Spiced vegetable medley with almonds, raisins

Over the years, Marina Pinto Kaufman has become the keeper of Spanish Moroccan food traditions for her cousins, children and friends, inviting them to her home in New York City, and now, Martha’s Vineyard, for the Jewish holidays, especially Rosh Hashana and Passover. And her legumbres para rosana, a colorful mostly vegetable dish, is often on the table.

Kaufman, 84, told me that, after the Inquisition, her ancestors settled in Tétouan, then part of Spanish Morocco, bringing with them customs from Spain.

“In Morocco, recipes were very important to the status of a cook and her family,” she said. “Often home cooks guarded their recipes so much that they would purposely forget to share ingredients.”

Born in Casablanca in 1940, Kaufman, the daughter of a tea and sugar merchant, moved to Tangier as a child, and later to Geneva, shortly after Tangier lost its international zone status in 1956 and reintegrated into an independent Morocco. After visiting New York as a tourist in 1960, she returned in 1966 as an interpreter at the United Nations where, on a blind date, she met her future husband Stephen, a litigator.

Kaufman started cooking when she married, calling her mother when she needed a family recipe. She devoured books by Paula Wolfert and Claudia Roden, even finding a photo of her grandmother, Myriam Abensur, in Roden’s “Book of Jewish Food.”

Her legumbres para rosana, made with traditional harvest foods, dates back hundreds of years to Spain, where it was one of the dishes served at a Rosh Hashana Seder, a tradition mentioned in the Talmud: “Every man should make it a habit on New Year’s of eating pumpkin, fenugreek, leek, beet and dates.” The harvest foods are served raw or cooked, and vary by country with observant Sephardic Jews saying blessings over each at the new year. Kaufman, a more secular Jew, continues the custom only with her cooking, tampering slightly with tradition to make it easier for the home cook.

The vibrant dish, with bright orange sweet potatoes and yellow squash as well as caramelized onions, zucchini, raisins, carrots and chickpeas, is a distant cousin to the Ashkenazic tsimmes, with its sweet potatoes and carrots. Kaufman’s legumbres separates six of the ingredients into rows, enabling young children to pick and choose their favorites, while others can mix them all with the caramelized onions. Best of all, it can be made a day or two in advance and reheated in the oven before serving, perhaps alongside roast chicken, a brisket or Moroccan cumin-flavored meatballs with peas, as Kaufman does.

Kaufman, a founder of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York, now lives with her husband on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts full time. By keeping this one recipe more or less intact as it came down to her, she keeps a potent memory of her journey from a childhood in northern Morocco — and even before that, from its beginnings 500 years ago in Spain.

Spiced Vegetable Medley With Almonds and Raisins

This delightful Moroccan dish, often served on Rosh Hashana, incorporates an abundance of traditional harvest foods and is warm with spices (cinnamon, cardamom and coriander). Traditionally served with chicken couscous, it is somewhat like the Moroccan version of tsimmes, an Eastern European dish incorporating both carrots and sweet potatoes. In this recipe, the vegetables are scooped into long piles, giving children — often picky when it comes to such delicacies — the choice of what they like, while adults can stir them all together to enjoy the spices and the caramelized onions. Great for entertaining, this dish can be prepared the day before serving, so all you have to do is heat it, but you can roll straight through the recipe, enjoying it the day you prepare it, with wonderful results.

By Joan Nathan

Yield: 8 to 10 servings

Total time: 1 1/2 hours

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large zucchini
• 4 large carrots
• 1/2 medium (2 1/2-pound) butternut squash (or other winter squash), seeded
• 1 large sweet potato, peeled
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• Salt
• 1/2 cup blanched slivered or chopped almonds
• 2 large onions (about 2 pounds)
• 1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, drained

Preparation:

1. The day before serving, heat the oven to 400 degrees and brush a 9-by-13-inch baking pan with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. While the oven is heating, trim the zucchini and peel the carrots, leaving them whole. Cut the squash and sweet potato in half lengthwise. Put the vegetables in the baking pan and roast for about 30 minutes, or until the zucchini and carrots can be easily sliced but are still a bit taut. Roast the sweet potatoes and squash for a little longer if needed, until they are soft but still meet some resistance when pierced with a knife.

2. While the vegetables are cooking, plump the raisins in 1/2 cup warm water.

3. Stir together the sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander and 1 teaspoon salt in a small bowl.

4. Heat a small skillet over medium, add 1 tablespoon of oil, then add the almonds and cook, stirring frequently, until slightly browned, about 5 minutes. Drain on a paper towel, then set aside until the next day.

5. Cut the onions in half, thinly slice them and then cut those slices into half-inch lengths. Add the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil along with 1/4 cup water to the skillet. Cook the onions over medium-high heat, stirring often, until beginning to brown, about 10 minutes, then reduce heat to medium-low and cook until caramelized and deeply browned, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.