Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Tips to make it a manageable feast

For the Jewish seder or any other large, multicourse meal, the freezer is your friend.

By BETH J. HARPAZ, Associated Press
Published March 14, 2007

To minimize the risk of collapse, use a tube pan with a removable insert when making the Potato Flour Sponge Cake.
	[AP photo]

Flexibility, forgiving recipes and preparation are the keys to a successful seder - or any other feast that involves numerous guests, multiple courses and uncertain serving times.

This unpredictability is especially true of a seder, the ritual feast held to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins at sundown April 2. Prayers, songs, games and a retelling of the biblical story of Exodus precede a multicourse meal that can include hard-boiled eggs; gefilte fish; matzo ball soup; a main course of brisket, fish, chicken or lamb; and special desserts like sponge cake and flourless tortes. You can't predict how long the ceremonial aspects of the meal will take, so you never know when you'll be sitting down to eat the roast or the fish.

"It's the hardest meal to orchestrate," said Joan Nathan, a James Beard award winner and author of many cookbooks, including Jewish Cooking in America.

Despite all the work involved in hosting a seder, "for many Jews, it's the warmest and most meaningful holiday of the year, perhaps the only time that person thinks about what it means or what they want it to mean, to be a Jew here and now," said novelist and poet Marge Piercy, who has just come out with a new book called Pesach for the Rest of Us: Making the Passover Seder Your Own. (Pesach is the Hebrew word for Passover.)

Liberation is the theme of the Passover story, and these tips can help liberate you from the stress of organizing any big meal.

- Make to-do lists and start shopping far in advance. "Go through your menu recipe by recipe and put the shopping list together," said Sandra Blank, editor of The Kosher Palette. "That to me is the most overwhelming part, but you can do that weeks ahead of time."

- Start cooking well before the big day. "I am a big advocate of things that can be made ahead of time," said Blank, including soups, main courses, salad dressing, side dishes and desserts.

If you have freezer space, you can make many dishes a week or more beforehand, then freeze and defrost the day before or the day of the seder. Sponge cake "freezes like a dream," said Nechama Cohen, author of Enlitened Kosher Cooking.

Soup can be frozen in a plastic container and defrosted by running the container under hot water until it loosens. Then flip it into a pot. "Warm and defrost on a very, very low flame," said Blank. "A thicker soup will burn on the bottom, so stir it to keep it moving."

If you make a roast in advance, slice and cool before freezing. Use bakeware that can go from oven to freezer, then back to the oven for warming, and right onto the table for serving, Cohen advised.

- Use cooking techniques that don't require a lot of last-minute attention to detail. Cohen undercooks her seder entrees a bit so that when they are warming up, they won't overcook. A recipe with a sauce or gravy can also help "cover up whatever might happen to it," she added.

Use a "very low oven, 180 or 200 degrees" to keep chicken or brisket warm until you're ready to eat it, said Blank. "You want it to be a slow process so nothing will dry out."

Consider serving cold side dishes, rather than hot vegetables.

If you're warming up a pan of hors d'oeuvres or some other side dish, Cohen said, it will look fresher if you give it a light coating of nonstick cooking spray and cover with waxed paper rather than tin foil.

- Take shortcuts and don't do everything yourself.

Take some tasks off your to-do list by asking guests to bring wine, juice for the kids or even flowers for the table.

Nathan actually assigns her guests recipes from her own cookbooks, and she serves the main part of her meal as a buffet.

Consider plastic plates as an alternative to china.

DESSERT

Potato Flour Sponge Cake

8 egg yolks

2 whole eggs

1 3/4 cups confectioners' sugar

2 teaspoons lemon juice

Grated rind of 2 lemons

Grated rind of 2 oranges

8 egg whites

7/8 cup sifted potato flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

- Beat the egg yolks and whole eggs together. Gradually add the sugar, beating until thickened. Stir in the lemon juice and lemon and orange rind.

- Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold carefully into the sugar mixture. Sift the potato flour and salt over it and fold in gently.

- Turn into a 10-inch tube pan. Bake for 45 minutes. Turn upside down and cool. Be very careful handling the cake, as it can easily collapse.

- Serve with fresh berries, whipped cream, ice cream or haroset (a mixture of fruit, nuts and wine that is part of the seder). And to prevent the cake from drying out, don't overbeat the eggs or batter.

Source: Pesach for the Rest of Us: Making the Passover Seder Your Own by Marge Piercy (Schocken Books, $22.95)

[Last modified March 13, 2007, 12:20:57]