Most of these cookbooks contain a special section for Passover, the spring holiday that celebrates religious freedom and the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt. Cooking is a special challenge because many ingredients are prohibited during the eight days of the holiday.
This year Passover begins on Monday night, March 29, with families around the world sitting down to their Seder meals. We’ve collected a few of the recipes that will be served in area homes as well as reminiscences to go with them.
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Jacqui Kuhr’s Thumbprint Cookies
Reflections from Jacqui Kuhr’s daughter, Rachel Hernandez of Dayton.
“Every year growing up in Dayton, my mother, sisters and I would spend weeks together prior to Passover getting the house and kitchen ready for our family Seder. We would go to the market and get the special Passover foods that we needed. Mom would put on some Safam records (a band from the 1970s that sang Israeli and folk songs) and we would roll up our sleeves and start cooking. We would mix and chop and grind and bake and roast right up to the first night of Passover. It was tradition at our Seder to have some family favorites like gefilte fish, brisket, wine-and-nut cake and our beloved Thumbprint Cookies.
All of our family in the area — aunts, uncles and cousins as well as family friends — would be welcome at our table. My mother was very active in the community and she never knew a stranger. One year there were 30 people in our living room and we were definitely squished together, but it was always a wonderful time.
When my mother passed away 12 years ago, my sisters and I decided to split the preparation of the family holidays so that we would always honor her traditions. I immediately volunteered for Passover. I feel that every Passover, not only do I honor my ancestors but I also get a chance to honor my mother by sharing with my children all that she shared with me.”
I put on some Safam CDs, unpack my mom’s Passover dishes and my children and I start our baking. I think my mom would be pretty pleased.”
The recipe comes from “Hadassah Cooks.” Hadassah is the Zionist women’s service organization in America that supports medical research in Israel.
Thumbprint Cookies
3 eggs
1 cup oil, butter or margarine
1 cup sugar
2 cups minus 2 tbsp. Passover cake meal
2 tbsp. Passover potato starch
1 tsp. lemon or orange extract
1/4 tsp. salt
Mix the above ingredients together to make the basic cookie dough. Shape dough into walnut-sized balls. Roll in a cinnamon-sugar mixture. Make an indentation in the center with your finger and spoon in a little jelly.
Bake on a greased baking sheet in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. The Passover ingredients can usually be found in the Passover section of your grocery store.
Jackie Fishman’s Sephardic Charoset
Reflections from Rabbi Judy Chessen of Temple Beth Or, Kettering.
(Charoset is one of the symbolic foods used on the Seder plate and represents the mortar used by the Israelite slaves in Egypt.)
“One of the gifts that our congregation received by some of our master chefs — Jackie Fishman, Sherry McKenney and Lois Solganik — was training in a Jewish kitchen. Even if we were born Jewish, we may not have had the exposure to Jewish foods and lessons in how to make these things. Many a Jew by choice still makes the recipes taught to them by the matriarchs of our congregation. I will always remember fondly those first Passover cooking lessons 25 years ago in our congregation where Jackie taught us to look beyond what we were used to and learn how Jews around the world celebrated the same festival. She taught us to make haroset from Morocco, Bukhara Uzbekistan, Kurdistan and Persia.
The recipes live on, and we continue to serve Jackie’s charoset at our congregational Seder each year. Jackie prefers the Kurdistan recipe made with dates, but my all-time favorite is this Sephardic Haroset.”
Jackie Fishman’s
Sephardic Charoset
1/2 cup grated coconut
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
Process together in coarse grind
1 cup raisins
1 cup dried apricots
1/2 cup dried apples
1/2 cup dried pears
Add fruits, chop to coarse grind. Put all ingredients in a saucepan, cover with water and cook uncovered stirring often (about 1 hour) until mixture thickens and comes together.
Take off heat and stir in:
12 oz. cherry preserves
1/3 cup grape juice or wine
Cool and serve on matzoh.
Claire Jacobs’ Passover Sandwich Buns or Bagels
Reflections from her daughter-in-law, Rachel Jacobs, Butler Twp.
“These Passover bagels — my mother-in-law called them rolls — have always been quite popular because they can replace sandwich bread which we can’t eat over the holiday. Mom Jacobs would make them almost every day during Passover: She’d fill them with tuna salad or corned beef or turkey and send them down to the office for her sons to eat over the holiday.
Over the years, we all started baking them too. My 10 year-old granddaughter, Zoe Claire, who was named for her great-grandmother, said she gets a special warm feeling when she bakes her great-grandma’s recipes.
Now all the children look forward to baking and enjoying these Passover bagels as part of our family holiday tradition.
Recipe from Beth Jacob Synagogue’s “Main Street Cookbook.”
Passover Sandwich
Buns or Bagels
1/3 cup peanut oil
2/3 cup water
1 cup matzoh meal
pinch salt
1 tsp. sugar
3 eggs
Put water, oil, sugar and salt in a pan and bring to a boil. While boiling, add matzo meal. Let cool and add eggs, one at a time.
Drop 1 tablespoon batter onto an oiled cookie sheet and make a hole in the middle of each round.
Bake at 400 degrees for one-half hour on the lower rack of the oven. Move to a higher oven rack for the last one-half hour and finish baking at 350 degrees.
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