In keeping with the traditional symbols of Passover, I planned a menu of lamb shanks braised in homemade lamb stock and red wine, braised romaine lettuce, maple brandy carrots, matzo ball soup (stock AND dumplings hand made, of course!) and a mushroom and green onion kugel for the vegetarians.

The challenge of doing this all not only non-dairy but without chametz (prohibited grains) was, truthfully, much diminished by the culinary education I’ve received up to this point.  This is not to discount the number of tasks completed nor the accomplishment of completing everything well and timing it all effectively; only merely to appreciate how much I’ve learned in a relatively short time.  (I prep things, such as chopping vegetables, much more quickly now as well.)

I’m most proud of the vegetarian entrée because it was an exercise in creative thinking within the constraints of the non-dairy, non-chametz.  To make the kugel, which consists of making a custard to soak the matzo and binding it all together by baking, normally I’d use milk and eggs.  In this case I’ve learned that a custard can be any liquid bound with eggs, and so I substituted soy milk.  I know, soy is kitniyot, or foods that can be confused with the actually prohibited chametz.  I’m personally not so concerned about avoiding soy products, and vegetarians gotta eat, too.

Every year I’m reminded about how much I love the idea of tradition, both as part of a rich ethnic and cultural history but also for tradition’s own sake.  I made an Egyptian date-raisin charoset (fruit-mortar, intended to remind us of the mortar the Hebrews used in slavery to build the structures in Egypt) but also made sure that we had the traditional Ashkenazi apples-and-nuts version on hand.  It wouldn’t exactly be Passover without them.

We always have a symbolic bone on our seder plate, but this year I knew for sure that it was actually a lamb /shank/ bone – because it came out of the lamb cuts I prepared for the meal.  This is my first Pesach as a Jew, my first as a cook with training, and so the richness of the symbolism combined with the seasonal freshness of all of the traditional foods have really heightened my experience of this spring harvest festival.

And I appreciate the freedom that I have to choose to be Jewish, the educational opportunity I always have at my disposal, and I will continue to work and pray for freedom for everyone who still is not free from all types of bonds.

Chag Pesach same’ach!

It means only that, good gravy, my life got busy and complicated lately.

This road trip vacation from which the Katzen not-so-recently returned (in November) was an adventure in many ways, not least of which was culinary, but it certainly didn’t find me in a kitchen cooking… at all.  (Since then I’ve started culinary school, and find myself cooking more hours a day than I typically sleep in a shot.)

So my Jew and Julia challenge to take ye olde regular recipes and turn them kosher turned to a possibly even harder challenge: how to eat in restaurants for two weeks while remaining at least kosher-style. (I had and generally have no delusions that simply because I am vegetarian in restaurants, that I am achieving perfect kashrut observance, but conditions being what they were, I did my best.)

And the conclusion at which I arrived was a disappointing one, and a challenging one.  One that I don’t typically talk about very much, if at all, because it is discouraging.

Keeping kosher is really, unbelievably hard.  Not in the rote observance of a specific list of rules, but because of the nitty in the gritty.  Because you can’t see melted animal fat, chicken/veal/beef stock, et cetera, and it may very well be in the pan where your vegetarian dish was cooked.  Because you don’t control all points of preparation when you are ordering in a restaurant (hence the “best effort” clause above.)  It’s also hard for me personally, having been raised with no dietary restrictions other than preference-driven ones, because I know what most foods taste like.  I know and vividly remember the flavor of a cheeseburger, and to this day I still like it.  Finally, it’s hard because my spouse does not keep kosher, and because he is my daughter’s parent, too, I don’t overrule his choices when what Sami eats is up to him.

These are all points I’ve addressed in some form or other before, but the hardest part of it all is that my marriage was essentially based on food love up until the day I decided to start observing kashrut.  It is hard to sit across the table from the person you love most, and refuse to try the awesome dish he just ordered because of religious observance.  I miss about our relationship the expression of love through flavor.  It was a thing we shared that we really don’t share as much any more.

While on vacation, I got into a conversation with a relative over breakfast, flowering from her query, “How kosher is your kitchen?”  Good question.  And here is where it’s time to come clean, so to speak, not that I’ve been hiding anything; I merely realize that I haven’t been very specific.  My dishes are all glass, easily kashered by washing.  My cookware is stainless (easily kashered), except the occasional enameled cast iron pot (not kasherable) and cast iron fry pans (kasherable, but I have separate pans for meat vs. dairy, just on principle and apart from kashrut.)  We have a santitzing dishwasher, and I rationalize that this lets me get away with a lot.  I do not do a great job of separating cookware, have an only loosely segregated refrigerator, and I do not put my foot down and prohibit the storage of treif in my fridge (though I don’t cook it in my house – Ben reheats in the microwave from time to time.)

In short, on a scale from 0 to glatt kosher, I might rank a 2.  A 2 which represents a tremendous quantity of compromise and struggle and some marital jigsaw-puzzling, and I believe this is not to be discounted.

I also do not address this topic in effort to assuage my guilt, since I feel negligible guilt. I’m trying in general to do “the right things,” but I cannot let my home life fall apart.  Should it require abandoning kashrut observance entirely to keep the rest of our lives in peaceful order, I would do it.

To be honest, I try and fail at a great many other mitzvot (commandments) as well.  I drive on Shabbat, to shul at the very least.  I try but often forget not to use my computer, though I do curb my impulse-texting, Tweeting and blogging.  I do pretty successfully avoid writing with pen on paper.  I turn the lights on and off with careless abandon.  Sometimes I am late with the Shabbat candles.

Yup, I’m a “bad Jew,”   Except that in this process of self examination, I’m learning that while I am failing to fulfill a great many mitzvot, I am mindful of what I should be doing and it is in my mind to always be moving in that positive direction.  I also can’t write off the mitzvot that I /do/ fulfill with minimal fanfare.  So while I am out of town and eating in a restaurant, I don’t needle myself with grief because there may be traces of meat matter in my cheese.  I have to appreciate what the obligations of kashrut make me mindful of, even if I find myself negotiating them against the balance of my life.  And I have to appreciate that there are a great many ways of building Jewish identity and expressing Judaism that don’t relate to food, and I can’t overlook them simply because, when you look at it squarely, I am in fact obsessed with food.

The blog continues because I think it’s a good challenge to see what is possible in French cuisine with the constraints of kashrut.  But the blog also continues because I see totally unforseen value in the question of how to be a Jew without relying on food to do so.

That said, there are a few premises that need to be accepted.  First, I won’t mention the process of kashering all cookware, utensils and dishes, but is a basic step toward complete observance of Kashrut.  Therefore, in the interest of verbal economy, we will assume that all tools involved are properly kashered (made appropriate for use according to Jewish law).

Second is that all ingredients are kosher.  This presumes that packages have been examined for the stamps of the various oversight organizations (Circle-K, Star-K, OU, etc.)  Generally, domestic cheeses in USA are considered kosher for all but the absolutely most stringent Jews, but even cheeses are supervised and to be safe labels on these can also be checked.  Produce also is generally considered kosher as long as you don’t find any critters freeloading when the produce is inspected and washed.  Meats from kosher animals (cows, chickens, sheep as opposed to pigs, for example) must be slaughtered according to Jewish law, so for the purposes of this project we’ll assume all meats, unless specifically discussed, are kosher.

Wikipedia has a good article that covers several viewpoints on many of the dietary laws.

Third, we’ll assume that everything is done at a time when it is allowed to be done.  For example, we’ll assume that no flames were lit nor electricity used on Shabbat or on any of the holidays that prohibit such activities.  (As a general rule, I won’t perform those functions, nor blog about them, on any day when it would be halakhically (by Jewish law) prohibited to do so.)

I think that about covers general basic assumptions upon which the project will rest.  Obviously there are topics I’ve just presented that will merit further discussion over time, but seeing as it’s been over a week since my first entry, and I’ve spent a lot of time running over guidelines in my head, I thought I’d take another step forward.

As always, to be continued.