Tradish-AHHHHn!!

     Tuesday evening brought this year’s Passover holiday to a close. The favorite meal to mark the return of leavened foods to our homes is pizza. Or out for Chinese.

     But it is the traditional foods of the holiday that hold such significance intrinsically and for me. The Passover Seder meal tells from where we have come, who we are, and where we are now. The Seder plate itself is laden with gastronomic symbols that lead us to the story of our ancestry: The matzoh bread of oppression and liberation, the wine of sublimation and sanctity, the bitter herbs of suffering, the charoseth of labor, the salty water or our lamentations, the green herbs of spring, the roasted egg of rebirth and the Eternal, and the lamb roasted in sacrifice and bounty and remembrance.
     These symbols lead the ceremony, and the dinner itself is the halfway point of its observance. Our meal, like many Jews of Eastern-European descent, was comprised of those foods traditionally eaten by our great-grandparents and their elders in their diaspora homes. Potato kugel, braised brisket, carrot tzimmus, rolled cabbage, matzoh ball soup, gefilte fish with horseradish, roasted fowl, and fermented beet russel or a borscht are the foods that grace our tables. While not a year goes by that Martha Stewart or Light Gourmet or whomever else doesn’t offer their ‘inspired’ twists on this cannon of American Ashkenazi cookery (Lemon Zest Matzoh Balls or Tri-Colored Gefilte Fish anyone?) most of our lot would generally be appalled if most of these dishes didn’t take their place beside Elijah’s cup at the table. I for one lament this, but wouldn’t change it. For though the cuisine of the Sephardic Jews from the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions is far more sophisticated and celebratory, it’s not mine.
      My Bubbie’s Passover cooking was among the first to have really penetrated my psyche as a person and ultimately as a cook. I can vividly remember the smell of her chicken soup, the flavor of the sweet, earthy russel, and the meaty tang, and slight crunch of my favorite – the rolled cabbage. Though my parents took us, from young ages, to into the great ethnic hubs of our melting-pot metropolises and their accompanying eateries, it was Bubbie’s cooking that really convinced me that cooking was something great; something alchemical and mysterious and attainable and important to my being. So, our Passover meals this year were not only a solution to the challenge of Passover cooking, but they were an homage, and a personal journey, and I was happy to be able to share it with you.
     Maybe next year we will try something even more traditional.
     Braised udder anyone?