Dispatches from the Pesach homefront: of joy and soup

IT WAS a chance comment to a friend that made me realise. It’s not original, of course, to say that the festival of freedom, of liberation, is in fact the very reverse for most women. But it’s when I caught myself saying that I would kill not to have to make Pesach ever again that I understood what a burden this festival has become. Try as might, Pesach has become a huge millstone round my neck and, believe me, I have it easy in comparison to many women.

At the time of writing I haven’t yet had the courage to embark on the horrors of Pesach shopping. The scars of 2013 are still with me, not least in the several boxes of matza left over from last year because I woefully miscalculated how much edible cardboard I could genuinely consume.

Or the fact that I know I quite like apricot jam over Pesach but that I loathe recipes giving me 150 different things to do with said confiture. (For the record, there are probably only about 10 reasonable recipes for apricot jam adaptations.)

One year, I wandered, lonely as a Pesach daffodil, among the fruit and veg shelves of my local Tesco, looking gloomily for Ashkenaziacceptable greenery. I hit the jackpot when I found an assistant who didn’t know what rhubarb was.

Some years I overstock on eggs: I count it a successful Pesach if I manage to avoid eating matza brei, which I detest, along with anything almond-flavoured or the once-eaten-neveragain truly disgusting tomato and mushroom sauce purveyed by a number of American food companies.

It’s at times like this that you begin to doubt your own sanity. As I said, I have it relatively easy. I have a slew of Pesach-only cupboards at one end of my kitchen and so the unpacking and putting away agonies of the Pesachs of my childhood are just that, a distant memory. But in those cupboards are the inheritance of a mad accumulation of Pesachs long ago.

Who, I used to demand of my mother, needs 60 soup plates? Nobody needs them, she would respond placidly, but you never know when they might come in handy, perhaps if we were forced at gunpoint to make an emergency seder. I am now the owner of 60 soup plates. Little swine won’t break, either, no matter how much I direct them towards my hard-tile kitchen floor. Needless to say I have never been obliged to make an emergency seder.

I haven’t mentioned cost, yet, because I keep thinking that if I don’t mention it, it will go away. This is a serious mistake. Pesach is God’s revenge on Jews for Christmas. Yes, all the time I smugly congratulate myself on not participating in any kind of winter solstice festival, Pesach is squatting like a dark toad at the beginning of spring, devouring ludicrous amounts of cash in a surreal fashion. Watermelons at £15 a pop? It’s Pesach. The identical kosher wine you bought before Pesach has doubled in price to help you celebrate. Otherwise normal comestibles now come only in giant catering-sizes. But it’s Pesach, enjoy, enjoy!

I am trying hard to get into the spirit of Pesach, honestly. I am trying not to think of how I should have organised myself to book for Israel this time last year, although realistically even the most cut-price Israeli Pesach is a good 10 times what it will cost to make it here.

But one day, one day, I will get Pesach where I want it. I will have a separate Pesach kitchen, never mind cupboards, some of which will be a dedicated area for my 60 soup plates (and their china friends.)

I will have a retinue of servants to do the shopping and cooking (in this fantasy, even Yotam Ottolenghi rolls up to Hendon with the occasional elegant plate of designer charoset.) No expense will be spared in the eating and the drinking and the liberating thereof. My house and my soul will be chametz-free.

I love Pesach. I do. But maybe we could cancel it this year?

NO SOONER had the Bibi caretaker story blown over than the Prime Minister walks into another controversy — this time a sticky one involving matzah. The idea, and it was one of my better ones, I thought, was that he would go along to Kfar Chabad and help them bake some matzah for Pesach, make his peace with the Charedi community and leave everyone smiling. However, somehow Beebs managed to turn even this into a PR disaster. As soon as the PM was safely out the door they threw the matzah he had made into the bin and highfived each other. They claim that no one was supervising him properly as he made dough so that it was possible chametz could be transmitted, yada, yada, yada. But one of my spies in the building told me that Bibi came in “smelling of bagels with ice-cream stains on his shirt”. I’m going to have to have another chat with him.

Shimon Peres was off to China for the first presidential visit in over a decade this week. Cue frantic phone call from Shims about whether protocol would allow him to eat his chop suey with a fork. I had a spare evening so I thought I’d pop around for a chopsticks session. It was like the old days at Ten Li Chow as we munched our way through the sweet and sour chicken and special fried rice but we should have known better than to order the toffee apples. Anyway, thankfully the dentist was able to fit us both in at short notice and Shims just about made the flight. I hope he remembered my warning not to eat the sea cucumber.

Just as I get home who should pop around but Little Ed Miliband. I haven’t seen much of Eddie recently but when he was a child I would go round for tea with the Milibands – Ralph would always be there reading Marxist tractates to his children over the rusks – so sweet. Anyway, Eddie was off to Israel this week and knew that I’d sorted out the Foreign Ministry strike so he wanted to say thanks and ask if I had any tips for him. I told him to practise wearing a kippah so it didn’t look too weird on the day and also to turn down any offer of matzah at the Prime Minister’s residence. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Shame about the brother.

I’ve been finalising my plans for Seder night – I’m trying to keep it down to 80 this year but there was one late invitation. Nigella has been such a lost little soul recently with all the tsores over Saatchi that I thought she might be grateful for a night out. I think she was touched to get the invitation but apparently she is planning a quiet night in with a couple of deep fried pig’s ears and a glass of Merlot. Sigh.