Fish Cigars for Rosh Hashanah

Cook-in-residence Rinat Tzadok has a talent for updating traditional recipes with a modern touch. One of her favorite holiday dishes, crispy “cigars,” are a Moroccan classic. The appetizer is labor intensive, to be sure—dough is stuffed with meat, rolled into skinny “cigars,” then deep-fried. “It’s a holiday dish, but it’s work, you know?” says Rinat. “It’s not easy to make.” Doing it the old-school way requires a meat grinder for milling spices, and pre-cooking the meat before it’s rolled into the pastry. Recently, Rinat created a delicious alternative.

The idea came to her this summer, when she was craving lighter food and wanted to spend less time over the stove. Enter the fish cigar. The filling is a mixture of hand-chopped snapper and grouper mixed with hot peppers, garlic, cilantro and tomatoes (quite like her ceviche). Since the fish cooks when the cigars are fried, there’s no need to cook the filling separately. Ready-made dough helps, too. “In Israel you can find women who made brik the old way,” says Rinat of the pastry itself, which is similar to phyllo, but sturdier and sold in rounds instead of sheets.

“You have to order two days before and they make for you.” (Stateside, you’re more likely to find brik in the frozen section of a Middle Eastern or international food market.) Finally, it’s served hot out of the fryer with a tahini or yogurt dipping sauce. Rinat and her family eat cigars not only on Rosh Hashana, but on other important holidays, too. “It’s really good,” she says. “You start to make it and after five minutes, you don’t have it because people love it.”