Pesach Menus

My kitchen has established itself as my source of recreation if not creativity.  I've collected cookbooks, kosher and general pretty much since receiving my first paycheck.  When I first subscribed to cable TV, the Food Channel became a staple, though no longer is as instruction from experts waned in favor of endless competitions.  The internet brought searchable recipes, refined by keywords from kosher to Valentine's Day to dessert.  The cookbooks are not obsolete, though, as they reflect what masters with skills far exceeding mine have tested and thought about.  

A few times a year I plan and toil more than others.  Thanksgiving with its traditional tastes.  Always roasted turkey.  Always sweet potatoes, but not always presented the same way.  Wife's birthday, elegance for two.  Shabbos dinner with guests, elegance for four.  The sukkah, a confined space.  And the annual challenge of them all:  Pesach or Passover.  This Festival has its blend of ritual, dietary restrictions, sharing with guests or in my younger years being a guest, and imagination.  Thinking and discussing some concepts of Freedom, still part of our political discourse today.  And we discuss obligations, as we are mandated certain things like eating matzoh, drinking wine, and tasting bitterness.  Imagination also entails creativity, making those foods on the permitted list with special presentations to reflect abundance amid restriction.  The absence of bread does not have to convey deprivation.

My kitchen gets scrubbed, unpermitted foods sold by my Rabbi acting as my agent, and my largest grocery bill generated as I select some mixture of need and want with significant price markups.  Matzoh in a five-pound box.  Matzoh meal.  Some specialty dairy and candy.  Macaroons as a quick snack.  Even soda made with cane sugar, the only time of the year when this appears as an acceptable grocery purchase.

The Festival lasts eight days.  The first two evenings and the last two are formal Festivals, with the Friday night during the Intermediate Days presenting another occasion for a special dinner.  As a practical matter, by the final two Festival evenings, people are pretty tired and tend to try to finish up what they've prepared earlier in the Holiday.  So the culinary challenges really appear for the first two nights devoted to ritual Seders and to shabbos dinner.  

The Seders, or Sedarim in Hebrew, have some specified eating obligations.  We drink four cups of wine at designated times while we recite the story of our collective and personal redemptions from Egypt in a monograph called a Haggadah.  Parsley is dipped in salt water.  We recite a blessing over a wad of raw horseradish sweetened with an unspecified amount of a fruit-wine-nut blend called Charoset.  We eat not only matzoh, but pieces from specified parts of the three boards which we set out on our tables.  And though not part of the Haggadah, many communities including mine begin the supper portion with a hard boiled egg sitting in a puddle of salt water.  None of this requires a recipe search, other than Charoset whose contents vary by regional tradition.  Being of Eastern European ancestry, mine is a mixture of shredded apples, ground almonds, and kiddush wine with a splash of cinnamon.  Other places use dried fruits such as dates, apricots, or figs as the base.  In America, where we embrace multiculturalism and live in prosperity, Eastern European families will make their Charoset from the more expensive though flavorful dried fruits, though I go for my more economical tradition.

Much like Thanksgiving, the menu often reflects compromises between traditions that do not change from one year to the next and with creativity.  Kosher cookbooks invariably contain a chapter with recipes in compliance with Passover's dietary limitations.  My own Seder preparation grid has eleven categories:

1. Charoset
2. Appetizer
3. Soup
4. Matzoh Balls
5. Salad
6. Dressing
7. Entree
8. Kugel
9. Vegetable
10. Dessert
11. Beverage

Cookbooks and web searches yield ample possibilities but over decades my own basic pattern has declared itself.  Ashkenazi Charoset.  Gefilte fish for seder, usually for shabbos as well, though a stuffed vegetable will sometimes make a good shabbos substitute.  Chicken soup, homemade.  Composed of chicken parts, carrots, celery, onion, pepper, maybe a turnip, maybe a kosher for Passover bouillon cube, all boiled in my biggest and oldest stock pot for hours. That chicken will fall off the bones, only to reappear as chicken salad or stir-fry the final two Festival nights.  Matzoh balls have multiple variations.  The matzoh meal box has the basic recipe of eggs, fat, and meal in a basic proportion.  I like to add some club soda, maybe some parsley to the batter.  Others like to add ground nuts.  Some people stuff the matzoh balls with ground beef.  My fat is vegetable oil.  Others opt for chicken fat, known as schmaltz.  I boil mine separately in water, then add to the soup.  Others add their uncooked balls directly to the simmering soup.  And how many to make and of what size?

Salads are one of those uncommitted variable dishes.  Vegetables other than legumes and rice are permissible.  Mine can be tomato-based, cucumber-based, lettuce or cabbage-based.  Some make beet salads, but not everyone likes beets, though borscht is also a Passover soup classic with a large contingent of enthusiasts.  Indeed, the college caterer used to serve a small bowl of borscht with a boiled potato during the Intermediate Days.   Dressings come bottled, but vinaigrettes are easily created with olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, and seasonings.  Mustard to create an emulsion is not permitted.  My salads tend to be simple:  Israeli with several diced vegetables or cucumber with thinly sliced onion.  Lemon juice and salt and parsley complete the taste.

It is the entrees that showcase the effort and the planning.  Realistic choices are beef and poultry.  For a crowd, which Sedarim often have, a whole turkey takes the least effort relative to yield.  Brisket comes in different sizes.  Many families center the meal around that, a display of taste and generosity, as a five pounder could run a multiple of what a whole turkey costs.  But they will each serve both Sedarim.  Smaller attendance opens more options.  There is whole chicken, chicken parts, turkey breasts. small briskets, tzimmes made with beef or lamb cubes, rib roasts, and stuffed veal breasts.  The price of crock pots, air fryers, and Insta pots has declined to where people can purchase one only for Passover use. While the number of guests drives the final selection, appliance availability also needs reckoning, as most people only have one oven and four stove top burners to spread over several dishes. The soup will occupy one of the two large burners for a very long time, as will a whole turkey in the oven.  Matzoh balls, and made from scratch gefilte fish also use up considerable stove top.  

Starches take several forms.  Some cooks just make potatoes or tzimmes as the side dish.  This being a time dedicated to matzoh, kugels or puddings based on matzoh have become popular.  Some people opt for the easier potato kugel.  Whatever form, the kugel has a starch base mixed with eggs.  Additives such as carrots or mushrooms give character.  Potatoes are moist, but matzoh needs to be reconstituted with either water or a few ladles of chicken soup from the stock pot.  Most are baked, some are done stove top.  Sometimes the matzoh kugel becomes matzoh stuffing for the poultry entrée.

  

Vegetables could be anything.  Seasonal items go on sale, in my region, asparagus is discounted most years.  Carrots are versatile with boiling, roasting, and glazing.  Green beans are the only beans permitted.  Many a Bar Mitzvah caterer includes green beans with sliced almonds on the dinner plate, something acceptable for Passover.  And beets are sweet, though not universally liked.  More adventurous people may opt for artichokes, a staple at an Italian Seder table.

Dessert is another branch point, a restricted one as dairy is not permitted with a meat meal and flour not permitted with any meal.  Eggs become the agent to allow products to rise.  Finely ground matzoh or potato starch become the sources of substance, and ground nuts add bulk and flavor.  Fruit desserts such as sorbets or poached pears are popular.  I find nut cakes tasty and reasonably straightforward.  Others prefer sponge cake, which seems like a waste of yolks unless repurposed to crème brûlée for a dairy meal.

And beverage.  The Evil Coca-Cola.  Tea, plain or mint.  Club Soda laced with Manischewitz.  KP wine.  

So I find myself at pluripotent menu planning with a lot of uncertainty.  I think it better to set the menu, then shop, though others would advocate for food selections to drive the menu.  My grid has a lot of open squares, both for Shabbos and for Sedarim.  Recipes from kosher sites and my kosher books are all suitable.  Recipes by popular cooking magazines do much less well at maintaining within the Pesach and Kashrut boundaries.

And I have to wash all dishes before starting and afterward.  So tentative:

1. Kiddush wine
2. My usual apple-almond charoset
3. Boiled Frozen Gefilte Loaf with grated fresh horseradish
4. Chicken soup in my stock pot
5. Matzoh balls seasoned a little differently than before, boiled in water, never in soup
6. Cucumber Salad
7. Half-turkey breast
8. Matzoh Kugel a la White House Seder
9. Carrots sweetened in some way
10. Almond torte 
11. Evil Coca-Cola with the yellow cap

And consider shabbos later.