Passover foods take bold twist
Feasts can have from gluten-free fusilli to matzah s’mores kits
While millions of people will be sitting down to brisket and potatoes at their seders tonight, Shirlee Franco plans to serve Chilean sea bass steamed in fresh crushed garlic and white wine, turkey meatballs with a sweet cherry and tamarind sauce and mango sorbet.
The 51-year-old Silver Spring, Md., resident is an example of how on-trend foods are transforming Passover from biblical to Bourdain.
The stereotype of the stodgy, bland menu is gone, as this slice of the food industry overhauls itself to cater to the more discerning kosher consumer, who wants contemporary and fun fare.
This year, 129-year-old Manischewitz introduced a matzah s’mores kit and for those addicted to matzah pizza who want an authentic shape, triangle-shaped matzah. Gefen unveiled potato gnocchi and gluten-free fusilli for the holida and Haddar has added crostini and pesto to its line-up. Pereg’s Passover newcomer is kaniwa aka baby quinoa.Gone are the days of sweet syrupy wine as a punch line; new for the kosher wine connoisseur this Passover is a vermentino from Cantina Giuliano in Tuscany.
The kosher industry in the United States is $12 billion strong, according to Lubicom Marketing Consulting, which tracks this data.
The Passover market, which exists only eight days a year, is $1.3 billion of that — a large chunk of the annual sales, because plenty of people who don’t keep kosher year round buy foods that are kosher for Passover — KFP for short.
The number also is hefty, because KFP items tends to be more expensive than year-round merchandise due to the extras the food manufacturers incur — pricier ingredients that must be used to meet rabbinic standards, added cost of more stringent kosher supervision and the time lost to shut down production lines in order to clean them before running them for Passover, which requires a 24-hour dormant period and an intense purge and boiling procedure. Supermarket tabs can reach thousands of dollars.
“The market grows significantly and it’s the most widely observed holiday on the Jewish calendar,” said Lubicom president and CEO Menachem Lubinsky. “Manufacturers are constantly coming up with new products to add to the mix.”
In 2012, there were more than 23,000 KFP items, but that jumped to over 53,000 this year, he added. At the annual trade show, Kosherfest, an estimated 300 new KFP products were being hawked.
Passover’s kosher laws prohibit eating unleavened items, called chametz, made of wheat, spelt, barley, oats and rye, so foods like bread, crackers, pasta and cereal are a problem. (Matzah is made in 18 minutes to prevent leavening.)
While some Passover foods are made with matzah meals, many others utilize potato starch instead. Chametz can be present in items not associated with carbs, like emulsifiers in yogurts and chemicals used to produce peeled baby carrots. Jews of European, rather than Middle Eastern heritage, also refrain from eating other grains and legumes, such as rice, corn and beans. Coca-Cola famously produces KFP Coke made without corn syrup.
Fueling this “exodus” from the ordinary to the ooh-la-la is the ever more discriminating palette of the kosher consumer.
They’re demanding more upscale and sophisticated food stuffs all year round, so why is this night — and the week-plus that follows — any different? That many Passover foods were gluten-free thousands before Hollywood caught on means not only a boost among folks living that lifestyle who don’t celebrate the holiday but motivation for companies to develop KFP products which then migrate to the yearround market, tempering what might otherwise be R&D expenditures with small returns.
“If you look back at the history of the development of kosher foods specifically for Passover, in the 1970s it was coconut macaroons and regular plain matzah and items like borscht. Then, it moved through into items like gluten-free and organic that consumers were looking (for) through the last 10 years and we’re moving into more valueadded and creative products, products more for Jewish foodies items,” explained Manischewitz CEO David Sugarman, citing the new campfire-inspired kit, which comes with mini matzah, chocolate and marshmallows. “S’mores outside of Passover have become part of the mainstream culture. The thought from the Manischewitz side was, ‘Why not bring this to the Passover holiday? Why not have some fun with matzah?’ ”
The kosher food titan does about 30%-35% of its annual business in the two to three months leading up to Passover, he added. The pizza and s’mores kits sold out by mid-March.
Even Passover staples, like the macaroon, are getting an upgrade. Rebecca & Rose has introduced a sea salt-drizzled chocolate version and Manischewitz has a gourmet one, coated with premium dark chocolate made from Ivory Coast beans. And couple years ago, the latter created a pistachio-orange flavor macaroon — which was the result of a social-media campaign.
“The kosher community is probably less sheltered than it used to be. They’re out there more. They understand food trends. They shop in the Whole Foods of the world. They’re hungry to be kosher, but not willing to compromise,” said Mordy Herzog, CEO of Kayco, the largest supplier of kosher food in the United States.
“For Passover, you need to be more creative about what you do without jeopardizing the rules,” he said. “The goal is to make products for Passover that doesn’t take like cardboard and that you wouldn’t eat year round. ... You go to the shelf and you think, ‘This can’t be kosher for Passover,’ and you look at the ingredients and do double a take.”