Passover and Easter Living Happily Under One Roof in El Cerrito

The coming week will greet the arrival of Passover, which starts at sunset on April 18 and lasts through the evening of April 26, and Easter, on April 24. Since my husband, Steven, is Jewish and I’m Christian, we celebrate both—with varying degrees of religious ritual and plenty of food.

I’m somewhere between Lutheranism and spirituality, and Steven's all about connection to and kinship with Jewish culture and community, but we share our holidays—and not half-heartedly.

Passover always involves food, and in our house it’s particularly important because it’s a way I can help bridge, in some small measure, the 2,500-mile divide between my husband and his family and the culture of New York City, our home until we relocated to the Bay Area in 1995.

We don’t make a Seder, but I take the opportunity to produce several of Steve’s favorite childhood dishes, like chopped liver and smoked whitefish salad—though I needn’t worry about foods being Kosher for Passover, or even Kosher.

I always lug home a #10 can of gefilte fish and doctor it up by simmering the contents for a good hour with roasted carrot, onion (with the skin), celery and a few bay leaves—which improves the flavor immensely. I don’t feel guilty about not cooking these fish and matzo dumplings from scratch, because my mother-in-law served them right out of the jar, making it an easy act to follow.

Passover would not be the same without smoked whitefish, and I’m always happy beyond measure when Costco carries Acme Fish Corporation’s Blue Hill Bay smoked whitefish salad and whole smoked whitefish for the occasion—at a fraction of the cost I’d pay elsewhere. These Brooklyn-made products are excellent.

Smoked whitefish salad is great on real boiled bagels, which you’ll find at Berkeley Bagels (1281 Gilman St.). Whole smoked whitefish can be used to make chunky salad, or served in sections with good rye bread.

I’m always living in hope that smoked fish and other appetizing goodies catch on in these parts, because smoked salmon and pickled herring represent only a small portion of that universe. You haven’t lived until you’ve had smoked sable or sturgeon. Even pickled salmon is a treat.

Smoked sable may set you back upwards of $30 a pound, but chopped liver is a frugal thing—and best made at home. It absolutely requires rendered chicken fat to be authentic. I collect and freeze bits of chicken fat and skin well in advance of Passover, or buy some chicken thighs, which render enough fat to serve chopped chicken liver to all of El Cerrito.

Rich and comforting, this is Steve’s all-time favorite, and I make it more or less by feel. If you want to give it a try, I’ve provided a pdf document with a short recipe that includes instructions for rendering chicken fat. Serve your chopped liver with rye bread or matzo.

Easter activity will phase in toward the end of Passover, and involves the usual suspects: colored eggs, chocolate rabbits and a big dinner.

My mother has, little by little, taken over this holiday, so all I do now is make dessert for the dinner—which sounds more fun than it is because all holiday events and meals on the Christian side of the house are highly-ritualized, meaning the dessert has to fall in line. I’m limited to something in the pound cake line, and there’s only so much a person can do there. I often choose to make 7-Up cake with lemon glaze, so there’s at least some zing.

We’ll have roast duck. We’ve always had roast duck, and we always will. The world and everything in it may be going to pot, but if you come to my house for Easter dinner you can depend on roast duck stuffed with apples, sweet and sour red cabbage, whipped potatoes and smooth cranberry dressing. One year the person responsible for the cranberries produced a chunky, whole-berry dressing and all hell broke loose.

After dinner we’ll linger over coffee and talk about loved ones no longer with us, and laugh about some of the outrageous behavior that accompanied our Easter dinners over the years. But that’s what holidays do—they mark the passage of time and loss well, and make us hold tight to these precious hours together.

I wish you a joyous week, whatever your tradition.