Closed Loop Cooking Weekly Newsletter 3.31.23

March 31st, 2023

Hi friends,

Passover begins next week and we’re digging into rituals from a few favorite creatives. Regardless your affiliations, it’s a good reminder of our cyclical traditions and how we might take part in mindful practice. Shaking things up this week and sharing an excerpt from a personal essay and my own practice of making matzo.

Matzo Me

Once a year, come Passover, to keep with kosher law, bread was illegal in the Cook family kitchen. 

Any trace of leavened carb was either frozen for post holiday consumption or dumped in the backyard on a small hill of dirt and food scraps, generously referred to as “the compost.”

Matzo was a staple for those long, seven days. Packaged and crushed up into a fine meal for rock hard mini bagels in the morning, or lathered with butter for a roughly palatable afternoon snack. By the end of the week I was almost used to it, running my fingernail along the smooth, papered edge of a new box to pop it open.

We made every variation of sandwich between two, flaking pieces of matzo. Taking care to bite on either side so the flatbread wouldn’t crack down the middle.

Cheese, butter, and pickles.

Nut butter and marmalade.

Smashed avocado and a runny egg.

I’d always bring an extra piece or two to school, handing it out to curious friends who were surprised by how tasty this nondescript, religious cracker was. I wasn’t impressed.

Up until my 20’s, it hadn’t even occurred to me that other Jewish folks made their own matzo. I’d thought it tradition to buy the light pink Parev boxes, each sheet stamped with a perfect raised pattern of familiar matzo bumps.

Putting on my first pop-up dinners, I realized we could have been making our own all along. Package-free, imperfect and irregular, my matzo at Passover now is infinitely better than the boxed variety we’d eat year after year.

I’d accepted that stale flavor as tradition, important to uphold and make do with. Tasteless, ancient peer pressure that would inform my palette for years to come. I make my own matzo now, but hey, it’s kosher in my kitchen.

–

Stay hungry,Hawnuh Lee | Founder, Closed Loop Cooking

A Haggadah of Our Own // Thursday Bram

The dish >>

• If you’re taking part in Passover this year or even just curious, Thursday Bram’s radically inclusive A Haggadah of Our Own is a must have at the table. All other haggadot do not compare. (^^ digital download + pay what you can.)

• Continuing Pesach prep with my favorite package-free matzo (aka crispy sea salt flatbread.) Observing or otherwise, highly recommend homemade hummus to pair.

• Spring clean-as-you-go and existential crisis.

• Thinking about summer sun–living for fruit stand appreciation.

• Has anyone tried this SodaStream CO2 hack?

• Ink dreaming. I need gorgeous vintage cookbook illustration tattoos. (Thanks Skye!)

• Feeling eco-anxiety? This climate action workshop may help.

On ritual

We're honored to share a moment of insight this week from a few of our favorite Jewish creators. Looking at how this annual tradition is marked through making, whether a familiar recipe or a snapshot to capture the spirit of observance. These rituals are a reminder of the coming season and the importance of occasion, however you're ushering in Spring.

Maya Oren // creative directorThis time of year always sparks a feeling of renewal in me. I tend to do a bit of internal mapping this time of year—sort of like a spring cleaning but on an internal level to recalibrate what I'm focusing on and what I want to spend my energy on in the summer months. I also spend time soaking up the sunlight and taking more meditative walks to express gratitude for the new flower buds and unfurling leaves.

These photos represent so much to me. I took these on film in Israel in September and was so jazzed when I got them developed. They feel calming and represent the pace of life I like to embody.more about Maya

Randi Brookman Harris // prop stylistSharing from an important interview with Domino: I grew up in a mostly observant house. My parents kept kosher and we went to synagogue — all of that. When I got married, my husband and I didn’t really have our own rituals and were slow at making them together, but I eventually realized that I missed it. I love Passover. It’s one of my favorite holidays. When I was little, we always had big, big Seders with all the cousins. You’d get to stay up late and sneak wine, and it was just so much fun.

After my son was born, I felt like I wanted to make this a more special thing for him as it had been for me. As a prop stylist I wanted to make the Seder plate really beautiful, because it’s the center of the table. But I wanted to make it our own, and I wanted to do it in a modern way.more about Randi

Maia Welbel // writer(+ of CLC acclaim of course)

They say innovation thrives on constraints, and the laws of Kashrut during Pesach offer just the circumstances to flex my creative muscles in the kitchen. I look forward to baking in particular during the holiday, because it honors the mitzvah of differentiating Pesach from the rest of the year in a really tangible way.

I love the ritual of making matzo in under 18 minutes. You need to have all your ingredients ready to go and you can’t get too precious trying to shape your pieces lest any flour dare try to ferment. I typically use a nutty spelt for extra flavor and go generous with the salt. My slightly blob shaped matzo is invariably tastier than the boxed stuff, but I’m also not above a good slice of the supermarket variety slathered with vegan cream cheese and strawberry jam for breakfast. The pure nostalgia wafting off those sharp edged squares makes up for their blandness.

I always experiment with a Kosher for Pesach dessert or two. My go-to for the conclusion of the Seder meals is a mixed berry crumble using quinoa and buckwheat flour for the topping (pseudocereals famously passing rabbinic approval!) I’ve also attempted vegan flourless chocolate cake the last few years, but so far they’ve all been too goopy or too dense. I’m hoping 2023 is the year of the perfect velvety, hametz-free slice.more about Maia

Dana Hollar Schwartz // founder of Via Maris

I love creating imaginative, meaningful, and beautiful Seder plates. The Seder plate allows us to not only retell the story of Passover, but to smell, taste, see, and feel it. Passover is my favorite holiday because it's a sensory event. While there are traditional foods, what goes on a Seder plate is much more open-ended than many people realize and that allows for an expansive, individual, ever-evolving reflection of the changing nature of Jewish thought.

The Via Maris Seder plate is rooted in the concept of "order" which is the English translation of the Hebrew word Seder. The upper ring on the plate facilitates the precise order of the Seder in a precise material and fashion. This is intentional so that what goes on the Seder plate can be fluid.

Each year, I create a Seder plate that honors tradition but in a contemporary way. This year, my salt dish will be mixed with edible glitter to represent trans youth. My charoset is always deconstructed because it's prettier (I always have a bowl of the classic variety on the table + enough for leftovers), and this year I'm using pink chicory for the bitter herbs and to represent women. I always replace the shank bone as a personal preference and this year will be replacing it with a golden orange beet which also represents LGBT (an orange is classic). My egg this year is a blue egg (I always have to order in advance as they are hard to find but worth it) and abundant Italian parsley because it's delicious. Somewhere in here I will also incorporate a flower as it symbolizes renewal but I haven't figured out where yet! And lastly, a friend brought back a beautiful tin of olives from Israel recently and I will put out on the table somewhere to represent peace. more about Via Maris

Portland folks - you can sign up for a Shifting Tides regenerative seaweed tour out on the Oregon coast.

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