Passover Food

A Passover plate from the seder in Israel in 2018.

The Passover Seder is a ritually defined meal that includes several symbolic foods, but also a number of traditional foods that have no religious significance. The ritual foods are served on a special plate, like the one above, and play a role in the ceremony. Traditional foods are not required, but they have become so much a part of the Passover meal that they feel obligatory too. These foods include, especially, gefilte fish, matzoh ball soup, roast meats and vegetables, and several types of sweets and unleavened pastry.

We had an early Passover meal at Elaine and Larry’s house Wednesday night (because we plan to be on the road by the correct date, Friday.) For the benefit of one of Elaine’s friends, and for anyone else who is interested, here are some of the traditional foods in photos from this year and other years, also including some of the required ritual foods.

Dessert First

Let’s start with the sweets! Passover desserts are very special because they must be made without flour, yeast, or other rising agents. Remember this is the holiday of unleavened bread, memorializing the hasty departure of the Hebrew slaves that Moses, his brother Aaron, and his sister Miriam,  led out of Egypt, carrying their unbaked dough which turned into matzoh — one of the ritual foods. Every family has some recipes for Passover tortes made only from eggs, almond meal, and other flavors, but with no flour or leavening.

Commercial Passover sweets are also a favorite food, and here are two that most of us remember from childhood. First, candy slices made out of fruit jelly. Here is a large box of them that we enjoyed last year:

The second commercial Passover treat is macaroons, made from coconut and almond flavoring. and sometimes other flavors like chocolate chips. We enjoyed the plain traditional version from the Manischewitz food company at our early Passover dinner Wednesday night. Commercially prepared foods that followed Jewish traditions and ritual laws became popular in the early twentieth century, and became even more important in the 1950s.

Matzoh Ball Soup, Matzohs, and the Seder Plate

A bowl of matzoh ball soup that we ate at Elaine’s.
This is one of the most iconic Passover foods,
so much so that it figures in many jokes.

Beating the eggs for the matzoh ball dough, which
is boiled like dumplings.

If you want to make matzoh balls, buy a box of Manischewitz matzoh meal (not matzoh ball mix), and follow the recipe on the box. Matzoh meal is made from ground-up matzohs, so it doesn't contain any leavening. Passover traditions include many other recipes for foods made from matzoh and matzoh meal, which were required by families who observed the 8-day traditional abstention from leavened bread and other leavened products; our family did not extend the celebration beyond just the Seder meal.

Matzohs, commemorating the unleavened bread, are the central
food of the Seder. Along with them, are the ritual foods on a plate.

The seder table from a few years ago, showing more of the ritual foods,
including a lamb bone that symbolizes the sparing of the children of the
Hebrew slaves when God killed the first-born Egyptian children.

The Seder plate at Elaine’s this year.

An orange on the plate is a 20th century addition,

expressing the right of women to play a central role.

From last year’s seder: gefilte fish and hard-boiled eggs
on one plate, and a bowl of charoset or charoses.

The Haggadah, seen in several of these photos, is the book containing the ritual and guide to the holiday; the contents and illustrations vary from edition to edition, but the central text dates from around 1000 years ago.

Elaine had a copy of our mother’s Passover charoses recipe including a drawing of the Seder plate.
Charoses is a key item in the ritual: it symbolizes the mortar that the Hebrew slaves used
when building the pyramids in Egypt. This version uses apples and almonds;
other versions (from other traditions) use dates to make a mortar-like condiment.

Wine

The Seder begins with a blessing over a cup of wine, and drinking this cup of wine. A discussion of the wine would require another long blog post. After the first cup of wine, each of the ritual foods on the Seder plate then has its own blessing, and the foods are eaten in small amounts. In the course of the Seder, the participants each drink four cups of wine, sometimes adding a fifth cup at the end of the meal, in memory of the six million victims of the Holocaust. Depending on how closely you follow the reading of the Haggadah and the symbolic consumption of the special foods, the meal is served somewhere between 10 minutes and several hours after the ritual begins. At the end of the evening, a symbolic cup of wine is set out on the table, and the door to the house is opened, to invite the prophet Elijah to arrive in the world and announce the coming of the Messiah.

Blog post and photos © 2018, 2021, 2022 mae sander.

 

Last Chance Stuffed Dates with Ground Lamb

A split date stuffed with spiced ground lamb, garnished with parsley, lemon,
and toasted almonds. A creative Israeli recipe!

On our recent trip to Israel, we ate lunch one day near the Dead Sea at a restaurant called "The Last Chance." I ordered a very delicious dish which the menu called "Dates stuffed with meat, tahini, and silan." There was just a hint of tahini, and the ground meat spicing seemed vaguely North African (the restaurant's chef is of Tunisian background). Silan is honey made from dates -- in fact that's the honey that's meant in the Biblical verse about a land of "milk and honey."

When I got home, I searched and searched for a recipe for dates stuffed with meat, but found that dates are sometimes used to stuff lamb roasts; they are often stuffed with cheese or nuts; but the recipe I wanted just didn't show up in any of my cookbooks or web browsings. Finally, in a not-so-obvious page on the restaurant's website I found their actual recipe!

Stuffed date recipe from the restaurant website (link).

Making this recipe required that I do a bit of interpretation: for example, it's not clear about cooking the meat after you add it to the pan, and the spice quantities are pure guess-work. Nevertheless, I tried making the dish as best I could, and the results were satisfying. Adjustments:

• I did not make an attempt to buy Silan, as it's hard to find. In any case, I thought it was a little too sweet for the meat dish as served in the restaurant. Using pomegranate molasses for garnish was enough sweetener.
• Besides the spices called for in the recipe, I added a little of the Moroccan seasoning blend Ras el Hanout because I thought I had tasted some of those flavors. 
• I used ground lamb from a local farm, but this would also work with ground beef.

Ingredients ready to prepare, cook, and assemble.

My serving platter, with the parsley, lemon, and a bit of tahini spread on the
surface as the recipe suggests, and as was done at the restaurant. Mint is
really not in season here so I sprinkled some dried mint on the tahini.
I made sure each date was set on the tahini.

Platter with the stuffed dates and recommended garnishes.

"The Blue Mountain" by Meir Shalev: Israeli Natural History

Returning from our recent visit to Israel, I decided to reread The Blue Mountain, a novel by Israeli author Meir Shalev. At the time I read it in 2006, I found that it resonated with my recent experiences visiting the countryside in the Jezreel valley, which lies east of the Sea of Galilee and west of Haifa. The novel combines historical fiction, humor, magical realism, and natural history, creating a portrait of the pioneers who created the State of Israel. The Blue Mountain is centered in a Moshav -- a type of cooperative farm but distinct from the more popular Kibbutz. Shalev grew up in Moshav Nahalal, which we visited at that time, making it especially meaningful. I wrote about that in this review/blog post: "Storks."

A greenfinch at a feeder, Jerusalem Bird Observatory.

A kestrel (type of Falcon).

One of many characters in the novel, Shalev's schoolmaster, Pinness, stands out for his fascination with the natural world, his interest in writers and naturalists such as Luther Burbank and Darwin, and his dedication to teaching the village children about their environment.  Shalev frequently uses birds that nest in Israel or migrate through, as well as other wild and domestic creatures, as a metaphor for the events in his story. Some of the birds appear, as shown, in the photos we took, and this feature of the book seemed very compelling to me.

Bird quotes from The Blue Mountain:

"The air was cool and crisp when I set out, and dewdrops still hung from the leaves... . Greenfinches jumped on the hedgerows along the path, and a pair of falcons tumbled in the air, sporting in high-pitched spirals. A yellow cloud of goldfinches swarmed anxiously over the thistles, their thick, short beaks sounding little squeaks of surprise. ... Pinness told us how Darwin had studied the Galapagos Island chaffinches... Sometimes I would flush a mother lark from her hiding place, and she would run ahead of me and flop around in the stubble like a shrill, lame old woman, soiling her crest in the dirt while luring me away from her nest and camouflaged eggs." (pp. 128-129)

A clamorous reed warbler near the Dead Sea.

"When I was five he once took me to the orange grove to show me a roofed oval nest with a round entrance on one side.

"'This is the nest of the graceful warbler,' he said. 'Its fledglings are gone already. You can stick your hand inside it.'

"The inside of the next was lined with soft, warm down and groundsel seeds.

"'The warbler is our friend because it eats harmful insects said Pinness. 'It has a little body and a long tail'" (p. 189-191)

A Little Owl.

"At my grandmother Feyge's funeral Pinness had noticed two Little Owls, a male and a female, bowing and curtseying to the mourners while curiously regarding them through slit golden eyes.... Several days later he returned to find that the two small birds of prey were nesting among the stone ruins. Scattered on the ground were the slivery skulls of field mice, dry, hardened bird spew, and the wings of devoured grasshoppers. A stench of carrion arose from two little fledglings in a nest, whose white plumage and angry hisses made him think of a pair of Hasidic dwarfs." (p. 267)

A Griffon Vulture.

"With his grey hair and clawing fingers Meshulam resembled an irritable Egyptian vulture." (p. 276)

Black Storks in migration, near Eilat. The storks that nest
in Eastern Europe are White Storks, which also migrate
through the region.

And finally, the paragraph I quoted at the beginning of my earlier review: “I lay on a bed of jonquils, staring up at the sky. Flocks of migrating storks soared overhead, circling like tiny water insects on a clear, transparent pond. Back in the Ukraine, two storks had nested in the chimney of Grandfather’s house. ‘I knew that they visited the Land of Israel each year and came back with a bellyful of the frogs of Canaan,’ Grandfather told me. Were the grandchildren of those storks flying over me now?” (p. 84)

In re-reading The Blue Mountain, I again found strong resonance with my recent experience birdwatching and observing a variety of landscapes and natural history. Besides the birds mentioned in the paragraphs above, many more appear in the narrative, including the barn owl, starlings, swallows, coots, the bee eater, cattle egrets, ostriches, a kite, pigeons, herons, robins, the plover, geese, quail, and more. In addition, passages on insects such as the cicada, on sand crabs, on hyenas and jackals, and on many others reveal the natural environment of the human story. They complement Shalev's descriptions of the challenges that the characters in the book faced in building homes and barns, developing farmlands, learning techniques for raising crops, planting and maintaining orange trees, managing work animals, setting up dairy operations, establishing governance of their cooperative endeavors, coping with an unfamiliar climate, and rearing their children in the new land.

The Cemetery of Moshav Nahalal, from our 2006 visit.

Wordless Wednesday: An Egyptian Mastigure in the Negev Desert

Back in Ann Arbor!

Remembering our trip: a parrot in a coral tree. One of my favorite birds, one of my favorite trees, in
the park near Janet's house where we stayed last week.

Last night we left Janet's house at around midnight. Door to door, the return trip was well over 20 hours, and all connections were on time and not difficult. I've chosen a few retrospective images from our stay in Kiryat Ono. First, Janet's friendly and exuberant dogs, Juno and Luna, photographed in a quiet moment when they weren't barking and running into the yard:

Citrus blossoms in Janet's yard, which are deliciously fragrant.

We are relieved that the very long trip is over. I might have a few more retrospective posts before I return to my usual blogging.

Happy Passover

Kiryat Ono, Israel. Our Passover Seder with our cousins Janet, Ethan, and Avigail, and several others. Above: the Seder plate with all the traditional items that are part of the ritual readings, prayers, and songs. What a beautiful evening! I didn't photograph every single dish that we ate, but here are a few.

Matzoh, haroset, the Seder Plate, and two pomelos from Janet's garden.
A 20th century tradition is to add an orange to the Seder plate to represent
the fact that women play an active role in modern Judaism. We used the
two pomelos for this symbol.

Preparations

A 5.3 kilo salmon, about to be poached in the large fish poacher.
On the back of the stove: a pot of chicken soup.

Hard boiled eggs, a standard part of the menu.
One roasted egg appears on the Seder Plate.

Ethan preparing the dishes.

Special  Passover rolls and at right, komish bread for dessert.

Also for dessert: meringues.

In the kitchen: preparing sauce for the fish.

Sabbath candles, lit as part of the Passover ritual because the Seder was on Friday night this year. All Jewish holidays
are "moveable" feasts because the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar. Outside the window you can see the flower boxes.

Chicken Soup with Matzoh Balls

A Whole Roast Salmon

Janet carves the salmon, our main course after the ritual foods, the eggs, chopped liver, nut spread, and soup.

The salmon: to be served with lemon sauce and kumquat chutney.

After all was carved, eaten, and put into a large dish for another day.

Janet's Passover Kitchen

Last night there was a wonderful confluence of aromas here in Janet's house in Kiryat Ono, a suburb of Tel Aviv, where we are spending the week preparing for Passover. From her kitchen came the aroma of chicken fat -- the traditional schmaltz -- being rendered for one of the many dishes for the Seder tomorrow night. From the garden came the amazing perfume of a citrus tree, the pomelo, blooming in this mild climate. A very unexpected combination.

Right now, the aromas from the kitchen dominate: an enormous pot of chicken soup is bubbling on one burner, as you can see in the photo.

A pot of kumquat chutney is simmering on the other burner. Janet harvested the kumquats this morning from another tree in the garden, and I spent at least an hour cutting them up and taking out their seeds. We both worked on the other ingredients. Janet loves to make chutney from the produce of her own tree.

Who would have guessed that such tiny fruits nevertheless have seeds the same size as those in an orange or a tangerine!

Kumquats, garlic, and ginger being prepped for chutney.

Hot peppers for chutney -- other ingredients include onion, orange juice,
sugar, vinegar, star anise, pepper, and salt.

Chutney simmering in a big pot, which is used only for Passover food.

Janet has lots more plans for our seder dinner tomorrow night. She's been shopping and cleaning for days. All the year-round dishes have been stored away, all the normal food is eaten up or will be discarded, and fresh Passover food and one-week-a-year dishes have replaced everything in the newly-cleaned shelves and drawers of her kitchen.  As I said before, it's quite a production!


Now for some photos of the wonderful greengrocer where Janet bought many of the ingredients for the soup and many other planned dishes. She has other sources for meat, fish, and so on.

Years ago, she says, this small but amazingly stocked store sold fruit and vegetables grown nearby, but the city has overwhelmed the farms that used to occupy land in this area, and now the owners bring in produce from other places. Beautiful produce!

So many colors of little tomatoes!

Quite a big selection of spices. I bought a few to take home.

I was amused to see the same brand of olive oil that I buy at home at Whole Foods.