A Tropical Shabbat Dinner

As you may know, we host a Shabbat dinner at Chabad House each month. We switch off between doing a traditional Shabbat dinner menu and a themed Shabbat dinner menu.

After having tons of people throughout Pesach we sailed straight into our Shabbat dinner of 50 people.

Back in the summer when I designed the postcard for Shabbat with Chabad we included all the dates and themes for the entire year. So when I looked at my records I saw that this past Shabbat was to be a tropical themed Shabbat dinner.

To be honest I wasn't totally sure what should be served at a tropical themed Shabbat dinner - after all there are a good number of tropical places in this world - each with its own cuisine.  After doing lots of research I finally came up with what I thought would be a good menu. We started with a carrot salad based on a recipe I saw for Caribbean carrot salad, avocado dip, tomato-mango salad, a garden salad with carrot-ginger dressing and pineapple-teriyaki gefilte fish. Then we had chicken soup with matzah balls - I am fairly certain that Jewish people in tropical places still eat chicken soup with matzah balls! The third course brought pineapple-mango chicken, sweet potato kugel and green beans with toasted almonds. Dessert was brownies and fresh strawberries and pineapple.

All in all I believe it was a very colorful and tasty Shabbat dinner! (next month we will have a traditional menu - May 27 @ 8:00 PM)

Here is the recipe for the carrot salad

Tropical Carrot Slaw


Carrots, grated
Craisins
Scallions
Canola oil
Rice vinegar
Salt
Pepper
Garlic
Sugar
Lemon juice
Lime juice


Grate carrots and place in a bowl. Add chopped scallions and a handful of Craisins. Dress with canola oil, rice vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic, sugar, lemon juice and lime juice. I happened to discover that it tastes better after it has been refrigerated for a bit. Enjoy!