A Louisiana Passover Seder Merges Generations and Culinary Traditions by Rien Fertel Photography by David Gallent
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GATHERING A Louisiana Passover Seder Merges Generations and Culinary Traditions By Rien Fertel Photography by David Gallent This Passover feast explores the city’s historic Jewish communities and their ties with Creole cuisine, featuring the contrasting styles of Mildred Covert’s Ashkenazic, (brisket and root vegetables) and Alon Shaya’s Sephardic (Mediterranean-centric nuts, honey, and olive oil) backgrounds. ometimes this gets Springing from one of his earliest food me into trouble when memories—the scent of flame-charred I say it, but I don’t peppers and eggplants wafting throughout believe there is any his grandmother’s kitchen—the recipe such thing as Jewish works as a deconstructed ciambotta—the cooking.” Mildred stewed, southern Italian cousin to the Covert is no rab- French ratatouille—but with an additional ble-rouser, but this feels like a subversive drizzle of tahini. “Sstatement, especially considering that Or, better yet, take the Israeli-born chef ’s we are gathered for a Seder, the ceremo- Matzo Ball Soup “Wedding Style,” a bowl nial meal that commences the Passover of which I look forward to eating each year holiday, the festive commemoration of the at the week-long series of Passover dinners Israelites’ freedom from bondage in Egypt. Shaya holds at Domenica, his Roosevelt Alon Shaya, perhaps the brightest young Hotel-located restaurant in New Orleans. chef in America, changing the way eaters Substituting airy-light matzo balls for the think about traditional Jewish foods, nods dense meatballs found in Napoli region’s excitedly. “Yes! It’s from everywhere. That’s minestra maritata (married or wedding the beauty of it.” He unconsciously reaches soup), he brilliantly melds two soupy tra- down to rearrange the herbs that top a ditions. One of this evening’s Seder guests plate of roasted eggplant and continues. declared this to be his favorite matzo ball “Like in Italy, there’s this great old Jewish- soup, next to his bubbe’s, of course. Chef Italian cuisine. …” Shaya smartly responded. “I’m not in the That dish exemplifies the shared ideas business of competing with grandmothers, from Shaya and Covert’s exchange—the but I do want y’all to know, the cook who roots, customs, and assimilationist-ten- made these matzo balls is from Cut-Off, dencies of Jewish culinary culture. Louisiana.” Chef Alon Shaya’s wood-fired matzos. Menu by Mrs. Mildred Covert (Kosher Creole) & Chef Alon Shaya (Domenica) | Hosted by James and Patricia Glickman & Family 26 Louisiana Kitchen & Culture | March / April 2013 MyLouisianaKitchen.com March / April 2013 | Louisiana Kitchen & Culture 27 Glickman Passover Seder Glickman Passover Seder ust as this soup linked the familiar with the contemporary, the planners of this Seder ambitiously set a table and guest list that spanned generations, cooking styles, and cultural traditions. This Passover feast would explore the city’s historic Jewish communities and their I am New Orleans: ties with Creole cuisine, featuring the contrasting styles of Mildred Covert’s “We broke our Yom Ashkenazic, (brisket and root vegetables) andJ Alon Shaya’s Sephardic (Mediterranean-centric nuts, honey, and olive oil) backgrounds. Kippur fast on fried A local culinary icon, Covert was the guest of honor, for her role in bridging Jewish and Louisiana culinary chicken and potato canons. Back in 1982, Covert co-authored with Sylvia Gerson the Kosher Creole Cookbook, a quirky, comb- s a l a d .” bound recipe collection CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: Chef Mrs. Mildred Covert that, with great impro- Alon Shaya and Mrs. Mildred Covert share visation and ingenuity, the Hagaddah at the Passover table; adapts the eat-anything musicians Randy Cohen a.k.a. “19th Street approach of Creole Red” and Ben Shenck of the Pamorama cooking to the occa- Jazz and Brass bands; the Glickman sionally strict system family’s collection of kosher cookbooks; Seder hosts Jimmy and Patricia Glickman of Jewish dietary laws. at the New Orleans Music Exchange, their Because much of our popular Magazine Street store; Chef Alon water’s bounty is Shaya in his kitchen at Domenica, his forbidden to obser- restaurant in the Roosevelt Hotel. vant Jews, the authors swap in gefilte fish for the main proponent in their Oysters Mock-A-Feller and tuna for shrimp in the Stuffed Mirlitons. In many dishes, kosher smoked sausage easily replaces the variety of porky products. While Louisiana’s abundant use of fresh vegetables, eggs, and certain fishes (such as redfish, trout, and flounder) remind us how pareve—the term for non-meat/dairy foods that can be eaten with anything, according to Jewish law—Creole cuisine really is. Adaptation is the key idea—the “big magic word” in her words—to Covert’s lengthy career as an author and home cook. Growing up in a kosher-keeping home, she remembers eating her grandmother’s red beans and rice each Monday, with brisket displacing the ham hocks and sausage. Despite such culinary switches, she and her family never thought of them- selves as outsiders. “I am New Orleans,” she asserts. “We broke our Yom Kippur fast on fried chicken and potato salad.” 28 Louisiana Kitchen & Culture | March / April 2013 MyLouisianaKitchen.com March / April 2013 | Louisiana Kitchen & Culture 29 Glickman Passover Seder hen she This sense of community informs the lives and married Uptown home of our Seder hosts, Jimmy and her Patricia Glickman. The shop they co-own, the less-devout New Orleans Music Exchange, acts as a nucleus of husband, the city’s vast and various circles of professional David, and amateur musicians. It was a bit difficult to though, she keep kosher when he moved here in 1985, Mr. was faced, Glickman said. But the Passover ritual and dinner for the first is adaptable to one’s own degrees of Judaic belief. time, with Glickman has attended nine-hour-long Seder the challenge of cooking ham. She went to the ceremonies, but prefers his family’s semi-ortho- grocery, unsure of how much salt-pork to pur- dox, somewhat freewheeling approach. “We chase. “I need a piece of meat for my husband to do it how we want to,” he says, inviting, each Weat,” she told the butcher, who presented a piece spring, a diverse group of 10 to 20 individuals, that looked much too small. “I asked for a bigger frequently including local musicians. This piece,” (she holds up early evening, her hands indicating Randy Cohen, a a cut of meat much MENU singer/guitarist too big) “and cooked who travels around it in red beans. Dave the world playing took one bite and it On the Seder Plate: Charoset under the sobriquet was like eating brine.” (Chef Alon Shaya) 19th Street Red, She teases herself. “It and clarinetist Ben had to have been a Soup Course: Matzo Ball Soup Schenck, founder mental block. I could “Wedding Style” of the New Orleans not remember things (Chef Alon Shaya) Klezmer All-Stars and with pork in it.” the Panorama Jazz and Entrée and For decades, Mrs. Ac companiments: Creole Pot Roast Piquant, Brass Bands, join the Covert was known (to be passed Galilee Glazed Carrots, Passover table. as the little lady in family-style) The history of Jewish the red-brick house Jaffa Jazzy Beets; people and New Orleans (all from Kosher Creole by Mrs. Mildred Covert) The Seder Plate near Tulane’s campus has long been entwined, who, in those pre- Coal-Roasted Eggplant with jazz musicians and word processor days, with Tahini and Olive supporters playing key typed dissertations Oil- Roasted Vegetables roles in the evolution of (Chef Alon Shaya) and manuscripts for the musical form. In the In a medium saucepan, students and profes- late 19th and early 20th combine vinegar, sugar, sors. She obtained Salad Course: Bitter Herb Salad centuries, thousands wine, onions, apples, and her lifelong dream of (Chef Alon Shaya) of Eastern European honey. Cook on a low writing a book when Ashkenazic Jews—my flame until onions become one of her clients Dessert: Passover Almond Cake great-grandparents translucent, about seven spied on her desk with Figs, Orange, among them—settled ⅓ cup rice wine vinegar minutes. Stir gently so that a mimeographed and Honey throughout the city and ⅓ cup granulated sugar apples retain their shape; compilation of rec- (Chef Alon Shaya) state. They followed ⅓ cup Moscato d’Asti wine remove from heat. ipes titled Creosher scores of Sephardic, ⅓ cup onions, cut in ½-inch dice In a separate bowl, com- Cooking, which she French, and German 3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, Charoset bine figs, dates, preserves, had put together with immigrants from cored, cut in ½-inch dice Chef Alon Shaya citrus zest, and juices. her friend Gerson. For the past three decades, Western Europe who migrated and readily assimi- ¼ cup honey the Pelican Publishing Company has kept their lated into the city, a century earlier. The Ashkenazi, My mother would always make charoset 1 cup dried figs, cut in ½-inch dice Place fig mixture in a first cookbook in print, along with its three like the Sephardi before them, used food to for us at the house during Passover. 1 cup dates, cut in ½-inch dice food processor and lightly kosher sequels that highlight Cajun, Southern, integrate and define themselves against Creole I loved it because it was sweet and ¼ cup good-quality apricot preserves pulse one or two times until and cooking for children. The cookbook series, New Orleans. As Marcie Cohen Farris writes in complex in flavor and really gave me a zest and juice of ½ lemon ingredients combine but are according to Covert, fulfilled its promise in Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish reason to eat matzo out of a box.