A friend used Facebook (yeah, I know) to post a picture and list of ingredients for what he calls charoses; a list of ingredients, rather than a recipe, because, as he says “I have never made charoses the same way twice. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
Fair enough, although I suspect all the learned rabbis who endlessly debated the matter are spinning quietly in their graves. What particularly struck me about the discussion it detonated was that there was almost no reference to the make-up of his haroset, which is definitely rooted in Sephardic tradition, and a whole lot of theorising about why Jews of different traditions have different ways of pronouncing different words.
I’m flattered that his decision to add wine was prompted by the podcast, even though at least one rabbi advised Jews not to do that for fear of what the gentiles would do. We live in more enlightened times, mostly.
In matters of personal taste there are no absolutes. I like this, you like that. But does that also mean that there is no good, no bad? That is a surprisingly complex question, especially when it comes to as fundamental a food as bread. William Rubel is a freelance historian of food who seems to take a delight in pricking the pretensions of people like me, who think that some kinds of bread are better than others. “Why can’t we like what we like?” he asked in a defence of supermarket packaged bread. To which I say, “Like it if you like, but don’t tell me it is good.” He also says that there is no historical tradition of using a leaven among Anglophone bakers, which somehow diminishes the efforts of English-speaking bakers to “revive” the use of sourdough leavens and long fermentation. And that revival denigrates supermarket bread.