Pesach in the Pandemic

Celebrating Passover in the depths of a pandemic was always going to be a challenge, but as the Passover story tells us, the Jews are a resilient people. Our Zoom seder went off with surprisingly few glitches, with people joining in from such far-flung locations as Boston, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and even London. 

With classes moved online, I've been as busy as ever with work. Finding a creative outlet and taking some time doing something else has been very welcome. Passover, while throwing its usual culinary curveball, always presents an interesting challenge. As I've written before, wheat and barley (other than matzo) are prohibited during Passover. Additionally, Ashkenazim also avoid other grains and legumes. It's actually this second part I find more difficult, since both rice and beans (two very important components of Chinese cooking) are eliminated. In this article, I'll briefly discuss the highlights of this year's Passover cooking. 

For the seder, I made a brisket, based on Daniel Gritzer's recipe. It's not too far off from my existing recipe. I cooked half of the 9 pound brisket that was part of our Sam's Club run about a month ago. This was, in my opinion, my best brisket yet. As usual, I made it in my extra-large saute pan instead of a roasting pan. It's definitely a specialized piece of equipment, but it's become a real workhorse in my kitchen for braising. Being able to sear a 4 1/2 pound slab of meat and braise all in the same pan is definitely a plus. We also had matzo ball soup and gefilte fish. 

Passover standbys from the last few years made return appearances throughout the week, including scotch eggs and probably too many Brazilian cheese breads. Chopped liver was the only Passover staple missing from the menu, since all the local stores were out of chicken liver, for some reason. We are truly living in unprecedented times.

I added to the repertoire with some new chicken breast dishes, including a Kosher for Passover schnitzel. Later on, I marinated chicken cutlets in lime juice, orange juice, olive oil, cumin, and paprika, pan fried them in olive oil, and served with sauteed onions and garlic. Rice would have been a welcome addition, but I had to do without. Another simple meal involved skin-on salmon fillets with quinoa. Since it is not technically a cereal grain, quinoa is generally considered Kosher for Passover. 

We also experimented with making matzo pizza. This consisted of pieces of matzo with some jarred tomato sauce, mozzarella, and sauteed sausage (left over from the scotch eggs). With a few tweaks, I think this could be really good. Even as it stands, the effort to result ratio was just fine. The main issue for me was that the matzo softened too much, and I ended up eating it folded like one of those "New York slices" that some people like to go on about. It did make me think about trying a "matzo nachos" experiment next year. 

I've never written about matzo brei on the blog before. Matzo is soaked in water and fried in a pan with eggs. It's not quite like anything else I've eaten, but always hits the spot. We made two batches this Passover. Ariel did her usual sweet one with cinnamon and sugar. I made my first attempt at it using Molly Yeh's savory recipe. I added some Chinese chili crisp to mine. 

By Wednesday night, we were hungry and running out of ideas and Ariel even proposed ending Passover early. I was pretty close to frying up a pan of potstickers, but managed to save Passover with a sausage hash, following Kenji's general advice. The baked eggs are a great addition that tie the whole thing together. To make mine, boiled the potatoes and sauteed the sausage. Then, I diced the potatoes and cooked them with some lard on high heat. Finally, I sauteed some diced onion and garlic, combined everything back in the pan, and baked for about 15 minutes with the eggs on top.