Passover meal - help!

[Underconstruction]

My SIL is visiting with her not-particularly-observant Jewish husband. He's said nothing about wanting to celebrate Passover but I remember her saying he gets very low if the Jewish holidays are not observed in any way. I've looked up a lot about Jewish observances around Passover and they seem a bit out of our league but it would be nice to make something in acknowledgement of his faith. Any ideas or suggestions... or just general advice about what a normal Jewish family would be eating this Saturday or Sunday???

Hi, I'm really interested in this myself and I've never done a passover meal but found a good website - have a look at homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/passoverfoods.htm

• they show a list of foods served at a passover meal such as roast lamb, bitter herbs (they suggest horseradish) 4 glasses of wine and unleavened bread, there even appear to be video clips you can watch on how to do everything right. Well done for trying it, I hope it goes really well

you sound very thoughtful . you could get hold of some unleavened bread, (matzah), big supermarkets sell it, and maybe hard boiled egg and chopped herring (M & S sell it, not sure about other supermarkets)

Thank you both of you! I will see what I can do. The website looks good. Planned meal was a curry fest till I remembered about Passover...

I think they'd normally do a Seder plate. It's a plate of symbolic food items (charoset, an egg, lamb bone and parsley) followed by more ordinary, everyday foods. In university I worked for a catering company that was very popular among the Jewish community in that city and this was something that was requested often.

Mmm I could manage that... I think!

Some nice recipes in Nigella's "feast", poss also online?

Matzah - no flour or anything that rises

Also no pasta or rice etc

So a good fall back would be a roast dinner for example

You can get kosher for Passover jam, butter etc

Right, you can totally do this. You can even run the whole Seder if you want, there's lots of instructions online. As long as you cover the basic stuff (telling the story of why Passover is celebrated) you can be pretty creative with it.

Yes yes to lots of wine. Traditional foods vary by culture, depends on if he is Sephardi or Ashkenazi background -the former eat rice during Passover, the latter do not. The traditional herbs and charoset recipes vary by culture too.

I am torn between thinking it looks like a doddle and being alarmed. I have no idea about his background. I've been reading Nigella's Feast and thinking it looks quite do-able, but if only I had a friendly Jewish neighbour guiding me through it all... I will try. Thank you all so much for you advice.

Well, Passover was tonight so he might think you a bit odd for doing a full Seder just for him on the wrong day. I'd ask him before going too over-the-top. Though some sects of Judaism do a Seder on the second night too, so you might get away with doing one tomorrow night.

Passover is as much about a meal with close family, so even if you just do a nice roast with nothing containing flour and pop some matzot on the table, (and lots of wine he'd probably be quite pleased). Then you could ask him to talk about Passover and its traditions.

We're not observant and don't avoid flour etc for the whole Passover week but did at least try to mostly avoid it for Seder dinner this evening at B&SIL's. So if you deck the house out with kosher for Passover food that he hasn't asked for and may not particularly want, it might make him uncomfortable.

Bottom line - speak to SIL and him and ask before you do too much! It's a lovely idea, so please don't think I'm trying to shoot you down, but I'd hate you to go to lots of trouble unnecessarily when a small effort would mean just as much to him.

Thanks Annie. I didn't do it in the end. I had to do all the checking via DH but he eventually spoke to them and they decided against, which makes my life oh so much easier. (The plan to do the wrong night was that they were getting home so late tonight that the kids had to go straight to bed and half of it would have been for them.) Another year....!!