'Love and Knishes: An Irrepressible Guide to Jewish Cooking'
Recipes by Sara Kasdan
Illustrations by Louis Slobodkin
The Vanguard Press, 1956
Buy it at Amazon

Dedicated "To the Wonderful Women Who Never Cooked from a Book," Sara Kasdan's Love and Knishes (1956) is both a very traditional Jewish cookbook (with recipes for knaidlech and kugel) and a fascinating, funny historical document of mid-century attitudes about cooking, ethnicity, and health. Kasdan wrote her book at a time when, as she writes witheringly in a chapter titled You Can Be Normal, Too, Why Not? "Nowadays, everything is psychology...everybody has complexes." Interspersed with her recipes for tzimmes and kasha varnitchkes is a caustic sense of humor that makes the tome compulsively readable. Kasdan's audience is a generation of women whose instincts and traditions were about to get run off the road by everything from Julia Child and processed foods to cookbooks purporting to teach them what they already knew.

Takeaway Tips: Look for the double entendres: Kasdan's one-page chapter about salads is called "Papa Called it Grass." She suffers none of the pretensions or guilt of modern cookbook writer, and the book is a festival of schmaltz, sour cream and refined carbohydrates. A helpful glossary defines foods like lox ("A partner to bagels") and kreplach ("Chinese definition: Won Ton; Italian definition: ravioli.") And all of the chapters come with lengthy anecdotes about everything from picky husbands to Rosh Hashana strudel.

Quality of Illustrations: Crude but hilarious.

Just as April showers bring May flowers, so do the hard-boiled eggs that arrive via Passover seder or an Easter egg hunt bring us, well, a lot of hard-boiled eggs. What to do with them all?

Many of those who celebrate Easter open a lunch box the first Monday thereafter to be confronted with a big scoop of egg salad. And while that's always an option -- as is the Cobb Salad that centers many an April luncheon -- there are recipes out there beyond the standards. So hide your eggs and eat them too.

First, though, safety is critical. According to the USDA, Easter eggs are safe to eat after the hunt provided you follow a few basic guidelines: Use food-safe coloring to dye the eggs and refrigerate them within two hours of boiling them. Boiling an egg removes a protective coating that occurs naturally on the shell, which leaves the shell vulnerable to bacteria. After the hunt, discard any eggs whose shells have cracked or that nestled in a bacteria-friendly environment such as dirt, hay or anywhere accessible to pets. Don't keep hard-boiled eggs away from the fridge for longer than two hours and use them within seven days of boiling them.

Beyond the jump is a delicious recipe for using those safely-handled eggs. (Hint: It's a salad, but it's not egg salad).

Though some Jewish food mavens may beg to differ, we think few dishes are as associated with the children of Israel as gefilte fish. While not as easy-to-love as blintzes, as versatile as horseradish or as soothing as chicken soup, the ubiquitous balls of ground fish make a fine appetizer for almost any holiday meal.

Gefilte fish, which takes its name from gefüllte, the German word for "stuffed," was traditionally made using finely ground pike or carp mixed with eggs, onion, flour, seasonings and either matzoh meal or challah bread. It was then packed into the skin of a deboned fish, poached with onions and carrots, chilled and sliced. Today gefilte fish is typically formed into patties and served cold. It is often preserved in a jellied fish broth and commonly accompanied by horseradish and a slice of carrot.

While gefilte fish isn't one of the symbolic foods on the Passover Seder Plate, it is a traditional part of the meal in many households. Part of its popularity lies in the cultural significance underlying its preparation: Since one can buy it deboned, it doesn't require work at the table, which means that it can be eaten during the Sabbath when work is forbidden. Another benefit is that fish is parve, so kosher consumers can eat it on the same plate with either meat or dairy foods.

Another reason for the aqueous critter's lingering popularity lies in its economy. Originally developed in Europe's Ashkenazi Jewish community, gefilte fish balls incorporated cereals and fillers to stretch the fish itself. The fish was class-free -- accessible enough for the poorest member of a community, yet glitzy enough for the most wealthy.

Today gefilte fish continues to be a popular and enduring cultural motif. On one end of the spectrum, enterprising chefs like Wolfgang Puck are finding ways to make it more exciting; on the other, a strong market for the traditional ground fish and stuffing survives. Brett Werner, manager of Miami Beach's popular Roasters' n Toasters deli, estimates that his store has sold approximately 200 quarter-pound pieces of the fish for this year's Passover already!

How do you feel about gefilte fish?

Passover starts at sundown tomorrow and we've got you covered over at AOL Food. Check out our Matzo Ball 101 (the secret ingredient, as we reveal, is schmaltz -- more than a sentimental moment, it's literally chicken fat!) and oodles of other recipes including a delectable-lookin' Merlot-drenched beef brisket with prunes. So take a gander before you hustle out the door to do your shopping tonight.

Got a knockout Passover recipe? Share it in the comments!

Saturday afternoon, Scott and I picked up my great-aunt Belle and drove out to my cousin's house for my family's Seder dinner. It was Scott's first Seder and Belle's 90th, so she gave him a quick rundown of what expect on the way out there. The Seder dinner was moderately traditional, starting out with a shortened Haggadah gefilte fish and matzo ball soup (the addition of fresh dill made the matzo balls particularly delicious) and then ending with roasted lamb, string beans and matzo kugel.

It was the first time that Scott tasted gefilte fish, and when the verdict was that it wasn't too bad at all. Our gefilte fish was nice looking, but not quite as lovely as the stuff you see above. Thanks for the picture, C(h)ristine!

Earlier today, I came across this recipe for Mandelbread that uses matzo meal and is kosher for Passover. I thought about throwing it together after work today for a potluck I'm heading to later tonight. One of the things that makes this recipe appropriate for this time of year is that is uses kosher-for-Passover margarine (admittedly, I would probably cheat and use regular old butter since I'm not worried about staying kosher).

However, there are lots of Jews out there for whom keeping kosher for Passover is deeply important and this year it's a little bit harder, because there's currently a shortage of that kosher-for-Passover margarine that the recipe calls for. This margarine is essential for Passover baking, because it can go with either milk or dairy meals, making the resulting baked goods far more flexible than they would be if they are baked with butter (made from dairy, you cannot serve anything with butter if it's a meat meal).

Part of the shortage has to do with the fact that this margarine can only be made with cottonseed or palm oil. Currently, there is a shortage of cottonseed oil, driving the price to an all-time high. Also, several kosher-for-Passover margarine manufacturers have recently gotten out of the business, increasing the scarcity.

So, if you planned on baking with kosher-for-Passover margarine this holiday season, you may well in be in for something of a challenge.

[via WSJ]

Passover starts Saturday night, the holiday during which Jews give up all leavened products for a period of 7 or 8 days. Instead, we eat matzo. Stacks and stacks of matzo. However, until I saw this picture, I never really thought about how beautiful such a basic food item could be. Thanks Ohad*, for the lovely image!

Yesterday, I asked you guys for some help with a savory matzo kugel (thanks to all who commented and pointed me in the direction of recipes, I do appreciate the help). I want to return the favor by offering one of my very favorite Passover recipes, for charoset. Charoset appears on the Passover menu in order to represent the mortar that the Jews used to build structures during their enslavement.

However dark and unappealing the inspirational source, the resulting dish is delicious. It is a combination of chopped apples, almonds, walnuts, honey, spices and a little wine (or grape juice). You can make a little or a lot, and the leftovers are wonderful with some greek yogurt for breakfast or over a bed of baby greens for lunch. Check out my recipe after the jump, but know that you can adapt it to your own tastes (tossing a handful of raisins in is never a bad idea).

Whatever dessert you end up having for Passover, please avoid those macaroons in the can. At the Passover Seder, we traditionally ask 4 questions. I propose adding a 5th question: Why on all other nights do we eat baked goods that come in bags, boxes, or direct from the oven and on this night we eat baked goods from a can?

Even moving past canned macaroons, I'm not typically a big fan of Passover desserts. These kosher for Passover chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting, however, are so tasty that I could eat them year round. One of my friends even told me it was the best cupcake she had ever had!

They are extremely rich - almost like fudge - so if you have mini cupcake wrappers, you might consider using those instead of normal-sized ones. You could also make the cupcake recipe in cake format.

The recipe can be found on Cupcake Project.

Passover, the holiday that lasts for a week and requires that observant Jews give up any leavened bread/grain product for the duration, starts this Saturday. My extended family isn't particularly observant, so while we're having a Seder dinner (the traditional Passover meal that includes a lengthy service called the Haggadah) we're cutting the Haggadah section of the meal down to a manageable five minutes.

The one place where we aren't breaking from tradition is that the actual meal will be Kosher, with no leavened dishes on the table. For the first time ever, I've been assigned a dish to bring (I guess my cousins figure that since I'm nearly 29, I can handle it). They asked me to bring a savory matzo kugel (pudding). I've made noodles kugels and sweet matzo kugels in the past, but I've never made exactly the thing that I've been asked to create.

So Slashfood readers, I need your help. Point me in the direction of your favorite savory matzo kugel recipes! If you have a family recipe that you are willing to share, pop it into the comments section. My family and I thank you!

Pollsters are now looking at how consumer behavior, including eating, affects voter choice. Dr. Pepper is for Republicans, Sprite is for Democrats. Clinton supporters snack on Fig Newtons, McCain fans on stuffed-crust pizza. While some results are weird, others are predictable - Whole Foods is a dead giveaway of liberal orientation.

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