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03/31/2003 Archived Entry: "Passover & Easter Recipe Roundup"

I’d love to say I have a whole bunch of new Passover and Easter recipes for you. Instead, I have a whole bunch of old Passover and Easter recipes for you.

I like old, traditional food on the holidays. Eating the same food that my forebears ate puts me in touch with their spirits and our history.

Already on this website is my family’s recipe for brisket. On Passover, it is traditional to eat pot-roasted meat as opposed to truly roasted (oven-roasted) meat, and brisket is an extravagant cut, suitable for Sabbath dinners and holidays. Our recipe is extremely simple, but order your meat now: Jewish-Style Pot-Roasted Brisket should be made with a whole brisket, not only the “first cut,” also called the “flat cut.”

However much we like the brisket, what my sister and I always look forward to is the meat that is cooked in our sweet potato and prune Tsimmes. It’s flanken, which is short ribs cut across the bone instead of in the same direction as the bone, and it becomes particularly succulent and darkly caramelized as it cooks in the sweet juices of the potatoes and prunes. You must make your tzimmes ahead to get this effect, then more than reheat it, recook it, just before at the festive meal.

Here’s a traditional Passover recipe from another family’s repertoire: Cabbage and Matzoh Farfel, another excellent side dish.

And there are many Passover dessert recipes on this website: Matzoh Butter Crunch, Chocolate Mousse Sponge, A Simple Apple Cake, and My Family’s Passover Walnut Cake.

I’d like to suggest a small improvement in the Walnut Cake. To make it more stable, and not cool into a crater as my grandmother’s sometimes did, reserve 1/4 cup of the sugar and beat it into the egg whites, one tablespoon at a time, starting when the whites become foamy.

As for Easter …

Ham is traditional because early spring is the time of year when pork put to cure in early winter is ready to eat. I don’t know of a better recipe for ham than my friend Ann Nurse’s Famous Baked Ham, a smoky ham sweetly scented with brown sugar and pineapple. This is the centerpiece of Ann’s legendary Beard House Brunch that kicks of the Beard Foundation’s award and partying season.

After your family has picked on the ham leftovers for a day or so, you can use the rest to make Ann Nurse’s Split Pea Soup.

If you are searching for brunch recipes that can be made ahead and left on a buffet, take a look at a baked pasta I jokingly call Neapolitan Noodle Kugel, although it should correctly be called Pastiera di Tagliolini. It is a very Easter-ish baked pasta, related to the pizza rustica that many southern Italian families eat on Easter and at Easter Monday picnics. “Rustica” means it contains cubes or bits of cheese, often more than one, and cured meats such as salame, ham, mortadella, soppressata, and pancetta, often all of them. In this case, fine egg pasta (you can buy it dried) holds the rich filling together. It is from Naples At Table and one of my most successful party dishes.

There are many Easter brunch-worthy pie and cake recipes on the website, too. Peruse The Food Maven Index.

A tradition in many Italian-American households is to serve Migliaccio, a type of cheesecake made with ricotta and farina and flavored with citrus, at Easter time.

Orthodox Easter falls a week after Roman Catholic Easter this year, but you don’t have to wait that week (or even be Orthodox) to make Pashka, a traditional molded cheese dessert.