Tag Archives: Pesach

by | April 9, 2017 · 10:53 am

Nevertheless, She Persisted: A New Passover Dish

IMG_0724This year there will be an additional vegetable dish on my seder table, a colorful, savory roasted cauliflower pie called Nevertheless, She Persisted. It’s an homage to the too-often underestimated cauliflower, as well as a shout-out of gratitude to the women who persist every day, under all kinds of conditions, and often against those who underestimate their strength.

Passover only comes once a year but it is a defining piece of what home means to me. Over the years I have figured out how to cram the maximum number of people in my house for seder. It’s admittedly not the most comfortable seating, it’s crowded and noisy, but the guests keep coming back so it can’t be too terrible. When I was briefly thinking about moving last year, one of the main considerations of a new place to live was that it be large enough for seder. A crazy consideration given that it’s one night a year, but there it is.

I prepare for weeks, with everything spreadsheeted out, lists made and crossed off, multiple runs to different stores, the freezer at full capacity. I bow in humility to those who do it all in two or three days. Me, I can’t do it without major obsessive planning and preparation.

The menu stays more or less the same from year to year, with a few innovations here and there that get woven into the mix. It’s a meat meal, for which this vegetarian concedes to cook (meaning: buy, touch, and interact with) meat in act of love for the family and guests. I’ve never tasted my brisket, but they seem to like it and ask for more.

While the menu hasn’t changed much, what has changed dramatically in the last few years is the definition of family. In recent years, and in what felt like one fell swoop, I went from being part of a grouping of four, to one. As a result, I’ve begun to think about ways to keep the seder familiar, while also making it more “mine”.

So this year I decided to try something a little different. I’m still making all the standards that appear on the menu every year, but I’m adding something for myself.

I’ve been asked by many over the last few years if I was going to move, if I was going to sell my house, if I was going to stop doing seder. Isn’t it a lot to manage by myself, I’m asked. And the answer to all of those is – yes, it is a lot to manage, all of it by myself, but no, I’m not moving and I’m not giving up hosting seder. Maybe someday, but not yet. In the meantime, I’m learning, and I’m adapting. My skill set has grown dramatically, as has my toolbox, both literally and figuratively. My ability to graciously accept help when it’s offered has also increased, and I’m learning that paying for help is sometimes ok as well.

That brings me back to the cauliflower pie. Though it’s often overlooked and certainly often overcooked, cauliflower is quite a glorious, versatile, and nutritious vegetable. This new dish for my seder table is a bold, colorful, and fiery dish that draws on spices from different pockets of Jewish history and is deeply satisfying, while being fairly light and healthy (it’s also carb-free, and therefore gluten free). From my perspective, there’s no such thing as too much cauliflower, and it’s a good antidote to the usual heavy, meat-focused Passover dishes. And given the state of the United States at the moment, there’s also no such thing as paying too much attention to women’s roles, women’s voices, women’s rights, and our bold, colorful, fiery persistence against those would underestimate our strength.

Roasted Cauliflower Pie

2 heads of cauliflower

3 Tbsps sweet paprika

1 Tbsp cumin

4 shallots, chopped

4 garlic cloves, chopped

Olive oil

8 eggs

2 Tbsps chopped parsley

salt and pepper

  1. Cut cauliflower into florets. Place in Ziploc bag with 2 Tbsps paprika, cumin, salt, and olive oil, enough to coat the cauliflower. Close the bag and shake until all the florets are a nice reddish yellow.
  2. Oil a cookie sheet and toss the cauliflower onto the pan. Spray some oil on top of the florets as well. Roast at 425 until they’re starting to brown.
  3. While they’re roasting, sauté chopped shallots and garlic in oil until golden.
  4. In a bowl, beat eggs. Add in chopped parsley, shallot and garlic mixture, and remaining Tbsp of paprika. Add salt and pepper. Mix well.
  5. When cauliflower is roasted, placed into oiled baking dish. Pour egg mixture on top and make sure all the cauliflower is covered.
  6. Bake at 350 for an hour or until all the egg is cooked and browned at the edges.

 

 

6 Comments

Filed under Passover, Recipe, women

Tagged as , , , ,

by | April 8, 2017 · 7:55 pm

Spring, Hope, and Passover Pistachio Lemon Cookies

IMG_0091Renewal. Rebirth. Green shoots breaking through the dirt. Known also as Chag HaAviv, “the Spring Holiday,” Passover is part religious ritual, part people-building exercise, and part springtime rite.

Whether it arrives in cold, rainy March, or flowerful April, Passover always manages to lift my heart. Its arrival reminds me to hold on to hope, no matter how dreary the winter has been, no matter how gloomy things look. Hope, Passover teaches, is right around the corner. The days will get longer, the flowers will bloom, things can get better.

After a very difficult personal year in which I didn’t know what the contours of my life were going to look like, I decided to plant bulbs in my garden. I didn’t even know at that time that I’d still be in that very house to see them come up months later in the spring, but it was a stubborn act of hope in the future. And by that next spring I got to see the flowers burst into glorious color right in time for Passover.

This Passover recipe is one of my favorites because of the bright green color, and the lemony flavor and smell. These cookies taste of spring, and hope. Pistachios are an ancient near eastern food, mentioned in the Bible, and feature prominently in Persian Jewish cooking. They speak of our historical past – where we’ve been and the resilience we’ve managed to harness to get from there to here, despite the obstacles. And the yellow lemons speak to the potential that the future holds – the possibility of brightness and light, the warm sunshine of the coming spring and summer.

Now it’s a year later and it’s been another difficult winter, but this time on a national and international level. Our national leadership has dramatically shifted and suddenly women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, climate justice, and much more are under attack. Ant-semitism is on the rise. We’re living in a world of alternative facts and cowardly leadership. And while refugees are being denied entry to this country and children are washing up on beaches, we’re bombing Syria for “moral reasons.” My bulbs are coming up again but the world is upside down.

Needless to say, these cookies are not going to solve the world’s problems. But they do provide balm for the soul and some hope for the future. And maybe that hope can give us strength to keep doing our part to heal this broken world.

Pistachio Lemon Passover CookiesIMG_0723

 6 c ground pistachios

6 egg whites

2 c sugar

Juice of one lemon

rind from 2 lemons

  1. In mixer, combine ground nuts, eggs whites, lemon juice and sugar.
  2. Grate rind from two washed lemons and fold into mixture.
  3. Use cookie scoop or spoon to place on pan lined with parchment paper.
  4. Bake at 325 until brown around the edges.

Makes about 5 dozen cookies. (And they’re gluten-free!)

 

1 Comment

Filed under Passover, Recipe

Tagged as , , , , ,

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.

 

2 Comments

Filed under Judaism, Passover, Seder, Stories

Tagged as , , , ,