(Disclaimer: I don’t speak for other Jews, any other person, or any group of people. The thoughts expressed here are my own, and are not intended to be malignant.)
Despite identifying as atheist, I was born and raised Jewish in New York City, and still identify as such. Being Jewish, for me, extends much further than just a religion: It is an ethnicity, and has its own culture. Despite moving to Norway and being non-religious, I still enjoy the traditions and foods that remind me of home, my family, my childhood, and my identity.
With everything that is currently going on in the world, I wanted to make a Passover dinner for my husband and I, to remind me of home. If you’re not familiar with Passover, I recommend reading more about it on Wikipedia.
Outside of the traditional seder plate and seder, my family’s Passover meal tends to be a huge, multi-course event, including, but not limited to, the following:
- Matzo (An unleavened bread, traditional on Passover)
- Charoset (Chopped apples and walnuts, soaked overnight in a sweet red wine)
- Hard boiled egg
- Gefilte fish (a ground mixture of white fish that I’ve never been too fond of)
- Matzo ball soup (A Passover twist on the classic chicken soup, including dumplings made of matzo)
- Beef Brisket (A fatty cut of meat cooked low and slow over many hours, until the fat is melt-in-your-mouth tender and the meat is falling apart)
- Potatoes, generally prepared using brisket gravy
- Some sort of green vegetable, like green beans
- Flourless chocolate cake and fresh fruit, for dessert
I didn’t actually realize that there was a shop in the Synagogue here in Norway where I could purchase many Passover staples, so my preparations began without them. I decided to pass over (get it?) making Matzo ball soup, since I didn’t have the matzo meal until later on, and focus on my favorite staples: Brisket, potatoes, matzo, charoset, and a dessert. I didn’t focus on making it Kosher for Passover, but rather on recreating the taste of my childhood.
Finding brisket in Norway is no easy feat. It is not a commonly found cut of meat here, so I had to search for a butcher that not only had it, but was still open during these weird times. Thankfully, I found it at Annis Pølsemakeri at Mathallen. I used my bike to fetch it from the butcher, where there was a queue to pick up preorders! Still a little rusty on my conversions, I somehow wound up with 2.25kg or around 5lbs of brisket. Whoops!
My first preparations began with homemade matzo. I found a delightful recipe on Leite’s Culinaria that looked delicious and had good reviews. Let me just say that while the resulting Matzo was absolutely wonderful, and better than any I’d ever had previously, including other homemade shmura matzo– my husband compared it to the boxed Matzo we got later on and told me the homemade was infinitely better– I would not attempt this recipe again without a sort of pasta/lasagne roller to make the process of rolling out the dough easier. Rolling out this dough was TOUGH.
After finishing the matzo, I moved on to the flourless chocolate cake. I used a recipe from King Arthur Flour, using both vanilla and espresso as flavoring, but foolishly thought I could get away with not using parchment paper. I simply oiled the pans, but because there is no flour recipe, it was a disaster and it stuck. Never fear– I decided to repurpose the cake by turning it into cake truffles! Adding 200g of cream cheese, I rolled them into balls and froze them before dipping them in white chocolate and sprinkling them with sea salt. They turned out rich and divine.
The last thing during the day before preparations was the Charoset. After contacting my Aunt, I decided simplicity is best: Equal parts apple and walnuts chopped, tossed in a bag, and sealed with just enough red wine so that there wasn’t any extra liquids overnight in a plastic bag in the fridge.
Then came the Brisket, on the day of. Using my mom’s traditional recipe, I altered it for the Instant Pot, my pressure cooker, to shorten the cooking time from a bajillion hours to just 2. I tossed in the potatoes afterwards to cook in the delicious beef gravy, and steamed some broccoli.
Garnishing it with some parsley, I threw some ground horseradish, available here in a tube from some grocery stores, into a bowl, and got everything ready. For a Norwegian twist, I paired the meat with some cranberry jam.
Finally, it was ready: Our Jew(ish) Passover dinner. It was delicious, and tasted like home.