For those of you out there who are beginning to think about getting your kitchens and pantries ready for Passover, be forewarned that you're going to have fewer Manischewitz products to choose from than you have in past years. The company has been in the process of putting a new oven in their one and only baking facility in Newark, NJ and, unfortunately, there were some engineering delays that made them miss the Passover baking window.
The company officials debated whether to stop producing some products altogether for the time being or just make less of them. The decided to temporarily stop production on a few of the less popular matzo products, including Passover Thin Tea Matzo, Yolk Free Egg Matzo, White Grape Matzo, Concord Grape Matzo, Spelt Matzo (unfortunate for observant Jews with wheat allergies) and the beloved cracker-sized Tam Tams.
So, for the Pesach-observant Slashfood readers, you might want to scour the shelves for any boxes of Tam Tams. Because when they're gone, there won't be anymore out there until the end of April.
In the news, THomas Keller's temporary Ad Hoc is open, Cindy Pawlcyn does fish at Go Fish, and Gary Danko tops the Zagat survey. Pan-Asian Red Ginger in El Granada and Oakland's country French JoJo both receive two and a half stars (**½). Mescolanza in the Richmond District gets two stars (**).
By now, most Jewish people are deep into their Seder dinners, as the first
night of Passover began at
Sundown today. However, I'm not Jewish so I don't get to enjoy the ceremonial storytelling and delicious Seder
feast tonight.
Much of the story of Passover is about suffering, so I feel sort of sacrilegous in thinking that haroset
is delicious. Haroset has its place on the Seder plate, representing the mortar that the Israelis used for
building when they were kept as slaves in Egypt. Haroset can be made in many different ways, but the most basic recipe
is made from apples, nuts, and sweet wine.
We already know that there are a lot of "commandments"
that govern the Jewish holiday of Passover, which will be starting tomorrow evening. Many of are strict dietary
rules. The first two nights of Passover are the most important because Jews hold a religious service in their
homes with friends and family around the dinner table called the Seder. The Seder is a time when the Passover story is
told from a book called the haggadah, and explains why the holiday even exists.
The word "seder" means "order," indicating that there is an "order" in which 15
things, or steps, take place. If you didn't figure it out by now, the Seder dinner can take a very long time.
There are very detailed steps that include blessings, hand washings, asking of questions and recitals of answers, and
storytelling.
First off, technically, I'm not Jewish. However, you might as well call me Sarah J. Gimstein. I spent
much of my childhood in a suburb that had a fairly big Jewish population, so most of my friends were Jewish. While my
own mother never made matzo ball soup for
me at home, I certainly got my fair share of matzo (oh, how I loved matzo smeared with
butter) and latkes at
friends' houses after school and on the weekends. And holidays? I knew all about the holidays when I would enviously
wonder what my Jewish friends were doing on "their" holidays, absent from school. Lucky!
It sits alone and untouched at the end of a long buffet table -- a bowl full of apples and bananas, maybe a seedy orange tossed in as an afterthought. Don't let your fruit salad meet this awful fate, spruce it up instead!
For those of you out there who are beginning to think about getting your kitchens and pantries ready for Passover, be forewarned that you're going to have fewer Manischewitz products to choose from than you have in past years. The company has been in the process of putting a new oven in their one and only baking facility in Newark, NJ and, unfortunately, there were some engineering delays that made them miss the Passover baking window. 
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