Category Archives: Seder

by | March 29, 2015 · 5:24 pm

Tradition and Change, and a Recipe for Tri-Color Gefilte Fish Terrine

IMG_2916My mother emailed me yesterday, nostalgic about Passovers past. She had opened a cookbook to begin her prep, and in it found a recipe card written in my grandmother’s handwriting for Pesach mandelbrot.

I’ve always loved Passover but the truth is, with one exception, I don’t have memories of my grandmother’s cooking. That’s probably because she wasn’t a great cook. Far from the stereotypical Jewish grandmother, she was a professional woman who had little interest in homemaking. And though my mother is a great cook who makes terrific vegetarian tzimmes and a mean almond chocolate torte, what mostly stands out from childhood Passover memories is the pleasure of being together with my relatives, not really the food.

Very early into adulthood, I insisted on hosting one of the two seder nights at my house. As I created a family of my own, seder became a significant part of our identity, something we all look forward to every year. And yet, though I had the memory of family togetherness and fun to hold on, I had very few actual food memories.

My challenge was to create my family’s Passover food traditions from scratch, based on cookbooks, stories, and Jewish history.  Living in Israel for several years had introduced me to a much wider spectrum of Jewish cooking than what I’d experienced growing up, and on a holiday so focused on our history as a people and our years of wanderings, it seems appropriate to incorporate that history into our food. Today our menu includes the kind of Ashkenazi Passover foods I grew up with, like tzimmes and potato kugel. But in addition, I’ve added other dishes that speak to different periods and places in Jewish history. I created a leek artichoke kugel in homage to the Jewish foods of Italy. This year I’m introducing a savory carrot kugel using baharat, a spice mix used by Jews from Turkey and Iran.  We have a Persian-inspired charoset in addition to the apple-based Ashkenazi style. And the last few years I’ve made a salmon dish with garlic and preserved lemon inspired by Jewish Moroccan cuisine.  I’m still working on a brisket recipe that uses pomegranate molasses rather than the ketchup flavoring that I grew up with – I made it for the first time last year and I forgot to write it down, so I’ll see if I can recreate it this year.

But back to the one exception about my grandmother’s cooking. My grandmother made delicious gefilte fish. That was her annual project. She would come up to New York, and we would trek out to Boro Park to get the fish ground just the way she liked it.  The year she kept forgetting if she had salted it, and it came out inedible, was the year we realized something was wrong. That was the last time she made it, and the last year she was able to sit at the table and enjoy the proceedings.

I’d love to say that I picked it up from there, but I didn’t. It’s been many years since I tasted my grandmother’s gefilte fish. Now we have something else entirely new in its place, a tricolor gefilte fish terrine that  I learned about from my sister.  It’s delicious, lighter and sweeter than my grandmothers and on the sweet side – a real crowd pleaser.  My grandmother – who preferred things salty and peppery – would have hated it.

Traditions change. My menu is very different than that of the seders of my childhood. And most of the regulars at our seder are friends, not family, since so few relatives live anywhere near us today. But the excitement about Passover is the same. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Passover is a major Jewish touchstone in my kids’ lives, even as though go out into the world. We can never fit as many people as we would like around our crowded table so they have to make difficult decisions every year about which friends to invite – the question of who is “Seder-worthy” looms large for them.

Even as Passover is about our history and our legacy, about the passing down of traditions and stories, it is also about ongoing change and evolution.  One of our favorite family traditions continues on, the annual miraculous visit of Elijah the Prophet, even though the mantle has now passed on to the third generation. Once the highlight of the seder was the Passover play that my children used to put on for the guests every year. Now, at 20 and 22, they (understandably) refuse to do so, though hopefully our tradition of paper bag dramatics will continue for a while still. As the children have gotten older, the conversations around the table have gotten more involved and deeper. There was the year that one them, in full teenage mode, delivered an articulate and well-reasoned soliloquy about why the divisions of the Four Children was offensive and wrong. In recent years we have related the issue of immigration to Passover.  Two years ago we had a special marriage equality reading. This year we are going to read and discuss the Four Children of Climate Change, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s feminist Passover Commentary, among other topics. And there’s of course the orange – a staple on our seder table for many years already at my daughter’s insistence.

My grandmother’s gefilte fish will not be on the menu, but her memory will be on our minds.  The tradition keeps changing. Even as we teach about who we were and where we came from, we face the future and keep moving forward.

IMG_4463Tri-color Gefilte Fish Terrine (with thanks to my sister who shared this with me years back)

1 loaf gefilte fish, defrosted

5 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 8-10 oz bag frozen spinach

Boil carrots until soft. Mash in large bowl

Defrost and drain spinach, place in a second large bowl

Divide fish into 4. Place one quarter in bowl with carrots, one quarter in bowl with spinach, and the rest in a third large bowl.

Mix fix and carrots until blended. Mix fish and spinach until blended.

Spray a loaf pan with vegetable spray. Line the bottom of the pan with wax paper and spray the paper. Line the side with wax paper and spray that as well.

Place carrot mixture on the bottom and spread evenly. Place plain fish mixture on top of that and spread evenly. Then spread spinach mix on top and spread evenly.

Spray the top with vegetable oil and place wax paper on top of that. Cover the whole loaf pan tightly with tin foil.  Bake at 350 for 1 hour.  Cool and then place in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Remove tin foil. Place serving plate over the pan, turn over and let it gently come out of the pan.  Peel off the wax paper and slice. Enjoy!

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by | April 11, 2014 · 5:05 pm

Passover and Memory

On Passover we remember.  We remember our collective story as Jews on the road to liberation.  We remember our family story, the struggles for freedom that brought us to where we are today.  And we remember Passover itself – that benchmark holiday in our annual cycle.

IMG_4454Like so many of our holidays, it’s a time to remember observances in previous years and to mark the passing of time. Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are certainly moments to take stock in that way.  How was I doing last year at this time?  What were my challenges a year ago, and what are they today?  Who were we as a family last year, and how have we grown a year later? And who was here with us last year, but now is no longer? 

For me, the pull of remembering on Passover is especially strong, perhaps even more than on the high holy days, because it’s such a home based holiday. We look around the dining room, and the absences are stark.

Today would have been my father’s 79th birthday.  It’s hard to imagine what he would be like at this age, as he died ten years ago.  I never had the chance to see him grow old.  He is still missed – his absence very present, especially around the Passover table.  Passover was one of his favorites, probably because of its home-based nature.   When we read from the haggadah, there are still two readings that are “his”.  Whoever reads them, and it’s often me, reads them with him in mind and we recall his dramatic reading.    

Second seder is the big night in our house (first night is at my mother’s).  There are many stalwart regulars, but some seats change from year to year.  It is a seder full of friends rather than family: an eclectic group of my oldest friend from age five and his family, my oldest camp friend from age eight and her family, friends from college, from synagogue, friends we met through our kids’ school, from my high holy day congregation, dear colleagues, my daughter’s former 3rd grade teacher.  Every year we worry that we won’t be able to fit the ever-evolving guest list around the table, and yet every year we magically manage to fit everyone. 

My father and my children, in the park my father played in as a child.

My father and my children, in the park my father played in as a child.

But there’s another guest list as well.  These are the guests who are around the table only in our hearts and our memories, even if their seats are now filled by others.  There’s my father, with his particular connection to the Edmond Fleg “I am Jew” reading in the haggadah, or my grandmother, with her dramatic enunciation of the Ten Plagues and her legendary gefilte fish, or Belle and Ruben, the founders of our synagogue with their stories of the “old days” in Brooklyn, or my friend Bonnie, an amazing cook who used to bring the most delicious chicken soup and matzah balls, or the adoptive grandmother of our whole synagogue, Ida, who brought her homemade chopped liver and memories of life in pre-war Poland.  Even though someone else now make the chicken soup, and another person is making the matzah balls, and I’ve taken over the gefilte fish, the memories of their dishes and their stories stay with us. 

Passover, like all our holidays, combines the sadness of loss with the sweetness of memory, all wrapped up in the ongoing dynamism of change and forward motion.  We combine our bitter herbs with the joy of charoset. Like our ancient ancestors, we mourn, we celebrate, and we keep walking. Our collective story remains the same even as who we are changes from year to year.  I look forward to welcoming this year’s guests into our home, to remembering with love my father and all those who once joined us around the table, and to continuing to create new stories and traditions every year. 

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by | April 5, 2014 · 7:48 pm

Unchanging Change: Passover Cooking

imageI’m obsessively organized when it comes to Passover.  On my hard drive are lists, schedules, and menus.  I make slight updates every year, but there are no radical changes.  While a tremendous amount of work is involved, Passover prep here is a fairly well-oiled process.

The first thing that happens is the caramelizing of the onions.  Once the 14 or so onions are caramelized down to about 3-4 cups of flavor-packed richness after hours of cooking, the real cooking can begin.  The first thing to get cooked is the leek-artichoke kugel.  The ingredients for the kugel get sautéed in the big caramelizing pot  as soon as the onions are done so that they absorb all the flavor of the onions.  There’s a method at work here that’s been developed over years of making seders.

And yet, while I may have the prep process down to a science, in truth the recipes change every year.  With the exception of baking, I cook by intuition, not recipes.  When I made the leek-artichoke kugel this year, I looked back to see the blog that I had written about it last year.  I was surprised to see that what I wrote here last year was was different from what I cooked this year.

We change from year to year and so it seems appropriate that not only menus change but recipes do as well.  Inspiration strikes differently from year to year.  Tastes change, as do dietary needs.  Available ingredients change depending on whether Passover falls in late winter or deep into the spring.  Today I use as much whole wheat matzah products in my recipes as possible, which is not something I thought about some years ago.  This year the seder will include a few wheat-free vegetarian dishes alongside all the matzah-meal-based kugels and the farfel-laden stuffing. Even if your guest list never changes from year to year (and when does that happen anyway??), the people around your table this year are not the same people who sat there last year. What’s unchanged about our tradition is continual change.

When I became a vegetarian years ago, my mother switched to a meat-free tzimmes for me, which has since become the family tradition.  Then one year, after I started making my own seder and thus my own tzimmes, I learned that my father’s mother had made tzimmes with prunes, which he had loved.  So I began to add prunes to my tzimmes for him, and I added dates as well.  He’s no longer alive, but I still think of him when I cook tzimmes (even though I now also add brandy which I know he would not have liked). When my grandmother was alive and well, she made the annual gefilte fish from scratch. It was a major ritual that included a trip to the fish store in Boro Park to get the fish properly ground. Today I use my sister’s recipe for tricolor gefilte fish terrine instead.  Change happens, and traditions evolve.

I try to write the recipes down for posterity (ok, because I hope that someday my children will want them) but the real message I want to impart is to be flexible.  The point of the seder meal isn’t perfection or achieving a culinary ideal – it’s about history, memory, pleasure, and being together. It’s about the unchanging nature of Jewish tradition bumping up against ongoing change as our lives continue to move forward and evolve.  If the recipes change a bit from year to year, all that matters is that it’s good, and that it builds part of a positive Jewish memory of observance.  Passover about is about freedom, and so too are we free to be flexible and creative, to keep changing and growing from year to year.

imageVegetable Farfel Stuffing

2 peppers, diced (use orange, red or yellow for color)

1/2 cup chopped onion (if none are available, increase to 1 cup)

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 cups chopped butternut squash

2 cup cooked, peeled chestnuts (make it easy on yourself and buy them vacuum packed, ready to use)

2-3 cups chopped mushrooms

fresh sage, rosemary and thyme

1/2 carmelized onion

6 cups whole wheat matzah farfel

8 eggs

4 cups vegetable broth (use more if too dry)

salt and pepper to taste

1. Sautee peppers, fresh onion, garlic, mushrooms and chestnuts until soft.  Chop herbs and add.

2. In a large bowl, beat eggs; add farfel and broth and let farfel absorb the liquid.

3. Add vegetables to farfel mix.  Add caramelized onions, if using. Add salt and pepper.

4. Mix well until all ingredients are blended.

5. Glaze pan with 1/4 broth or water and pour over mixture, blend well.

6. Pour into large greased pan.

7. Bake at 350 for 1/2 hour.  Freezes well once cooled.

Note: Because I am a vegetarian, I do not actually stuff the stuffing into meat.  However, it could be stuffed rather than baked as above.

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by | March 24, 2013 · 11:29 am

Passover Love Song: A Poem

A few years ago, while I was in the middle of preparing for Passover, I sat down and wrote this. I wanted to find a way to convey to my children why Passover, and the enormous amount of preparation for it, was so important to me, why it mattered, and how although I spent so much time on the food and preparing the house, it wasn’t really about that.  This poem was included in The Torah: A Women’s Commentary and has been used at many congregational and women’s seders since then.  Shortly after that it was translated into Hebrew by Dr. Tzvia Walden, and I hear that it used in quite a few seders in Israel now too.  That’s been a surprise but is a pretty cool thing.

Since it was written, it’s already become a moment frozen in time as Passover in our house has continued to evolve and change.  Nothing stays the same, and nothing is ever done exactly the same way again.  Little changes happen every year until you step back and realize just how much it has all shifted.   Grief and illness, marriages and births, college acceptances and new jobs all impact on the guest list, the menu, the conversation.  That too is part of our ongoing story.


26907_379886335821_1042308_nPassover Love Song  

The seder is a love song written

in the language of silver polish

and dishpan hands

freshly grated lemon zest

blanched almonds

ground pecans

shelled pistachios

pitted olives

sliced meat

matzah meal

white tablecloths

to-do lists

trips to Boro Park and Sahadi’s

This is how it’s done.

 

ashkenazi haroset

vegetarian chopped liver

my mother’s real chopped liver

Bonnie’s matzah ball soup

Israeli salad

gefilte fish terrine

chesnut farfel stuffing

tzimmes

leek and shallot kugel

salmon in grape leaves with pine nuts

turkey and brisket

coconut macaroons

sephardic lemon pistachios cookies

pecan meringues

chocolate dipped apricots

 

Remember.

 

tables stretched the length of the house

tulips on the mantle

my grandmother’s blue glass plates

Aunt Hannah and Uncle Joe’s silver

Nana’s candlesticks

the silver salt bowls from my mother

Frieda and Solly’s cut-glass horseradish pot

the wedding present seder plate

grape juice stains on the tablecloth

thin paperback hagaddot

our mismatched family of friends

silly half-versions of songs

and don’t lick the wine from your finger after the plagues

 

Don’t be fooled by the easy domesticity of these words.

This is more than a recipe for nostalgia.

This is an urgent coded message of     survival

adaptation

love.

 Read between the words.

 

© 2007 by Hara E. Person.  All rights reserved.

This poem originally appeared in The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (URJ Press, 2008).  

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by | March 21, 2013 · 10:57 pm

Evolutionary Tradition

In his speech today to students in Israel, President Obama told the crowd that he started holding seders at the White House because he wanted his children to know the story and the message of the haggadah.

The things we do for our children.  My original motivation to create a special Passover experience came from being a parent. Or at least that’s what I told myself at the time. I wanted my children to have something unique, meaningful, and wonderful to remember.  I wanted them to learn the meta-messages of Passover, and to experience the joy of this holiday of hope and renewal.

Guess that plague!

Guess that plague!

This wish led the development of many new traditions and the reclaiming of some old ones as well.  Over the years, as my children have transformed from babies to young adults, our family tradition, and their roles in it, has continued to evolve.

What is tradition one year becomes history the next year, and what is new and experimental can quickly become standard, until it’s not anymore.  There’s a dynamism to the tradition that enables us all to keep growing.  The plays they used to put on during the maggid section of the seder, generally focusing on Moses, Pharaoh, and the plagues, gave way to paperbag dramatics as they emerged into adolescence, which then morphed into a Passover theme charades game, and now has likely receded into fond memories entirely.

Elijah arrives!

Elijah arrives!

One of the traditions my husband brought from his family’s seders centered around the arrival Elijah.  When it was time to open the door and welcome Elijah, suddenly who should be standing on the doorstep but Elijah himself, also known as Uncle David.  This custom had a long history in their family, going back at least one generation further to my husband’s grandfather.  My husband became our family’s Elijah, mysteriously disappearing from the table and arriving on at the front door in full costume, much to the delight of the young children.  And now, it has become my son’s job, a role he takes very seriously.

My daughter has taken on the role of commentator on the Four Children, a part of the seder that she finds troubling.  For the last several years, she has led us in discussing the problematic nature of this element of the seder.  The orange on the seder plate is also her contribution, and she carefully explains its role to any newcomers around the table who might not be familiar with this new addition.

Our evolved seder plate.

Our evolved seder plate.

I am proud that they have found ways to make parts of the seder their own, and to contribute to our ongoing evolution of tradition.  Every year draws on past years, and is a little bit different too as we all continue to learn more and grow.  Last night my son came home from post-confirmation class at the rabbi’s house and announced that he had some good material to talk about at the seder.  I can’t wait to hear what it is.

At this stage of parenting though, I have to look back and admit that much of what was done in the name of my children was really as much for me as it was for them.  When they were young, there was plenty I did with them not only because they would like it, but also because it gave me an excuse to do it.  Spend the afternoon in the park on a sunny afternoon? Let’s do it!  Play with playdough?  Sounds fun!  Put together a Lego Hogwarts?  Um, yes!  So too with the development of our seder rituals.  It was for them, yes, but thinking about my children’s needs and development gave me permission and courage to imagine what kind of seder I wanted for myself.  Parenting provided a framework within which to think about what Passover could and should mean, and then actually make it happen.

Which brings me back to President Obama.  It’s great that you want your children to get the message of the haggadah, Barack, but it’s ok if you enjoy it too.

 

 

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by | March 20, 2013 · 5:46 pm

Passover Culinary Midrash

26907_379886335821_1042308_nSeder food is typically heavy – not only because of all the matza and matzah meal and brisket and potatoes, but also it is laden with layers  of symbolism and meaning.  The bitter herbs, the charoset, the salt water, the parsley, the roasted egg, even the matzah, are all part of the pedagogic underpinnings of this holiday that emphasizes retelling and remembering.  On Passover we learn not only from our texts, but also from our food.

My sister, Jenni Person, created the term Culinary Midrash, the concept of cooking as a midrashic response to text.  It’s a great way to learn, and she’s created many wonderful text study experiences that result in the creation of midrashic dishes using this technique.  In keeping with the Passover methodology of learning from food, I borrowed my sister’s concept to create a new Seder recipe.

When the Israelites are wandering in the desert, they begin to complain.  The trek through the desert is hard, and they are not yet fully on board with the mission.  They cry out that things were so much better back in Egypt, forgetting how difficult their lives were.  “We remember the fish we used to eat  freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic” (Numbers 11:5).  It’s a very human response to challenging times.  When the future is uncertain, it’s easy to  romanticize the past.

Out of that episode, I’ve created Leek and Artichoke Kugel.  On Passover we can celebrate our freedom with the foods that the Israelites longingly recalled on the long road to liberation.  Admittedly it’s not an exact match – I’ll leave the fish for the gefilte course, and the melon for the dessert course. I’ve 2738_66809740821_4963169_nreplaced cucumbers with their cousin the zucchini, and added in artichoke hearts in homage to Italian Jewish cuisine and to add some flavor.  But despite the changes, this dish is inspired by the Torah verse in which the Israelites, still a people more used to slavery than freedom, lament being brought out of Egypt by Moses.  This dish prompts us to hold onto hope and optimism even when our present seems bleak, while reminding us of the responsibility to work for a better future for all people.

B’tayavon! 

Leek and Artichoke Kugel, based on Numbers 11:5

8 Leeks, chopped

4-5 large shallots, chopped

2 teaspoons chopped garlic

1 cup carmelized onion (or two cups chopped onion)

4 jars artichoke hearts

4 zucchini, shredded

8 eggs

1-2 cups whole grain matza meal, depending on how loose you want it

salt, pepper to taste

  1. Chop leeks and add to carmelized onions over medium flame.
  2. Chop shallots and add to mix.
  3. Drain artichoke hearts.  Reserve liquid and chop hearts.
  4. Shred zucchini and add to mixture.
  5. When mixture is close to wilted, add chopped artichoke hearts.
  6. Sauté mixture.  Add 2/3 cup artichoke marinade and let it evaporate in pan.  Add salt and pepper.
  7. Remove from heat and cool.
  8. Beat eggs together.  Add to mixture and mix well.
  9. Add matza meal.
  10. Pour into greased baking dish (may make two batches depending on depth of baking dish).  Bake at 350 until it browns at the edges.

 

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by | March 19, 2013 · 9:59 pm

The Books of Passover: An Ode to Cookbooks

Never mind the challah on the cover. Another basic, must-have resource with good Passover recipes.

Never mind the challah on the cover. Another basic, must-have resource with good Passover recipes.

Books are a central part of my ongoing Passover education.  I don’t mean haggadot, though those are of course also essential and beloved, and I don’t mean our traditional texts dealing with Passover, though I study those as well.  What I’m talking about here is cookbooks.

Even though I was born Jewish, Passover prep, beyond the basics, didn’t come naturally to me.  It had to be learned.  In rabbinic school I studied codes and laws and customs related to Passover.  And at home I read cookbooks.

A good cookbook is much more than a collection of recipes.  Other than baking, where precision and chemistry matter, I rarely use cookbooks for the actual recipes.  I tend to create recipes based on ingredients and experience.  What I go to cookbooks for is history, the culinary byways that collections of recipes represent.  Why these spices were used, and why this ingredient is prevalent.  How changes in recipes over time represent changes in immigration patterns, or ruling powers, or economic status.  Jewish cookbooks are full of lessons in the day-to-day history of the Jews.

There’s this myth that authentic Jewish practice gets handed down seamlessly from one generation to another, but it doesn’t always happen that way.  I  learned about Judaism at home, enough to whet my appetite for more.  But since childhood I’ve been on an ongoing

A must-have Passover resource.

A must-have Passover resource.

journey, taking what I was given at home and deepening, updating, and enriching that original experiential base.  I’ve added back in things that were discarded along the road toward Americanization, and created new traditions.  Intentionally learned practice, once adapted and made your own, becomes as authentic as what’s handed down from ancestors.

I imagine that in generations past, women learned from their mothers and grandmothers and thus kept recipes and traditions alive, handing down knowledge from one to the next.  But that is not my story.  Many of my seder traditions are gathered from cookbooks, from years living in Israel, and from friends.  Modern concerns like vegetarianism, veganism, organics, food sourcing and so on have also impacted the seder table.  But maybe it was always like that, an ongoing evolution of tradition-meets-current-reality, and I’m only imagining a romanticized past.  For example, developments in beet sugar processing in certain parts of Europe meant that Jews in those areas began to eat a much sweeter diet than Jews in other parts of Europe, who relied on salt and pepper for taste.

My great-grandmother was supposedly a terrific cook.  I don’t remember much about her food, but I do remember her homemade blintzes, and I remember helping her stuff and fold them at her porcelain table in the Bronx.  But my grandmother, the only one I had,

My mother's copy of the balabusta cookbook.

My mother’s copy of the balabusta cookbook.

was not much of a cook or homemaker. No traditional bubbe was she.  Widowed in her forties, she went to work everyday as a bookkeeper.  She was not one to pass on recipes and techniques.  The only thing she took great pride in was her homemade gefilte fish.  Watching her make the gefilte fish was part of our pre-Passover ritual, until the year where we realized she didn’t remember that she had already added the salt – several times.

My mother cooks within the traditional Ashkenazi style, using family memories and what she, my sister and I call the “balabusta cookbook” but is actually called The Complete American Jewish Cookbook, by Anne London and Bertha Kahn Bishov.  For my mother, this is the essential reference, the one that has THE  correct recipes for the Jewish food she ate growing up.

When my sister and I got married, my mother gave us each a copy of THE book, now in paperback.  It was the must-have for us as we started our married, adult lives.  I don’t use the cookbook for that many recipes, but it is a great, basic resource.  Neither my sister nor I make the kinds of seders we grew up with, but for both of us the “balabusta cookbook” remains a touchstone, a connection to a certain

My copy of the book.

My copy of the book.

kind of cooking of the Jewish American past and to each other.

Passover preparation often begins with menu exchanges between the three of us.  Our respective menus are always very different.  My mother’s seder menu always includes chicken soup, gefilte fish, chopped liver, tzimmes, brisket, and potato kugel (she comes from the salt and pepper school, not the sweet). Of course there’s also a green salad, turkey breast (surely a new world adaptation), marinated grilled vegetables (a nod to living in a traditionally Italian part of Brooklyn), and desserts.  Plenty of desserts.

My menu draws from around the Jewish world.  It uses some of the Ashkenazi traditions I grew up with, but also borrows from other times and places in Jewish history.  My recipes take inspiration from the flavors of Italian, Moroccan, Syrian, Iraqi, and other Jewish communities, like pomegranate molasses, preserved lemon, pistachios, and artichokes.  I am a vegetarian and so there are many parve dishes for the non-meat eating crowd, but I also do serve meat (including my mother’s brisket).

Contains some good Passover recipes, including great nut-based cakes.

Contains some good Passover recipes, including great nut-based cakes.

Expanding the seder tradition out of the traditional Ashkenazi realm has been an intentional response to the reality of Jewish life in the 21st century.  My childrens’ heritage includes Germany, Poland, Russia, Alsace-Lorraine, Lithuania, South Africa, Israel, and Brooklyn, with some Portuguese roots thrown in.  I want them to connect to their (mostly) Askenazi legacy, but to also have an affinity to the whole of Jewish history.  I am far enough removed from the shtetl, and my children even more so, that it feels natural to claim all of Jewish history as our own rather than just one narrow slice of it.

For my mother, Passover cooking is a way to connect with the past.  Her “balabusta cookbook” is a guide to memories and tastes from back then.  For me, Passover cooking is about creating a new Jewish present that embraces the past while reaching toward the future. The “balabusta cookbook” is one of many that serve as guides to the culinary adventure of Passover.  Some are specific to the holiday, others are more broadly Jewish, and some aren’t Jewish at all but offer a recipe or two that fit the Passover guidelines.  All contain gems.

So if you’re looking for ways to expand your Passover creativity, do some text study and consult cookbooks.

Amazing history of Jewish vegetarian dishes, with some Passover recipes.

Amazing history of Jewish vegetarian dishes, with some Passover recipes.

Some of my favorites include:

Classic Italian Jewish Cooking by  Edda Servin Machlin (Ecco, 2005)

Joan Nathan’s Jewish Holiday Cookbook by Joan Nathan (Schocken, 2004)

Essence of Chocolate: Recipes for Baking and Cooking with Fine Chocolate by Robert Steinberg and John Scharffenberger (Hyperion, 2006)

The New York Times Passover Cookbook by Linda Amster (William Morrow, 1999)

Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World by Gil Marks (Houghton Mifflin, 2004)

Entree to Judaism: A Culinary Exploration of the Jewish Diaspora by Tina Wasserman (UJR Press, 2009)

Not a Passover cookbook, but it's got an incredible flourless chocolate cake: Orbit Cake.

Not a Passover cookbook, but it’s got an incredible flourless chocolate cake: Orbit Cake.

Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York by Claudia Roden (Knopf, 1996)

Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews by Poopa Dweck (Ecoo, 2007)

 

 

 

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Filed under Books, Judaism, Passover, Seder, Stories

by | March 18, 2013 · 7:37 pm

The Grandest Story of All

IMG_3676Passover is my holiday. For me, it’s the big one.  Yes, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are big ones too – after all, I am a rabbi.  And even though I’m not a congregational rabbi, I’ve had the privilege of leading an amazing and special congregation on the high holy days for the last 15 years, and I love that I get to do so.  Sukkot and Shavuot are great too, of course, as are Chanukah and Purim and….

But Passover is my personal holiday.  It’s about the home.  It’s about the family.  It’s about the story.  And it’s about the food.

Passover has it all – slavery, degradation, trials, miracles, missteps, charismatic leaders, and eventually the triumph of liberation. Whether or not it contains actual historical truth – and that’s a question I’ll leave to the ongoing scholarly debate – it contains profound narrative truth.  The ultimate truth of the Passover story is its power to bind the Jewish people together for generation after generation.  The truth of Passover is its ongoing ability to teach us about continuity and survival, to impart the value of caring for the stranger, to call us to remember while pushing us forward toward the future, and to connect us to God.  It is our defining story, the story that shapes us as a people.

When I first began to think about how Passover was to be observed in my own home as a young adult, I searched for ways to make it special.  My motivation at the time was admittedly more parental than spiritual.  I wanted to create an approach to Passover that would make my children feel special rather than restricted. I wanted to create rich and meaningful memories for them.  And I wanted to create something that was unique to who we were as a family.

I grew up with seders that were fun and delicious.  There were readings from our minimalist haggadah that were especially beloved by different family members – my 26907_379886350821_6424778_nmother lighting the holiday candles, my grandmother carefully enunciating the words of the Ten Plagues, my father particularly drawn to the Edmond Fleg reading “I am a Jew because…”  And of course who didn’t love searching for the afikoman and getting a silver dollar from my father?  The rituals of the seder shared the spotlight with the food, which emerged from the kitchen in slow stages over the course of the long evening, each with its own meaning and history.

Later I encountered different kinds of seders: a Hillel seder in college which was tremendous fun despite the mediocre food shipped in from a kosher caterer across the state, a hundred college students drinking unlimited amounts of cheap kosher wine; a kibbutz seder held in the vast communal dining room, in which corn and rice held places of prominence on the table, the seder leader used a microphone, and the focus of the haggadah was on agriculture; a seder with my Moroccan flatmate’s family in Hadera featuring tumeric-yellow piquant fish in a spicy tomato sauce instead of gefilte fish, and many unfamiliar songs to which I could not sing along; a seder with ex-South Africans in Ra’anana with many little cousins spilling bottles of coke across the white tablecloths and an Elijah who miraculously showed up at the door demanding wine.

What’s evolved over the years at our home is a second night seder that I think of as our big annual performance art piece (I went to art school before I went to
rabbinic school).  I don’t mean that the seder is merely a performance put on for an audience, but rather that it’s meant to be a participatory experience in which all senses of those gathered around are fully engaged.  This is art created as interpretation of the Passover story, art that is meant to be lived and tasted and felt in the gut, an extension of what our tradition brilliantly began by imbuing certain seder foods like charoset with narrative meaning. It’s the four questions writ large – we eat this because…

Our seder involves weeks of planning and preparation.  It is the one time of year that my secret inner Martha Stewart comes out.  I have lists and charts and know what has to get done on what day in the weeks leading up to the seder.  I track which ingredients have to be bought when, and from where; which dishes can be made two or three weeks ahead and frozen, and which need to be made fresh right ahead of time.  It’s the one time a year that I can indulge in being the balabusta I don’t have the time or inclination to be the rest of the year.

The laws of Passover are important.  Reading the Haggadah is important.  But the real lessons of Passover in our home are food-based.  Each food tells its own part of the collective story.  The tastes, the smells, the colors, the textures are all important elements of shinantem l’vanecha – teaching our children what it means to be part of the Jewish people, part of chain of tradition that reaches back farther than we can see.

2738_66476935821_105691_nMuch of this is centered around the food, but it’s not just about the food.  And this is not just an update on my mother’s Askenazi lineup of greatest hits.  A menu has evolved, with small annual tweaks, that draws on my family’s history, my personal history, and Jewish history. And it’s more than the food – there are tables and chairs to order.  There’s the “eating down of the freezer” to make room in the weeks leading up to Passover.  There’s cleaning the cabinets and storing the chametz and getting out the special pesadik dishes.  And the guest list – who’s coming back from prior years?  How many new people do we have room to include?  There are tablecloths to clean and flowers to buy and silver to polish….

All of which sounds extremely mundane.  Yet it’s very spiritual, even the lists.  The making of order out of chaos, the cycle of the preparations, the turning back around to hope and liberation, the coming out from winter into spring, checking last year’s menus and guest lists and making updates while remembering seders past and former guests no longer in this world – all of this speaks of our ongoing story, of the importance of memory, of our ongoing survival and adaption and interpretation.  The extensive planning and preparing and cooking aren’t ends unto themselves, but a way to participate in the constantly unfolding miracle of the ongoing story.

 

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