My semi-annual journey to West Palm Beach to visit my mother, Eleanor Rosen, in her assisted-living facility coincided with Passover this year. The facility, Morse Life, observes the holiday. As we were sitting under an umbrella in the lush garden, an aide brought my mother her lunch, matzo pizzas consisting of tomato sauce and melted kosher-for-Passover mozzarella cheese on matzo. I reminded her of all the good food she used to prepare for Passover when I was living at home.
My mother is one of the main characters in A Brooklyn Memoir, a book she hasn't been able to read due to failing eyesight. In the book, set in the 1950s and 60s, I describe her as a magician in the kitchen who often cooked gourmet meals like crêpes suzette. When I visit, she likes me to read to her from the book. In honor of her 97th Passover, I read from her favorite chapter, 15, "The Flatbush Diet":
Sometimes on weekends, she'd whip up a batch of blueberry pancakes or a cheese omelet or cinnamon toast or French toast (often made with challah), occasionally with a serving of ambrosia-like bacon on the side. Though we routinely consumed other pig meats as well—notably pork chops and ham—we also observed Passover. And to make more bearable those eight days of giving up virtually every food I liked to eat, my mother made a mouthwatering matzoh brei, latkes as light as feathers, and a sponge cake that she then transformed into a strawberry shortcake so delectable it seemed to defeat the very purpose of the holiday—to remember the suffering and deprivations of the Jews who'd wandered in the desert for 40 years.
And the only reason I can think of that she didn't add matzo pizzas—a variation on English-muffin pizzas—to her repertoire is because kosher-for-Passover mozzarella cheese hadn't been invented yet.
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