The Passover Table: New and Traditional Recipes for Your Seders and the Entire Passover Week (Paperback)

by Susan R. Friedland (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Susan Friedland wrote The Passover Table in 1994, and it is still one of the most outstanding books for this holiday. Before offering recipes, Friedland presents the roots of Passover in Jewish history and in the Torah. She explains the purpose of particular parts of the Seder, the ceremony that marks the observance of Passover, including the famous Four Questions.

Food has a central role during the entire seven days of Passover. Recipes in The Passover Table include dishes served by Jews with roots in northern and central Europe, and those whose culinary influences come originally from Mediterranean Europe (Ashkenazim), North Africa (Sephardim), or the Middle East. In addition to Gefilte Fish and Tzimmes (a sweet meat and vegetable stew) for Seder nights, the dishes for the rest of the week include Mina de Pesha, a layered chicken pie made with matzos; airy, puffed Potato Chremsel; and Birmuelos, Sephardic doughnuts served for dessert or breakfast. Large color photos encourage you to try unfamiliar recipes by showing the mouth-watering results.

From Publishers Weekly
The ideal audience for this generously illustrated cookbook may prove elusive. Friedland's short course on seder rituals and dietary laws, and her emphasis on traditional recipes, will bore all but the uninitiated (on the subject of matzoh balls, for example, she declares that "the best recipe is the one printed on the box of matzo meal, and every brand has the same recipe printed on its side," then she reprints it without further comment). She ventures off the beaten path with recipes for layered meat-and-matzoh pies, tasty vegetable cutlets and Turkish-style sweet-and-sour artichokes; such novelties, however, are few and far between, and the cook looking for fresh ideas will be disappointed. A basic understanding of cooking is presupposed--although the elements of the seder are lengthily defined, cooking terms are not. The color photographs, similarly, forego showing cooking techniques and stages of preparation in favor of glamour shots of completed recipes.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks (February 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060950269
• ISBN-13: 978-0060950262
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 9.6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #855,002 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great traditional recipes and terrific alternatives too!, March 13, 1998

By A Customer

I have used this cookbook for years to prepare dishes for my own Passover meals and those of friends, always producing rave reviews all around. The variations on traditional dishes make each Passover a little bit of a new adventure and prevent you and your guests from getting tired of the same old meal every year. I especially like the book for its desserts, since that is easily the most challenging part of the seder. It's hard to make anything really delicious without leavening, but try the chocolate apple nut cake and it will change your mind about that completely. I make it even when it's not Passover, as it's especially handy for bringing to friends who keep Kosher households. This might be the only Passover book you ever need! Enjoy!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious Passover favorites in a beautiful format, August 3, 1999

By A Customer

I use this book year in and year out to raves. The recipes are classics and they always work. I recommend this book to everyone who wants to know which Passover book to buy because it has never let me down.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lavish illustrations but too few recipes, March 18, 2006

By	abt1950 "abt1950" (usa) - See all my reviews

I bought this book shortly after it first came out, in hopes of improving my Passover repertoire. Passover can be a true culinary challenge for those who keep kosher. No pasta, no pizza, no sandwiches--and two major "dinner parties" (seders) to give! There's nothing like a batch of new recipes to liven up the menu.

Frankly, "The Passover Table" was a disappointment. The book only has forty-three recipes, and many of them are for old standbys like chicken soup, matzoh balls, chopped liver, roast chicken, and a very basic pot roast. For those, any Jewish cookbook will do. Friedland includes a number of interesting Sephardic recipes, but they're not enough to justify the price of the book. The illustrations are plentiful and generally very lovely, but their lavishness underlines the thinness of the content. As for the recipes themselves, I've had a 50-50 success rate for the ones I've tried, and I've had minor problems with most of them.