Tag Archives: Seder

by | April 12, 2017 · 11:15 am

Pussy Grabs Back Deviled Eggs for Passover

IMG_0773I don’t like vulgarity. I love words – written, read, spoken. My professional life as a rabbi and an editor is based on words and their import. Words and how they’re used matter, and are to be carefully considered.

When my kids were small, I was that principled mother who insisted on using the proper words for body parts, not euphemisms. And later I was that feminist mother of teenagers who insisted on not using words that demean women. It’s true that I often use a certain “inappropriate” swear word for emphasis. Admittedly, it’s not one of my better qualities, especially at work, and especially given my profession. I like to say that I use it because I’m from the mean streets of Brooklyn, before Brooklyn was cool, as if that gives me license.  Truthfully though, my fancy private school education belies any right I have to speak like that, despite my Brooklyn origins – I do indeed know better. But to me – rightly or wrongly – the use of that word always seemed different than using female-gendered words in demeaning ways. The words “pussy” or “cunt” (I can’t believe I even just typed those words!) has always greatly bothered me, in particular when used to disparage people of any gender. Somewhat prudishly, I had a hard time even saying those words.

And then suddenly “pussy” entered our national vocabulary. We had to hear a presidential candidate talk about pussy grabbing on an endless recorded loop that played for days. We thought, we hoped, that on Election Day we would grab back and show him a thing or two about the power of pussy – that pussy could grab back. We weren’t going to let him and those other misogynist predators out there own our agency or run our government.

My sister and niece at the March with the pussyhats I knit for them.

My sister and niece at the March with friends, in the pussyhats I knit for them.

And then Election Day came and as shock set in, resistance started to bubble up to the surface. Women’s marches were planned not only around the country but around the world, and someone came up with the idea for pussyhats (thank you Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman).  I started to knit, and I started to use the word pussy in every day conversation as we processed what was happening.

I’ve become much more comfortable using the word pussy now as a way to hold, rather than lose, power. And so for Passover, the holiday that is about counting our blessings, celebrating our agency as free people, and calling out injustice, and that is also a holiday about using food to tell our stories, I created a new dish: Pussy Grabs Back deviled eggs. They’re hard boiled eggs marinated in pickled beets so they turn pink, filled with a beet/yolk mixture with a kick of jalapeño and decorated with their own little pussyhats.


Pussy Grabs Back: Deviled Eggs with a Kick 

1 dozen eggs, hard boiled and peeled

1 cup apple cider vinegar

2 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

4 cooked and peeled beets

1/4 cup mayo

1/4 cup strong mustard

1 jalapeno pepper, cut up, or to taste (depending on how spicy you like it)

1. Boil 2 of the beets with the vinegar, sugar, salt. Once it reaches a boil, let it cool. The liquid should be bright pink.

2. When the liquid is cooled, place the peeled, hardboiled eggs into the liquid. Let the eggs sit in the liquid, refrigerated, for several hours or overnight.

3, Removed the eggs and discard the liquid. They eggs should now be tinted pink. Slice the eggs in half and placed yolks in a bowl.

4. Chop the remaining 2 beets. Reserve 1/2 a beet and add the rest to the yolks. Add in mayo, mustard, and jalapeño. Mix together well with hand mixer or in food processor.

5. Spoon or pipe the yolk/beet filling into the eggs.

6. Cut the remaining 1/2 a beet into small chunks, and then divide the chunks into triangles. Decorate each of the egg fillings with two triangles.

Refrigerate until you’re ready to serve.

 

 

 

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by | April 1, 2015 · 2:42 pm

The Meat Compromise, and a Recipe for Vegetarian “Chopped Liver”

Shishlik in tahini-pomegranate sauce

Shishlik in tahini-pomegranate sauce

We all make compromises for those we love.

I have been a non-meat-eater since 1981. Though I confess to eating my mother’s chicken broth once a year at her seder, aside from that I have not eaten meat or chicken since I was a senior in high school.

I once thought that I would have an idyllic vegetarian household, with sweet little vegetarian children who gladly ate tofu hot dogs, beans and rice, mac and cheese, and loads of spinach. Needless to say, it didn’t turn out quite like that. My children were both lactose intolerant, and as young kids they were averse to beans (other than humus) and green vegetables. And by the way, my spouse was allergic to soy, which further complicated dinner time.

At first I bought prepared or easy-to-prepare meat things from our food coop – organic chicken nuggets, all natural beef hot dogs, and so on.  And we ate fish, a lot of fish, because in truth I am actually a conflicted pescatarian.

Apple and honey chicken on Rosh HaShanah

Apple and honey chicken on Rosh HaShanah

But my children got bigger and they needed more than chicken nuggets and hot dogs. I started to cook meat. Several nights a week. Chicken breasts with apricot coconut sauce, or garlic-soy-ginger, chicken thighs shwarma-style, chicken and broccoli stir fries, grilled turkey breasts, sweet and sour meat balls, meatloaves (Asian-style or standard American). The less I had to touch it and deal with it, the better, so I still have never cooked a whole chicken.  But I hear that my meat meals are pretty good.  Over the years I developed some recipes that sounded good and were relatively easy for a working mom to manage.

I don’t like meat and I still do believe that the world would be a better place without the killing of animals and the eating of meat. But people I love eat meat. That’s just reality. So I compromise, and I’ve learned to cook meat. It’s not that we eat it all the time, but I do cook it sometimes, and they do eat it.

And then there’s Passover. Early on I decided to make it a meat meal. It didn’t seem right without meat. I know that sounds weird for a non-meat eater, but there it is. How could it be Passover without brisket or chopped liver, without chicken soup, without those emotional connections to Passovers past? And because I keep kosher, it couldn’t be both meat and dairy. So meat it was.

Passover brisket on its way into the oven

Passover brisket on its way into the oven

So these days my seder includes a brisket, which I now make myself after years of relying on my mother. And roasted turkey breasts, which required slightly more touching of meat than I’d like but is still better than a whole turkey or chicken. And my mother’s chopped liver.

That’s where I draw the line. Some of the people around the table love chopped liver. It’s the only time all year they eat it, and they look forward to it. So ok, they can have it as long as I don’t have to make it. There’s only so far I can go with compromising my personal comfort level to make the people I love happy.  So that’s my mother’s contribution to my seder – her homemade chopped liver. As for me, I make an amazing vegetarian “chopped liver” that many of the meat eaters love.  (One caveat – it’s made with kitniyot. So join the Kitniyot Liberation Front and enjoy it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about it, read up but feel free to eat legumes on Passover, it’s really ok.)

As for those sweet vegetarian kids I was going to raise – well, they’re both pretty serious carnivores. But they’re still very sweet and they do eat spinach, as well as kale and lots of other healthy vegetables.

Vegetarian Chopped Liver 

1 cup carmelized or sautéed onions

1 10 oz bag frozen string beans, defrosted

1 cup cashews nuts

Salt and lemon juice to taste

Toast the cashews so that they’re lightly brown.

Place onions, string beans, and cashews in the food processor.  Blend it all together.  Add salt and lemon juice to taste.  That’s it!  (I always triple the recipe and we eat it all week).

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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 | 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 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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