Passover recipes with a global feel
Blogger draws on world flavours for Passover dishes
Molly on the Range Molly Yeh Rodale Books, 2016 “My mom makes an amazing matzo brei,” author and awardwinning food blogger Molly Yeh says.
In her family, the Ashkenazi dish is enjoyed for any meal during Passover, and she shares her mom’s “excellent, shallot-y, and very hot sauce-y” version in her cookbook, Molly on the Range (Rodale Books, 2016).
Akin to French toast, shards of matzo are softened, stirred with beaten eggs and cooked in a skillet until set. The details vary by family. Some prefer it sweet, others salty; some prefer to use eggs to soak the matzo, others water.
Yeh says that while she uses pieces of matzo for Passover, the rest of the year she mixes it up, using “stale pita chips or saltines or Flamin’ Hot Funyuns.”
And while her mother “would never do this,” she sometimes adds a touch of heavy cream to the eggs.
If you haven’t tried matzo brei before, Yeh encourages making it when you’re looking for more texture in your plate of scrambled eggs.
“It’s not the flavour of the matzo that makes matzo brei good (there’s no flavour in matzo anyway), it’s the chewy texture of soaked matzo that’s more al dente noodle than soggy cracker,” she writes.
Although Passover food restrictions can differ according to family traditions, leavened bread or bread products (chametz) are prohibited. Matzo — an unleavened flatbread — is integral to many dishes made during the eight-day spring festival, which begins in the evening of April 10.
For Yeh, Passover this year will likely involve packing up a kugel or brisket to take out to the tractor.
She and her husband live on a farm on the North Dakota-Minnesota border, and the festival falls right in the middle of spring planting.
“You can’t have various ingredients (during Passover) and I like that challenge.
“It’s fun to see what you can do with these ingredients and with these processes … experimenting with new flavours of macaroons or inventing new Passover pies.
“I have tons of fun making those recipes and I also like making our own new traditions on the farm,” she says.
Yeh has been sharing recipes on her blog (My Name is Yeh) since 2009 when she “fell wildly in love with food” while studying percussion at the Juilliard School in New York City.
The recipes in her debut cookbook, as on her blog, reflect her Jewish and Chinese heritage (her mother is Jewish, her father Chinese), suburban Chicago upbringing, college life in New York, and the foodways of her new home in the Midwestern United States.
Chinese-inspired recipes, such as chicken potstickers and schnitzel bao with sriracha mayo and sesame pickles are alongside Yeh’s recipe for scallion pancake challah.
“This is me in bread form! Chinese, Jewish, and pretty doughy, whether I can help it or not,” she writes.
Midwestern favourites like lefse (a traditional Norwegian flatbread; Yeh’s “hugely untraditional” version uses sweet potato) and hot dish (a type of casserole; Yeh’s wild rice rendition combines unlikely partners — Morocco and the Midwest) join dishes from the Jewish diaspora such as cardamom orange kubaneh (a layered Yemeni bread) and everything bagel bourekas (Anatolian filled pastries).
Ingredients including tahini, dukkah, za’atar and labneh (a strained yogurt cheese) make appearances in Middle Eastern-influenced recipes: cauliflower shawarma tacos; dukkah doughnuts with blood orange glaze; and za’atar monkey bread with garlic and onion labneh.
Yeh says that visiting Israel and learning from food writer Janna Gur in particular have drastically changed the way she looks at Jewish cuisine.
“The Book of New Israeli Food is probably one of the most used books in my kitchen,” says Yeh.
“Janna’s book has led me to learn about Jewish diaspora cuisine … Libyan Jewish cuisine and Yemenite Jewish cuisine.
“It’s about so much more than putting together butter, flour and yeast, and creating a cool bread (in the case of Yemeni kubaneh).
“It’s about Yemeni traditions on Shabbat.
“And why they had to leave Yemen … It’s almost like the flavour comes secondary to the story.”
“My favourite way of connecting to my Jewishness is through the food.
“And this added an entirely new dimension on top of the bubbe food that I grew up with — the family recipes, and the Ashkenazi comfort food that I had when I was young.
“It’s opened up this whole new world of foods that I can make on the farm in the middle of a town where there are no other Jews.
“And then still feel that connection.”
Note: Yeh recommends making the following during Passover, with substitutions noted. As Passover food restrictions vary, check with your rabbinical authority if you’re unsure about the status of any ingredients. Recipes excerpted from Molly on the Range: Recipes and Stories from An Unlikely Life on a Farm by Molly Yeh (Rodale Books, 2016).