LONDON, Ont. – Desserts at a Passover seder are “a relief,” says Norene Gilletz of Toronto with a laugh. She explains that it’s partly about the sweet-tasting dishes themselves and partly that they signify the end of what is usually a very long, filling and fulfilling meal.
Gilletz is an expert on Jewish cooking by lifelong experience and as the author of nine cookbooks. But even for an expert, the strictures of creating food for a seder, including the much-anticipated desserts, can be daunting, she says.
This weekend will see the unusual convergence of Easter and Passover and for both Christian and Jewish families, tradition will dictate much of what they eat. But when it comes to ritual and the symbolism of the foods consumed at these high religious holiday meals, Easter dinner cannot compare with the Passover seder.
Seder, which means order, is the highlight and opening meal of Passover, an eight-day festival to commemorate the delivery of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. Although the level of observance varies among denominations and even among families within the same denomination, the traditional seder is a 15-step family-oriented feast that includes blessings, eating matzo, eating bitter herbs in memory of the bitter slavery, drinking wine to celebrate the freedom and readings from the Haggadah, which describes in detail the story of the Exodus.
Several symbolic foods are included in the meal, but matzo (also spelled matzah), an unleavened cracker-like bread, is one of the most significant. The story is that the Israelites left in such a hurry that the bread they had baked as provisions did not have time to rise. As a way of experiencing what their ancestors experienced, Jews, during Passover, are prohibited from eating any food product made from wheat, barley, rye, oats or spelt or their derivates that has been leavened or fermented.
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Matzo itself is made from flour and water, but under a strictly supervised or “guarded” process in which the matzo is mixed, formed and cooked in less than 18 minutes to ensure that it has no chance to leaven or rise.
This proscription against leavened products has big implications for seder desserts, an important but non-symbolic part of the meal, because it means you can’t use flour to make pies or cakes. Some people will use matzo meal – finely ground matzo – as a flour substitute. Others will use potato starch, a flour-like material made only from the starch of the potato, rather than from the potato itself.
Eggs are a popular ingredient in Passover desserts and meringue-type treats are common.
“People have their own customs and their own guidelines of what they like to follow,” Gilletz says. “The ultra-religious will use special matzo.”
Most desserts served at a seder are reserved for Passover, she says. Her favourite is her mother’s Passover sponge cake, made with potato starch and the added treat of Passover chocolate.
Other possibilities for desserts are “nut cakes that use finely ground nuts instead of flour. Macaroons are good – like a meringue with coconut in them. I make a Passover apple crumb pie or an apple cake.”
Brenda Donner of London is a convert to Judaism and says she loves the structure, the family orientation and the opportunity for meaningful discussion at the seder. It’s also a lot of fun with poetry readings and Passover-related lyrics sung to familiar tunes like “Oklahoma.”
“But it’s a massive amount of work” to host one of these large family gatherings, she says. When she and her husband and daughter gather with the rest of the extended family at the home of her husband’s aunt and uncle, everyone contributes a dish for the meal.
One of her favourite desserts is a Passover Chocolate Almond Torte made with ground almonds instead of flour.
Gilletz holds classes on how to adapt recipes for Passover. “I teach people how to modify and how to adjust.” Most but not all of her students are Jewish.
“We’re all connected by a culinary umbilical cord, a love of food,” she says. And whether you’re celebrating Easter or Passover, “it’s not what’s on the table; it’s who’s at the table.”
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To contact Susan Greer, email her at susan.greer(at)rogers.com.
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