Want to win my heart? Invite me to your Seder.

When I tell people this, I’m usually greeted with a half-beat of silence, followed by a Henny Youngman-esque “Take my Seder-please!” One friend, who boycotted his in-laws’ Passover dinners for 20 years before his children finally convinced him to rejoin the fray, is particularly unprintable on the subject. “The only decent-tasting thing the whole night long is the charoseth,” he grumbles.

Clearly, not everyone’s a fan. But what’s not to love? Like Thanksgiving, Passover consists of ritualistic elements-people, food, wine, conversation-that rearrange themselves kaleidoscopically each year into something equal parts familiar and new. But whereas the beauty of Thanksgiving lies in its democratic mutability-it can be expanded in any direction to accommodate any immigrant group, any culinary tradition-the allure of the Seder does not. Its themes may be universal-renewal, liberation, justice-but by definition, it’s a holiday that belongs to one group of people, and I am not among their number. In other words, to paraphrase Woody Allen, the celebration I love most is the one I’m eternally in danger of not being able to attend.

Of course, plenty of Seders are open to the public: the Women’s Seder in San Rafael, California; Milwaukee’s African American-Jewish Seder; and the unleavened bread bar at Tabla, Manhattan’s temple of New Indian cuisine, to name a few. But quite frankly, the whole point of the Seder is to be invited by people who like you enough to want to enfold you in the fabric of their family-to embed you culturally, so to speak. Just ask my friend Jen, whose parents have historically gone the community Seder route: “Call me crazy, but it just doesn’t feel like Passover when it takes place at the Harvard Club,” she says.

So I crave a homespun Seder, a place where I’m part of the dialectic. And I’m not alone. My Korean-American friend Grace, whose feather-light macaroons have provided the crowning touch at many a Seder, feels just the same. She’s even developed a Passover rite leading up to the main event. “Every spring, I buy a box of matzoh the moment it appears at the grocery store,” she says. “One year I made it into chocolate-caramel brittle and took it to the office. My co-worker stared at me and said, ‘You only like it because you don’t have to eat it.’ I offered him some, but not before I stuck my tongue out at him.”

Perhaps geography is to blame. After all, Grace and I both live in New York City, home to the second largest Jewish population in the world after Tel Aviv and the birthplace of the George Constanza Syndrome, that mysterious phenomenon whereby every New Yorker, regardless of ethnicity, comes to identify as an honorary member of the tribe. No one embodies this quality better than my friend Kristin, the ultimate Upper West Sider (she was mugged on 73rd and Columbus while still in utero), who also happens to be a blonde shiksa. Normally the soul of diplomacy, during her years of exile (college) in California, Kristin once found herself having the following conversation:

Classmate: “Hey, I just realized that it’s Passover today.”

Kristin: “Mmhmm.”

Classmate (backtracking conscientiously): “Oh, right. So, Passover is this Jewish holiday…”

Kristin (snapping): “I KNOW what Passover is!”

When you live in New York and you know exactly what Passover is, there’s nothing lonelier than finding yourself in a half-empty subway car as the sun goes down on the First Night. There you are, you and all the other Sederless children, making your way homeward to dine on… what? Pastrami on white with mayonnaise? How could you have ended up so… unchosen?

The more you think about it, the worse it gets. As night falls on Buenos Aires, you just know that there’s a side of chimichurri awaiting the matzoh (sorry, matzá). In Melbourne, forget the Manischewitz-you’d be sipping a heavily chilled Kosher-for-Passover rosé from a nearby winery. And the Persian Jewish diaspora everywhere is breaking out delicacies like chicken-and-chickpea dumplings and grape leaves stuffed with rice and barberries.

Never knowing exactly what you’ll get is another reason to love a Seder. After all, if three Jews have at least four opinions, your average Seder (not that there’s any such thing) boasts at least seventeen possible permutations. How much of the Haggadah will be read? Which Haggadah will be read? Who will fall asleep in the matzoh-ball soup? Seder may mean order in Hebrew, but if a universal concept of Sederkeit exists, surely it must encompass not only a state of order but also its opposite: the delightful sense of disorder that can only come when dozens of people-quite conceivably from all over the world-join together to prepare a banquet and then spend hours dissecting the ritual itself between courses.

Still think I’m crazy for pining after the Seder? Imagine the following scenario: It’s three days to Thanksgiving, and no one has invited you to dinner. You’d just buy a turkey and have a few people over, wouldn’t you? But you can’t apply the same logic to a Seder. You can beg, you can plead, you can volunteer to make the gefilte fish-but you can’t host a Seder just because your goyishe little self is in the mood.

Or… can you? After all, last year none other than our own Commander in Chief refused to be a Sederless child, choosing instead to host one all of his own at the White House. If Barack and Michelle have taken matters into their own hands, who am I not to follow suit?

Dayenu!

Photo by PinkMoose

The post Sometimes I Feel Like a Sederless Child appeared first on The Faster Times.

It all started back in medieval Sicily, when islanders prayed to their patron saint San Giuseppe for rain to deliver them from drought and famine. The rains came, and wealthy families expressed their gratitude by offering altars of food to the saint, then opening up their homes to their needier neighbors, who feasted on the remains. The holiday made the transition to the New World along with the thousands of Sicilians who settled in New Orleans in the late 19th century (giving birth to such local culinary touchstones as Central Grocery‘s muffuletta and Brocato’s ice cream), and the Crescent City remains its spiritual home.

Like so much of New Orleans life, a true St. Joseph’s Day altar belongs to the “more is more” school of aesthetics: its three tiers are covered with a white sheet, adorned with a crucifix, and then piled to the ceiling with cakes, cookies, candies, flowers, candles, silver-framed photographs of loved ones, tricolore streamers, braided loaves, and fishes (because it’s a Lenten feast, meat is never served). Scratch the surface, and you’ll find that the altars aren’t dissimilar in philosophy to an all-dressed, overstuffed po’boy or even the brilliantly colored beaded and be-feathered costumes of the Mardi Gras Indians, who hold an impromptu march each St. Joseph’s Day night. In all cases, there’s a peculiarly New Orleanian sense of bounty, a “holy trinity” of hospitality, good food, and joie de vivre. After all, where else would altar-makers actually go to the trouble of advertising in the local classifieds that they’re expecting you?

Fittingly in a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, St. Joseph is also the patron saint of the ill and needy, and the holiday incorporates elements of petition as well as thanksgiving. Unlike Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest, it hovers just slightly under the city’s cultural radar (plenty of New Orleanians have never visited an altar, although they’ve all heard of them), but it’s not simply a community celebration. Sure, a good number of the people milling about any given altar probably grew up in the neighborhood, but just as Americans everywhere are a little bit Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, anyone viewing an altar the next day (and dining from it the following) winds up feeling like an honorary Sicilian, whether you can compare notes on provenance (“You’re a Schiro? My grandmother was a Schiro!”) or not.

A weary traveler can count on being greeted with open arms, often by a host whose fingers are still floury from kneading bread. After arriving at Louis Armstrong International airport on the afternoon of St. Joseph’s Eve, just in time for the afternoon altar viewings, I headed straight for my first destination: the Dauser home in the nearby middle-class suburb of Kenner, where several dozen cars were pulled up at all angles to the open garage like iron filings to a horseshoe. About forty people were milling about the back yard waiting for the blessing of the 21st annual altar to begin. As the priest dipped a celery stalk in salt water and sprinkled the drops over the assembled crowd, several members of the crowd surreptitiously wiped tears from their eyes.

Sensing a stranger in their midst, two charming elderly ladies immediately offered me a seat at one of the folding chairs arranged in a semi-circle around the altar. “Where are you from?” asked one, just as the other broke in with a more pressing question, “Are you married?” “Brooklyn,” I said. “And no.” They glanced at each other delightedly and leaned closer. “Take a lemon off the altar,” one of them whispered. “Just make sure no one sees you.” “A lemon?” I asked. “That’s right. When an unmarried woman takes a lemon from the altar, she’ll be married by the next St. Joseph’s Day.” “What happens if a married woman takes a lemon?” I wondered a little too loudly. The ladies looked at each other sadly. “It rots,” they said in unison, and sighed.

For someone who gets exhausted when she throws a dinner party for ten, just imagining the labor that goes into preparing even the smallest St. Joseph’s Day altar is overwhelming. At the Greater New Orleans Italian Cultural Society along Bayou St. John, it takes 60 volunteers several weekends of baking to produce all the cucidati (pastel-colored glazed fig cookies) and other desserts scattered like jewels across the altar. As a general rule, the larger the cultural institution, the more elaborate its altar – and the more likely that the dishes enshrined on it will go directly to feed the homeless. All the more reason why the real joy of the holiday comes in a smaller, more intimate settings: walking into a strange home, like the Talamo-Metzgers’ (the host was quick to confess that a German butcher had crept into the bloodline somewhere along the way), and being greeted with a smile and a plate of maple-braised carrots, stuffed artichokes, and pasta.

About that pasta: It’s just not St. Joseph’s Day without a serving of pasta Milanese topped with mudrica, a “sawdust” of toasted breadcrumbs in honor of Joseph’s trade of carpenter. Those who don’t want to wait until next year should consider grabbing a copy of chef John Besh’s most recent cookbook, My New Orleans, which features his interpretation of the dish (Besh uses a good dose of red-pepper flake in his breadcrumbs, but old-timers will tell you sternly that a good sprinkling of brown sugar is the only flourish needed).

Before you say goodbye to the altar, be sure to leave a small donation and take a fava, or “lucky”, bean (which, or so the legend goes, was crucial to Sicilians’ survival of that famine centuries ago) as well as a few St. Lucy’s Eyes, in honor of the blinded martyr Santa Lucia, patron saint of vision. (Rest assured, the “eyes” are just uncooked garbanzo beans.)

Me? CalI it the magic of St. Joseph’s Day, or of New Orleans itself, but I couldn’t resist. I snuck a lemon too.

The post In New Orleans, We’re All Sicilians appeared first on The Faster Times.

Don’t get me wrong: I adore a Hanukkah brunch as much as ever (particularly when it features my friend Helena’s great-aunt Libby’s kugel), and I have yet to tear up an invitation to a Christmas cocktail party. But the Christmukkah hybrid elicits something in host and guest alike—a playfulness, a heightened sense of adventure—that nothing else can. Or so I thought until this past weekend, when I attended the world’s one and only Swedifilipino Christmas Party.

Frans Johansson grew up outside Göteborg, Sweden, son of a Swedish father and an African American–Cherokee mother from North Carolina; Sweet Joy Hachuela hails from Cebu, Philippines by way of San Jose, California. Not surprisingly, the couple have built their careers around the intersection of different fields, cultures, and industries (Frans is the best-selling author of The Medici Effect, a book on the nature of innovation). So when these two experts in cross-cultural creativity decide to throw a Christmas party at their home in Brooklyn, it’s the bacchanal to end all bacchanals—without a glazed ham or gingerbread cookie in sight.

Guests were greeted with glögg, the traditional Swedish Christmas drink of mulled, vodka-spiked red wine served with raisins and slivered almonds. Next, they were encouraged to lay waste to a modified version of the classic Swedish julbord, or Christmas buffet, piled high with herring and gravlax. Next to the knäckebröd lay heaping platters of lumpia, Filipino deep-fried egg rolls, which Sweet Joy served with tart-sweet lingonberry preserves. “One year I ran out of sweet-and-sour sauce, which is the usual dipping sauce for lumpia, so I just set out the lingonberry preserves and hoped for the best,” she recalls. “The pairing worked so well that there was no turning back.”

The fusion continued with Sweet Joy’s friend Dionne’s macaroni pie, a classic of the Trinidadian home kitchen. Instead of the usual cheddar, Dionne decided to make the dish with Västerbotten, the mild Northern Swedish cheese that’s a household staple throughout that country (and now, thanks to IKEA, widely available in the US as well). Dionne was also the power behind the Trinidadian eggnog (“The secret ingredient is a dash of Angostura bitters at the very end,” she confided shyly), which, together with the sour-cherry and cassis liqueurs Sweet Joy put up last summer from berries foraged from her in-laws’ garden, made for a delicious—not to say dangerous—cocktail bar.

There were honey-tinged Swedish meatballs, of course; creamed spinach in coconut milk; spicy, slow-cooked, falling-off-the-bone chicken adobo; potato salad with lashings of dill; pancit (rice noodles with carrots, cabbage, and shrimp); crisp-skinned lechon, or roasted suckling pig, the pièce de résistance of any Filipino fiesta; and, for dessert, leche flan. Looking at my plate, I saw that the lingonberry preserves had pooled against the adobo, which in turn had nestled up to the coconut spinach and potato salad like a particularly ardent lover. It was the Swedifilipino Christmas Miracle.

But don’t just take my word for it: superstar chef Marcus Samuelsson, himself no slouch in the intercultural department, is so smitten with Frans and Sweet Joy’s culinary partnership that he features them in his most recent cookbook, New American Table, an homage to the melting pot that is contemporary American cuisine.

Christmukkah, the gauntlet has been thrown down!

The post It’s a (Culinary) Miracle: The Holiday-Party Hybrid appeared first on The Faster Times.