The Oy of Cooking

Passover with the CookMobile

BKLYN CookMobile is a cooking program for teens and other beginners. We cook our way through Brooklyn’s diverse cultural heritages, with an eye to scientific inquiry and food justice. Naturally, we relish holiday ceremony and celebration! Here’s what we recommend for Passover:

Leave Me Alone with the Recipes: The Life, Art, and Cookbook of Cipe Pineles by Cipe Pineles

Peneles was the first female art director at Condé Nast. If her style looks familiar, it’s because food illustrators are influenced by her work to this day, often without knowing it. This is Peneles’ personal catalog of Jewish recipes with her gorgeous food illustrations and hand-drawn type. Brisket has never looked so good.

Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi

My family eschews gefilte fish for mackerel or herring. There’s no better accompaniment to these than Ottolenghi’s Beet, Yogurt and Preserved Lemon Relish. Use this one for bright, fresh salads to lighten up the Seder spread.

The Mile End Cookbook by Noah & Rae Bernamoff ; with Michael Stokes & Richard Maggi

Mile End is the historically Jewish neighborhood in Montreal, where, PS, I had the best pastrami sandwich of my life. While rye bread is NOT Kosher for Passover, matzoh certainly is, and you will find a brilliant recipe for baking your own here. I guarantee you’ll never go back to Streit’s.

Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook by Joan Nathan

You’re going to need matzoh balls, and you will find no less than four recipes here – from Russia to South Africa. How about haroset recipes from Persia, Egypt, Yemen, Italy, and Surinam? This book is an omnibus of Jewish holiday recipes from around the world.

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael Twitty

Among the many historical lessons in The Cooking Gene, Twitty gives close examination to how Black food and Jewish food intersect over the diaspora of both cultures, and, at Passover, over the “ancient lessons of slavery versus freedom.” No recipes here, but plenty of food for the soul.

Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes from the House That Herring Built by Mark Russ Federman ; foreword by Calvin Trillin

Know what’s totally Kosher for Passover? Latkes. The recipe in this history from the Lower East Side’s appetizing emporium is perfect: savory, crispy, puffy. Also worth reading for Federman’s hilarious customer stories.

For more cooking lessons from the Cookmobile, join us to make matzoh balls: