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At Kim Kushner’s home in New York City, the Passover dishes are a reflection of the cookbook author’s year-round cooking style: Simple, delicious food made with fresh, seasonal ingredients, whether it’s golden, butterflied chickens bathed in sumac and honey, or paprika-roasted salmon topped with crunchy squash and zucchini spirals.
Kushner learned to cook from her Moroccan-born mother, and fondly recalls summer visits to Israel and eating her grandmother’s shakshuka. Her cookbooks, including the recent “I Heart Kosher: Beautiful Recipes from My Kitchen” (Weldon Owen, $35), and wildly popular cooking classes have helped redefine kosher cuisine with a modern, farm-to-table approach.
That’s especially refreshing at Passover, when most of us Jewish home cooks make mad dashes to the grocery store kosher aisle, loading up on packaged goods for the week. This Passover, which begins on April 19, “I Heart Kosher” will inspire you to ditch the matzoh meal and cook simpler and better using Kushner’s make-ahead tips and ready-to-go marinades.
We caught up with Kushner earlier this month to find out about her Passover meal plans and the latest trends in kosher cuisine.
Q: How is “I Heart Kosher” different than your previous cookbooks?
A: For this book, I really took my tried-and-true recipes that I cook everyday. So it’s a little bit like being invited into my home. I’ve also included my tricks, rules, my tips. This is what you’ll find in my refrigerator if you open it up. And it was shot in my home and includes my family, so it’s overall a more personal book.
Q: Which dishes are making an appearance on your Passover table this year?
A: I really stick with my regular dishes that happen to work on Passover. Because in general, my cooking style is really simple. I find that people get overworked with Passover and thinking they need to buy all these special products, like matzoh meal. If you don’t use breadcrumbs in your cooking, then you won’t need to find a replacement.
I love the Halibut with Blitzed Chickpeas & Carrots because it’s a one-pan meal. It’s your protein, side and veggie. And it just tastes like home to me, with the cilantro and paprika. Ashkenazi Jews don’t eat chickpeas on Passover so they can eliminate that part. I also love making the Simple Roasted Chickens with Hasselback Potatoes. You have the beautiful, golden chickens with the thin, fanned potatoes. It’s a crowd pleaser, and it can be doubled if you’re having more people over.
Q: How do you handle dessert at Passover?
A: Dessert definitely gets tricky. But I still believe less is more. I keep it very simple, like chocolate-dipped figs with pistachios or honey-drizzled watermelon sprinkled with mint. If I have time I might make a flourless chocolate torte.
Q: You created a new category of recipe called sips. What are they?
A: They’re recipes that double as sauces and dips, like my Spicy Peanut Sip or Dill & Lemon Sip, made with Dijon mustard and Greek yogurt. I use them as sauces to marinate fish or chicken but I can also put them out as dips with a crudite platter. So I just came up with the name sip. I’ve got a dozen and about seven made it into the book.
Q: Favorite way to make matzoh palatable?
A: (Laughs) I actually eat matzoh year-round. You’ll always find a box in my pantry. I like it with butter and jam. I serve my spicy Marinated Feta with baguette slices but it would work well with matzoh. I actually think Passover is a great time for shakshuka. I have two in my book, a traditional red shakshuka and a green one with kale and spinach. Just dip the matzoh right in there.
Q: What do you think is the next big trend in kosher cuisine?
A: This genre has evolved and I think it’s following what’s happening in Israel right now. Going out to eat there is almost a show. And a return to rustic roots. There’s this movement started by (celebrity chef) Eyal Shani, who recently opened his first restaurants in New York, where he cooks in front of the guests and it’s all sort of wild. For instance, I’m planning a bar mitzvah for my son this summer in Israel. I was talking to the caterers and they’re going to have raw fish out for guests to select and have cooked right in from of them.
Overall, I think it’s a very exciting time because for so long, kosher food was not thought of in the best light. Now, there’s so much more available in the kosher world, so we’re showing people that you can work with fresh, seasonal and organic ingredients.
