Originally published on JewishBoston.com.

Most Ashkenazi Jewish food traditions can be summed up with the sentence, “Our ancestors were poor, and this is what they could afford to eat.” Even so, it’s pretty incredible how creatively our forebears were able to construct themed dishes for the holidays that worked on a tight budget.

Stuffed cabbage — known in the shtetl as holishkes — are one such dish. They get paired with Sukkot in part because cabbage is in season now, and in part because two holishkes placed next to each other on a plate look a bit like Torah scrolls, and Sukkot culminates with Simchat Torah, our holiday celebrating the yearly cycle of reading our central text.

Previously on JewishBoston.com we’ve featured a vegetarian, Passover-friendly recipe for stuffed cabbage. For Sukkot, we offer a variation that’s not quite traditional, in that it eschews rice and ground beef, but offers a poultry and whole-grain version as one might expect in 21st-century liberal Boston.  Continue reading →