Why all Jews love prunes

The ins and outs of the unleavened holiday diet.

By RUTH JUDAH
Updated: APRIL 20, 2016 19:24
Baking matzot (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Baking matzot
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Another Passover. Get ready for haroset, matza ball soup and brisket. Chefs who avoid these most popular dishes inherited from generations long gone may experience a near-exodus by their patrons, but standard Passover fare can be supplemented with food that has meaningful flavors and digestion benefits.
Jews who welcome the Passover diet are gifted the delights and benefits of a culinary retreat that honors healthfulness in the home. This is the holiday that encourages unprocessed food and a broad variety of farm-grown products. Yes, we can do better than matza for breakfast, matza pizza for lunch and potato chips with avocado for dinner. As we support our immune system with a broader selection of natural foods, we ward off disease – chronic and temporary.
The story of our freedom from Egypt is ancient, but metaphorically we are still slaves in some aspects of our lives, such as in our diet. Many perpetually choose foods that are nutritionally bankrupt and spiritually bereft. Passover can be the anecdote to this. If God hadn’t given us Passover, some health guru would surely have come up with the concept and spawned an industry of followers who would prove the benefits of annual food avoidance.
Our palate needs variety more than repetition.
There are only so many times we can drool at the thought of dry matza and a bag of Bisli. The most commonly eaten foods through the holiday are matza and potatoes, hence the reason that Jews love prunes. This is the year to broaden your menu.
Start with a cookbook, often with glossy and encouraging pictures. Amazon.com offers more than 400 Passover recipe books. In any language, from every country, there is an assortment to consider.
Consider tastier meal plans that are not merely pious efforts at substitutions for classic favorites.
In 2013, Aviva Kanoff released her delectable cookbook The No-Potato Passover.
She suggests sweet-and-spicy meatballs, carrot muffins, and mixed berry quinoa with roasted almonds. Kanoff explains, “I found myself dreading the very thought of another potato-filled Passover.”
She‘s in love with quinoa, the high-protein grain-like seed which must be marked with a kosher-for-Passover sign for the holiday.
What’s not to love? Quinoa, one of the best, most complete vegetarian sources of protein can be used alongside cauliflower, the perfect ingredient for easy-tolove cauliflower pizza. Spaghetti squash is low in calories and looks like spaghetti.
Google offers an impressive 608,000 recipe ideas for cooking with spaghetti squash. Something’s gotta work.
Remember that you can eat margarine (made without dairy, and soy and corn) and bouillon for flavoring. Also vanilla extract and olive-oil spray (made without soy lecithin). You can use kosher-for-Passover gelatin, all kinds of beef and chicken and fish and eggs. You can still serve soyfree hot dogs wrapped in lettuce leaves, latkes and a variety of ice cream desserts.
A nut, actually a fruit composed of a hard shell and a seed, is, when marked kosher for Passover, the perfect ingredient.
Peanuts are actually legumes and must be avoided by those who do not eat kitniyot, so purchase the more healthy almond butter for your PB and J matza sandwiches.
Nuts and eggs are both endemic to Passover recipes because they replace leavening and binding ingredients. If necessary, however, you can use ground coconut, tapioca flour or potato starch to replace nuts. Applesauce, oil, fruit nectar and honey can be substituted for eggs.
Still, even as the green vegetables are whisked from the market, we Seder chefs have to remember to choose dishes that bring wholesome goodness, but also avoid certain foods that cause an allergic reaction in certain guests. A 2013 study by the World Allergy Organization confirms that the last 10 years have seen an increase in food allergies, found in as many as 10% of the global population. If you are dealing with a food restriction this year, you are not alone.
Kosher dietary laws are among the most complex of all religious food practices, but this is not the only reason that adults choose particular diets. Ideological beliefs, allergies and food sensitivities make up the dietary choices of the world at large.
Whenever we cook, we must choose a menu that will work for the unique needs of our family and friends.
It’s not just the Jews who care about the food they chomp. Some Catholics refrain from eating meat on Fridays and Hindus do not eat meat at all. Muslims are forbidden to eat pork or drink alcohol and Mormons abstain from caffeine and alcohol.
Liberal though your views may be, it is unlikely you will find a Muslim or Mormon Seder anytime soon.
Public awareness of life-threatening allergies is reportedly far lower in Israel than in North America and Europe. This does not mean that allergies are less severe.
Most common allergies include peanuts or tree nuts, fish, eggs, milk, sesame, soy, corn and wheat. Lactose intolerance is experienced by approximately 65% of the world’s population after infancy. Fortunately, there has never yet been a Seder that serves cheese omelets.
Meanwhile, there are diabetic diets that require the proper balance of ingredients.
You can create a gluten-free Passover menu by using spelt matza, which is imperative to sufferers of celiac disease. Ignore your guests’ allergies at your peril. When facing food allergies, you need to think outside of the matza box. Take care; kosher labeling might not address the issue of cross contact with ingredients so traces of allergens might exist if you forget to check the label.
True food allergies can cause headaches and on occasion death.
Passover food is preferable for those who suffer from corn and soy allergies because Ashkenazim don’t eat these ingredients, along with legumes, during the holiday. Now you can purchase corn- and soy-free margarine, chocolate chips, frozen whipped topping, ketchup, soda and corn-free deli meat. There are gluten-free cake mixes, breadings, non-gebrokts matza balls, cakes, cookies, blintzes, pizza and knishes. Meanwhile, not every side dish must include eggs. You can make a tasty eggless potato kugel and mashed potatoes can be made with sautéed onions and mushrooms.
There is sometimes no nutritional value in Passover products, so stick to wholesome ingredients as far as possible. Check the labels – an easy mistake is to purchase a parve food thinking it is kosher for Passover.
When in doubt, ask your friendly neighborhood rabbi for questions on halacha.
Chabad.org may sum it up best: “A diabetic must be very careful to dose their insulin appropriately and limit their caloric intake during the meal to allow for the eating of the matza. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize that if eating matza (or wine or maror) will make someone ill, even if not seriously, he is not required to eat it. If eating the matza will make him seriously ill, then it is forbidden to do so. Judaism does not encourage pious foolishness!”