Bubbe Julie’s Pesadik Kamish

My Bubbe (Yiddish word for grandmother) Julie is unstoppable. At 90 years old, she is still maintaining a three-story house, driving her car around Vancouver, and cooking up a storm. When my family and I are in town, we eat everything Bubbe makes for us–even if we are not hungry. I can still distinctly remember about 10 years ago when my father was interrogated by a US customs officer for carrying a poppyseed cake in a brown unmarked box, fresh from the oven. “What is in the box?” they asked. “It’s a poppyseed cake baked by my mother-in-law, I promise.” One of my favorites in her baking repertoire is kosher for Passover kamish. It almost doesn’t take like Passover. You may have heard kamish referred to as “Mandelbrot” or “Jewish biscotti”. It’s all the same: sweet, crunchy and delicious.

Passover Pomelo Bars

Think lemon bar, but not. What’s a pomelo? Wikipedia holds lots of fun facts about this Southeast Asian native fruit, but for the sake of simplicity: biggest citrus, grapefuit-esque but sweeter, DELICIOUS. I was inspired to create a Passover recipe using this pith-ful fruit because I think more people should know about the pomelo and it offers an opportunity to share a Passover tradition I implemented last year (included below). That said, this is a recipe developed by an amateur baker, so please feel free to tweak it as you see fit.

I also invite you to include the pomelo on your Passover table this year, accompanied by the following reading (that I adapted for my seder last year):

Matzah Candy

Matzah Candy

So I actually made a batch of this over a month ago for a friend and almost forgot that I had promised to post the recipe in time for Passover.  I make this delightfully simple matzah based candy every year, and it never fails to impress, but it is far from original so I’ll keep this post brief.  I originally tasted it made with saltine crackers as a kid and I, like many many other Jews, adapted the recipe using matzah. Variations on this  treat abound so get creative. I recently came across one that puts a layer of coconut in between the toffee and the cocolate, which I may try if I have some coconut left over from my soon to be made macaroons. If you want to be truly from scratch about this, you can use Gordon’s guide to making your own matzah, or you can skip that part and just buy a box.

Chocolate Orange Truffles for Passover

Chocolate Orange Truffles

This weekend I was headed to a potluck  Oscar party at my friends Penny and Bill’s house.  Penny is a wonderful cook and Bill might be even more obsessed with Cooks Illustrated than I am. Penny asked me to bring bread but I also wanted to try making something new since I would have a crowd ready to eat it. I was pursuing Chow.com’s Oscar party guide and came across their recipe for Orange Marmalade Truffles and decided to give them a try.

I have also been contemplating Passover foods since my local grocery store has started stocking the wide array of Manischewitz and Kedem kosher for Passover prepared foods.  If you thought my views on the kosher food business couldn’t get more vitriolic, you have never talked to me (or Dafna, for that matter) about kosher for Passover food. Gordon probably still has PTSD from the year Dafna and I threw temper tantrums outside his office yelling “we hate Passover” as he calmly tried to review the intricacies of the eating rules and we became more and more grossed out at the foods available. The scariest options tend to be the desserts and sweets with an odd array of candies and baked goods you would never consider edible any other time of year. In reality, I love Passover. Much like my fondness for Thanksgiving, I find holidays that revolve around meals and some table-side ritual, with little other requirements, to be the most fun.  And much like the rest of kosher food, kosher for Passover food can still be very tasty if you start with fresh ingredients and make it yourself. As I read the recipe for the truffles I realized with minor adjustments you could make these for Passover as an alternative to the  horrifying cakes and cookies made from matzo meal. I, on the other hand, enjoyed them with a little side of George Clooney in a tux.