket (yay!), tzimmes means “to fuss over”. Maybe it’s all that chopping? This version is still sweet, but roasted instead of braised and topped with an oh so fancy tahini pesto to balance it all out. Yes.
It’s not too early at all to start planning your Rosh Hashanah recipes for your menu!
FYI you guys are going to want to put this pesto on errrything.
Brisket is optional, but certainly recommended. 
Tzimmes with Tahini Pesto and Pomegranate
Ingredients
- For tzimmes:
- 4 large carrots about 1 pound, peeled and cut into spears
- 1 large sweet potato about 1 pound, peeled and cut into spears
- 1 large russet potatoes about 1 pound, peeled and cut into spears
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tablespoons light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Pinch cayenne optional
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon orange or lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons pomegranate arils
- For tahini pesto: originally appeared with these Eggplant Chips!
- 1 cup fresh basil leaves
- 1 cup cilantro leaves
- 1 medium garlic clove
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- ¼ cup tahini
- ½ cup olive oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
- In a large bowl, toss carrots, sweet potatoes and russet potatoes with olive oil, brown sugar, cinnamon, cayenne, salt and pepper.
- Roast for 30 minutes, or until vegetables are tender and caramelized. Sprinkle finished vegetables with orange juice as soon as you take them out of the oven.
- While the vegetables are roasting, make the pesto.
- Place basil, cilantro, garlic, lemon juice and tahini in a blender and process.
- Then drizzle in olive oil with the motor running and process again until smooth.
- Season will salt and pepper to taste to taste.
- Serve vegetables immediately with pesto and pomegranate arils on top. You can make the pesto up to 3 days ahead of time.
Mmm! I wanna make these for shabbat!
Do it!
Aaarrrgghh !!! Yiddish again. The Yiddish word “tsimes” means stew, more particularly a vegetable or fruit stew. The use of the word to mean fuss is American slang originating from the Yiddish word.
By the way, congratulations on being written about in the Forward. Nice!
An analogy: when you say “don’t make a big deal out if it”, that’s the same kind of usage. In Yiddish you’d say “makh nisht a groisn tsimes”, i.e. don’t make a big tsimes…. don’t blow it out of proportion.
Which I’ve just done. Sorry. (For me, it’s as bad as it is for Italian speakers when they hear “biscotti”, a plural, used as a singular.)
Ha thanks!