We eat a sort of jam called charoset . … There are a lot of different recipes. … It’s made with dates, figs, walnuts, olives, and bitter herbs. Anyway, the last dish is charoset, boiled egg, bitter greens, lettuce, a piece of celery and a prayer is said for everyone.
That’s from Karima Moyer-Nocchi’s book The Eternal Table: a cultural history of food in Rome, in her treatment of Roman-Jewish cuisine.[1] Of course I’m seeing haroset everywhere I look these days, not just because of the time of the year; it is a traditional – although not required – dish on the Passover table. The recipe is clearly Sephardic in origin, although I have not heard olives mentioned in this context before. And no mention of ground terracotta or bits of brick, which at one time Italian Jews did include.
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.
Whether the last supper was a Passover Seder I do not know. I do know that the rituals of the Passover dinner have been in place for thousands of years, although always open to evolution. And yet, there don’t seem to be any universal elements about Easter celebratory foods. The episode looks at these two contrasting aspects of ritual food.
First, Susan Weingarten talks about an essential item on the Passover table that is not mentioned in God’s original instructions for the last supper of the Israelites in Egypt.
Then, I talk to Lois Long about a recipe made famous by her mother, Edna M. Holmgren. Magic Marshmallow Crescent Puffs won the Pillbury Bake-Off in 1969 and were subsequently expropriated by some Christians to retell the story of the resurrection.
The recipe
This copy of Edna Holmgren’s recipe is not quite the original. Lois Long told me that “the flour in the cinnamon sugar mixture was Pillsbury’s idea. I cut it down to 1 tbsp but I don’t like it. The original recipe has no flour.” I do wonder what it is there for. Possibly to soak up melting gooeyness, because many of the comments on the Hall of Fame website are complaints about the mess if the pastry isn’t very carefully sealed.
Edna Holmgren and her daughter Lois Long at Pillsbury’s Hall of Fame celebration in 1988
The banner image of The Last Supper is by the workshop of Pedro Berruguete, circa 1495–1500, a gift of the Ahmanson Foundation to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Oooops. Oh dear. I thought I had double checked the date of Pesach, but I apparently got it wrong. I said Thursday. It is Friday. Sincere apologies.
Maybe you’ve seen the news that a Kernza crop failure has prompted General Mills to modify plans for a Kernza-based breakfast cereal. Instead of rolling out the product this year, the company is instead offering a box only to people who donate at least $25 to The Land Institute, the perennial crops organisation that has spent years developing Kernza.
Still from a video by The Land Institute showing the difference between Kernza and wheat root systems
There are a couple of things about the story that intrigue me. First, for anyone who doesn’t know, Kernza is a perennial cousin of wheat, which offers several potential advantages over its annual cousin. Mostly, these are the result of being a perennial that develops a root system much more extensive than wheat’s. Not having to preopare the soil each year, along with that root system, means that Kernza can reduce soil erosion considerably. It also reduces the leaching of nitrogen from the soil. All that currently comes at a cost, though, because Kernza also yields less grain than wheat.
The 2018 harvest was even lower than expected, however, because of “weather and mistimed planting and harvesting decisions”. That’s unfortunate, but these are early days and further research will surely help farmers to make better decisions about when to sow and when to reap. What I don’t understand, and the article barely makes mention of it, is whether the crop, being perennial, will simply regenerate itself this year. If so, and I hope it will, that would be yet another advantage over annual wheat.
Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute, always talks of harvesting ready-mixed granola from a mixed stand of various perennial crops. [1] Honey toasted Kernza cereal isn’t quite that, but there are apparently 6000 boxes available. At $25 a pop, that should be $150,000 for more research. And eventually, Kernza cereal everywhere, and maybe even perennial granola.
He was already doing so when I visited, back in the 1980s. ↩
“For an administration that rails against socialism, it’s bizarre that it would place more faith in big government to price vessel loans than in the private banking industry.”
