NEWS FEATURE: Passover foods: not longer the same old Seder fare

c. 1998 Religion News Service BROOKLINE, Mass. _ Avrom Pollack remembers the excitement he felt as a boy when the first kosher-for-Passover chocolates were marketed, offering Jews a culinary option aside from the meat, potatoes, vegetables and matzah that until then comprised the limited Passover fare. At 52, Pollack is president of Star-K Kosher Certification, […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

BROOKLINE, Mass. _ Avrom Pollack remembers the excitement he felt as a boy when the first kosher-for-Passover chocolates were marketed, offering Jews a culinary option aside from the meat, potatoes, vegetables and matzah that until then comprised the limited Passover fare.

At 52, Pollack is president of Star-K Kosher Certification, one of several major organizations that certify foods kosher _ Hebrew for”fit”_ in accordance with traditional Jewish law. He’s seen first-hand, to his amazement, the explosive growth in Passover foods _ from breakfast cereals to pasta and pastries.


As a child, said the Baltimore-based Pollack,”the foods available on Passover were your basic necessities. We never dreamt of kosher-for-Passover condiments and potato chips.” Today, kosher consumers can not only find potato chips, they can choose from several flavors and varieties. Ditto with condiments, as ketchup, salsa and mustard all are available for use during a holiday once associated with culinary sacrifice.

Spurred on by increased competition in the growing Passover food industry, companies have combined the imaginative use of matzah meal with the latest in food technology to create a myriad of new products. The result is a range of kosher-for-Passover culinary choices unthinkable just a few years ago.

Among the new food offerings to appear over the past couple of years are several types of breakfast cereals, granola bars, frozen prepared dinners, pie crusts, hamburger buns, pizza, donuts, blintzes and tacos _ all containing matzah meal rather than regular flour. This year alone, more than 500 new Passover products have materialized on supermarket shelves _ including cherry-flavored cotton candy.”It doesn’t have to be borscht (beet soup) and potatoes anymore,”said Herschel Boehm, co-owner of Baltimore’s Seven Mile Market, the city’s largest kosher supermarket.

But Jewish consumers are by no means the only beneficiaries. Food companies have also profited handsomely. Passover foods have burgeoned into a $1.65 billion industry, accounting for 40 percent of the overall kosher food market, said Menachem Lubinsky, president of Integrated Marketing Communications, a New York-based kosher-food marketing firm. “You name it, they make it,”said Joshua Ruboy, co-owner of the Butcherie, a kosher grocery store in Brookline, Mass., a Boston suburb.”It’s not a traditional holiday where you just eat matzah anymore. The cuisine has become Americanized.” In addition to the normal kosher guidelines intended to sanctify the eating process, Passover _ which begins at sundown on April 10 and runs for eight days (seven for Reform Jews and in Israel) _ is regulated by an additional set of traditional food preparation laws.

Moreover, observant Jews maintain separate sets of dishes and utensils for exclusive Passover use and engage in a lengthly koshering process to prepare their ovens, sinks and other kitchen areas.

Regional customs aside, the main Passover food requirement is to avoid”chamets,”which are products made from grains _ or any food, such as corn, that can be used as a grain _ from which leavened breads can be produced.

The exception is matzah, an unleavened, flat bread made from wheat that tradition says was eaten by the ancient Israelites led out of slavery in Egypt by Moses, the basis for the Passover celebration.


The growth in Passover products has allowed Ruboy to create dishes unheard of just a few years ago, such as the chicken cooked in mustard he prepares at his store.

That dish was made possible because the Rokeach food company last year produced the first-ever kosher-for-Passover mustard _ sans mustard seeds, which are forbidden on Passover because of their visual similarity to certain grains. Its ingredients include water, matzah meal, apple juice, apple-cider vinegar and”mustard flavor.””They’re using food chemistry and all sorts of things, not always to make the same exact product, but a facsimile of it,”said Shmuel Singer, director of Passover supervision at the Orthodox Union, another kosher certification organizations.

The situation, said Singer, reflects the food industry as a whole, where companies are constantly putting new products on the market that imitate other successful products.

But despite the food companies’ best efforts, some recent Butcherie shoppers were hesitant about buying many of the new Passover products, expressing reservations at both the taste of the foods and the changes they have wrought for a holiday many remembered as a brief respite from the sometimes confusing array of foods available in American markets.”It’s only eight days,”said Sharon Spivak of Nashua, N.H., who prefers doing most of her own cooking during Passover in an effort to retain the holiday’s traditional flair.

Spivak considered buying one of the eight Passover breakfast cereal varieties available at the Butcherie _ including chocolate-flavored Crispy Os, Honey Stars and Mueseli _ but decided against it.”They always look good when we go buy them, but the kids don’t eat them,”Spivak said.”And I still prefer to bake my own honey cake. I tried one of the mixes once and didn’t feel it was the (correct) taste and texture.” George Berman, of Brookline, also prefers to keep his shopping traditional. But he also said he enjoys seeing the growing variety of products and the new tastes they bring to Passover.”It’s more pleasant,”Berman said.”You still have got to do the same cleaning, you still have got to do the same changing of dishes. It’s just more pleasant.” Hesitations aside, Ruboy said many shoppers appear quite willing to try the new Passover foods.”It all sells,”he said.”The customers love it when they see new products.

Rabbis point out that the sense of sacrifice traditionally associated with Passover was a matter of practical necessity, never of Jewish law.”Passover is not supposed to be a time of suffering,”the Orthodox Union’s Singer said.”It’s not a fast day, it’s a holiday!” Avi Shafran, spokesman for the ultra-Orthodox umbrella organization Agudath Israel, agreed.”From a nostalgic prospective, there’s something lost, I guess. But religiously, all that matters are the laws, the prescriptions for (Passover). If the level of kashrut regarding (Passover) is adhered to, it’s a healthy development,”he said.


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Along with quantity, the quality of Passover products is also improving, said Robert Solot, vice president of operations for Manischewitz, a Jersey City, N.J.-based company that is a leader in the kosher food industry.

The growing number of spices and other such basic ingredients certified kosher for Passover allows companies to create better tasting products, he said. Increased competition has also forced companies to improve their products, he added.

Solot said Manischewitz has doubled its Passover offerings over the last half-dozen years. A fifth of its about 300 total products _ both Passover and year-round _ is now comprised of items created since 1991.

The industry growth has affected not only kosher-focused companies, such as Manischewitz, but the broader food industry as well. An increasing number of large, nationwide food companies are procuring Passover approval on existing products, such as canned tuna fish and baby food.

Star-K’s Pollack said he recently spoke with a company that produces prepared salads. The company wanted Passover certification but used unsuitable chemicals to clean its lettuce and other vegetables, so Pollack coached them on changing their cleaning methods.

In addition, Pollack said, today every beverage company wants to make kosher-for-Passover beverages. Coca-Cola, for instance, produces sodas without corn-syrup for the holiday, using cane sugar as a sweetener instead.


Singer said when nationally known companies attain Passover certification, consumers in places with small Jewish communities particularly benefit because, while their stores may not specifically stock kosher foods they do carry popular brands that happen to be kosher.

But even as companies churn out new Passover products by the dozen, some old standards never fade away: Ruboy’s supermarket will produce 15,000 matzah balls for Passover chicken soups this season, and Manischewitz will produce a quarter-million sheets of matzah.

However, even the old stand-bys have not escaped the changes that have transformed the Passover market.

Macaroons, a pastry made from coconut or almond and one of the earliest of Passover desert items, can now be purchased in about ten flavors, including rocky road and banana split.

Walking through the Butcherie, Ruboy pointed to a particular aisle.”Twenty-eight feet (long),”he said.”Nothing but macaroons.”

DEA END KRESS

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