NEW JEWISH TABLE

Ellen Kassoff grew up as part of what she called “a madcap traditional Jewish household with two working parents and three brothers” — with her Great Aunt Lil’s chicken soup and matzo balls, with the Sunday brunch table at the family’s D.C. home laid with deli fare from pastrami to whitefish salad to chopped liver.

Todd Gray, the man she would marry, grew up Episcopalian in Fredricksburg, Va., “where he could count all the town’s Jewish residents on one hand,” as food writer Joan Nathan observes in the foreword to The New Jewish Table: Modern Seasonal Recipes for Traditional Dishes (St. Martin’s Press, $40), a book the couple wrote together.

Gray and Kassoff met 20 years ago; he had graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and, as a sales rep for a food distribution company, she made a cold call to the Italian restaurant in which he was cooking.

Today they are partners in life — they have a son, Harrison — and in projects, including the Equinox Restaurant, a Washington establishment not far from the White House known for its inventive use of local ingredients.

Nathan, an award-winning Washington-based food writer and cookbook author who has an encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish cooking, wrote a story for The New York Times in 2009 about the ways in which some gentile chefs with Jewish spouses prepare traditional Jewish holiday fare — and often tweak and update it along the way. Gray and Kassoff were among the couples featured in the piece, which netted them a book deal.

The New Jewish Table was published this month — in time for Passover, which commemorates the exodus of Jews from Egypt and their freedom from oppression. The eight-day festival, one of the most widely observed of Jewish holidays, begins this year on Monday evening with the first Seder meal.

It is an engaging work, combining family food stories and memories — his as well as hers; it’s not strictly a Jewish book — with recipes and advice. Each recipe is accompanied by a breezy introduction from one or both of them.

Although Equinox is not a kosher restaurant, “we stick to the traditional,” Kassoff said in an interview. The couple hosts a Seder meal for family and friends at the restaurant each year, for instance, and matzo is available during Passover. Jews who observe Passover abstain from most grain products; an exception is matzo, unleavened bread made from flour and water — mixed quickly and under rigorous conditions to keep it from becoming leavened. (There are Jews who wouldn’t eat in a non-kosher establishment, of course, at Passover or any time, but not all Jews keep strictly kosher.)

Special holiday menus at Equinox often feature updates on traditional Jewish dishes.