PASSOVER: Why Is This Item Different?

Etcetera Media’s Six Pack Wine Rack, made from renewable materials.

Etcetera Media’s Six Pack Wine Rack, made from renewable materials.

by Sandee Brawarsky
Special To The Jewish Week

Eat, pray, read. Celebrate Passover with meaning and style. Here are some ideas for seder gifts, food and recipes, books, tableware, tzedakah and a Lower East Side adventure.
Janet Gross Amateau, who grew up in a Ladino-speaking home in New York, runs Tradescantia Terrace Restaurant, a Sephardic restaurant between Barcelona and Girona, Spain — one of few Sephardic Jewish restaurants in Spain and the only one serving Sephardic cooking from the Island of Rhodes, where her family comes from.

For the holiday, Amateau is offering a folio of recipes, “Traditional Sephardic Cooking from the Island of Rhodes,” with 18 distinctive recipes. Sephardic cuisine from Rhodes combines the flavors of Spanish, Turkish, Greek and Italian foods, as prepared on the island for centuries. Foods are

seasoned with fresh aromatic herbs and citrus, while desserts are fragrant with cinnamon, cloves, honey and flower essences. Her recipes include Ouevos Haminados, “Warmed” Eggs (for the seder plate) with a smoky, rich onion flavor; Mina, Passover meat pie with spring herbs; Andjinara con avas, braised artichokes with fava beans and fresh dill; Mustachudos, spiced hazelnut pyramid cookies and Turkishc, all with detailed instructions. As she explains, the mustachudos are packed with symbolic qualities associated with Passover: the new wine, absence of flour or leavening, bittersweet flavor, rough texture and pyramid shape.

The folio is available for $15, delivered via e-mail in PDF format. To purchase a copy, see her Web site, SephardicCooking.com. The recipes make for a nice gift, or better yet, bring a finished dish from Rhodes to the seder.

Many pots and pans used for Passover have served families for generations. As you pull the Passover cookware out of closets and think about replacing the old, consider sending some new and essential solar cookware to the women of Darfur.

Solar cookers convert sunlight into heat to cook food. These pots will help the women in refugee camps in Chad, across the border from Sudan, to avoid the dangerous job of searching for firewood outside of the camps, where they are often violently attacked. And, since there is no need to tend a fire with a solar cooker, the women are free to do other tasks.

A $30 donation to Jewish World Watch -www.jewishworldwatch.org supports one family by providing two solar cookers, skills training and two potholders. A $150 donation supports five families by providing 10 solar cookers, training and 10 potholders.
Rachel Andres was recently awarded the Charles Bronfman Prize for her work with the JWW Solar Cooker Project. To make a donation, contact JWW at (818) 501-1836, or go to jewishworldwatch.org.

Elsewares.com, an Internet shopping site based in Brooklyn, highlights the work of individual artisans who are passionate about design, and manufacturers who take special care in respecting workers’ rights and the environment.

Etcetera Media’s Six Pack Wine Rack, made from naturally renewable and recyclable materials, works for storing fine Passover wine. The wool-felt wine rack can store up to six bottles and collapses easily for storage and gift giving. Etcetera, a Boston design studio run by a husband-and-wife team, manufactures all of its products in Massachusetts. $40.

Slice fresh horseradish on Furni’s sleek, bamboo cutting board, which comes with two stainless steel bowls. Bamboo, one of the most high-yield, sustainable resources on earth, is harder than maple and other woods, which makes for less visible knife marks on the surface. Furni’s designers are cabinetmakers who use the skills they’ve perfected to make small handcrafted furnishings, with special care in staining, finishing and boxing their products. The cutting board measures 15 1/2” x 10 1/2” x 3/4”. $30.

Cherah een shab ba’ah shab hayeh deegar fargh dareht? That’s Persian for the opening line of the four questions recited at the seder. In a new book, “Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights: The Four Questions Around the World” (Schocken), Ilana Kurshan presents the four questions in 23 languages, including Amharic, Latin, Yiddish, Afrikaans, French, Hungarian and Chinese. In addition, she briefly tells the history of Jewish life in the areas where these languages are spoken, along with a photograph or illustration depicting the community. This attractive book is sure to add multicultural joy to any seder. ($16)

This may be the last year to shop for Passover goods at the source: Streit’s Retail Outlet, at 148-154 Rivington St. Founded in 1916 when matzahs were baked by hand, Streit’s opened a modern bakery at this location in 1925. The family — the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Aron Streit — still run the business and have put the buildings that house their factory, offices and retail shop up for sale, with plans to relocate.

Inside the corner retail store, shoppers can peek at the “Baking Department” and view the final stages of the matzah baking process. The flat matzahs slide out of the oven, like papers coming out of a printing press, and are placed by hand into baskets on a revolving belt to cool and dry before being packed upstairs. In this building, about 2,000 pounds of matzah are baked an hour; some days during this season the ovens go for 20 hours.

Along with matzah in whole wheat, regular, egg and spelt varieties, they sell Streit’s Mac & Cheeze, Muesli cereal, sea salt, red Chilean wine vinegar and other Passover products. The shop is open Sunday to Thursday, 9 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

A video project is underway to record the story of Streit’s through the reminiscences of its customers. Those who would like to be interviewed (on April 13, at the store) should contact streitsproject@yahoo.com, or call (917) 968-5505.

Down the block, Economy Candy, 108 Rivington St., combines local history and sweetness. A family business founded in 1937, the crowded store still has the feel of a neighborhood candy shop, with its tin ceilings and barrels of sweets. Jerry and Mitchell Cohen, the son and grandson of the founder, Morris Cohen, now run the shop. On a recent morning, Morris, 90, was visiting.

Carrying a wide assortment of packaged candies and nuts and loose selections, this is a place of dreams for candy lovers. And for those who love bargains, it’s a double delight. For Passover, the store stocks several varieties of macaroons, chocolate-covered matzah, fruit slices and boxes of what used to be known as “fancy chocolates,” all at very downtown prices. Jerry Cohen says that they sell about 4,000 pounds of their most popular Passover item, chocolate-covered macaroons. The store is open Sunday to Friday, from 9 a.m.-6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Across Delancey Street, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, 91 Orchard St., offers tours of the landmark tenement building, a National Historic Site, with its carefully restored apartments. Visitors have an opportunity to reflect on the generations of immigrants to this country and their passages to freedom.

The museum offers afternoon tours (the week of April 14 is a regular schedule, while the week of April 21 is a holiday schedule, with extended tours). Call for information about tour schedules and prices, (212) 431-0233, or go to www.tenement.org.

At the Visitors Center & Tenement Shop, 108 Orchard St., amid one of the best selections of books about New York City, kosher-for-Passover “Star of David” brand soap is available in lemon eucalyptus and honey almond scents. With their vintage-style labels — the lemon eucalyptus features a mother and young son holding the star-embossed bar — the soaps are American-made, “with respect for the tradition, in honor of its passage through time,” as the label says. Made from the natural oils of lemon and eucalyptus, the bar has an appealing citrus smell, perfect for the kitchen. ($5.95 for a 9-oz. bar)

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