A Regular Ol' Chabad Pesach in Rome - Part I
Pesach was the one time a year when all of us were home together, at least until my brother was old enough to travel to some exotic locale on merkos shlichus with his friends (Rome is not exotic when it’s your hometown).
We trickled in slowly from the airport or train station, seasoned travelers lugging our duffel bags and suitcases into the narrow elevator with the old-fashioned wooden door. We came from Milan or Brunoy, Chicago or Israel, New York or Pittsburgh.
In non-Pesach times, when I would come home on a school break, I always took some time to reacquaint myself with the apartment, checking out the newly printed photos, making sure my junk drawer still held all its treasures, letting the baby eye me suspiciously until he or she got used to my presence once again.
I would enjoy being personally served some food by my mom as if she had all the time in the world, and I would sit around reading the latest magazines and newspapers. Catching up on all the new reading material was of utmost importance.
Not so before Pesach, when controlled chaos reigned and there was much to be done. The honeymoon only lasted a few minutes - we were to unpack and roll up our sleeves unless one was the type to fall into a deep jetlagged slumber until noon of the following day, a feat I was never able to achieve.
Much of the work had already been completed in the preceding weeks, but there was a kitchen to finish, folding chairs to scrub, seforim to air.
All children who were reasonably above toddlerhood were expected to scrub a sgabello in the bathtub. Sgabelli are stools and in our home, they were the custom-made tall white kitchen stools that were used as chairs in the kitchen, or as step ladders when we were too lazy to drag out the big ladder.
Our closets and drawers had already been cleaned, although half of us were away most of the year and were not in the habit of teleporting chometzdik crumbs into our old sweater hanging in a closet back home. Still, one does not question the drill sergeant when Pesach is looming. We were expected to clean our junk drawers and thus declare the bedrooms 100% chometz free.
We all have our own Pesach idiosyncrasies and my parents excelled at these. Take tomatoes: they are peelable and completely kosher for Pesach, but despite having had completely different upbringings, both my parents’ families did not eat tomatoes on Pesach. Nobody knows why. Maybe my father’s family didn’t use them because they barely had fresh vegetables before the summer season in Moscow. Who knows? We speculated that my mother’s family didn’t use them because they are difficult to peel. However, my mom insisted that her father’s family did not eat them for generations. We’ll never know.
The tomato debacle was quite irritating for us first-generation Italians and you bet we all eat tomatoes on Pesach in our own adult homes—plenty of them.
Then there were the recipes - my mom relied on my older sister to remember the exact ingredients for charoses. Even once she had flown the nest, the recipe mysteriously stayed with her and only her.
Nobody else ever seemed to know how many apples and pears, was it one pear and three apples or one apple and two pears, did we buy red apples? Bring the red apples from the porch. Tell so and so to crack the walnuts, somebody call C. and ask her how many apples and how many pears. I think it’s three apples and one pear but go ask C.
My designated job, in addition to all the other side jobs, was making the cucumber salad. This is NOT as simple as it sounds, people!
I inherited the job at some point, probably when I was deemed worthy of the sharp knife. It was a small and unassuming knife but it was perfect for slicing the cucumbers to the correct thickness, which was very thin but not too thin, and definitely not too thick if you knew what was good for you. There was an art to it and you were welcome to sit on a just-cleaned-and-dried tall stool and watch but the job was all mine.
I started by peeling mountains of cucumbers, which were nothing like the cucumbers they sell in the US. Some come close in appearance but not in taste or texture. Anyway, moving on.
The cucumber salad was the main attraction for the first course, it took pride of place next to the slice of homemade gefilte fish, BECAUSE WE DID NOT EAT TOMATOES.
So we needed a lot of cucumber salad and it had to be enough for both seder nights and maybe even a day. Enough to feed our large family and all the guests.
So - peel and get to slicing, very thin but not too thin. Fill the large bowl. One year my mom bought a new food processor with a slicing blade. She told me it would make my job easier. I was skeptical - I had a love-hate relationship with all that slicing and did not want to give it up. As it turned out, the machine slices were way too thin, nobody approved of them, and so my job was saved. Yes!
Next - the onions. How many onions? After I’d left home, the refrain began: call and ask Etti how many onions in the cucumber salad. I never knew how many onions, I eyeballed it. (Ask Etti how many cucumbers - I don’t know, the whole case?).
The onions were sliced thin but there was room for error, nobody cared about the onions. They were free to go in the processor.
Once that was done, it was time to squeeze lemons. Lots of lemons. Because we like our lemons, okay?
Out came the juicer, and we set to juicing. One of my brothers was the juicer-in-chief but everyone had to pitch in. There was a lot of juicing going on because we didn’t use most factory-made products.
In went the lemon and salt, mix and mix, and place the salad in closed containers in the fridge.
Taste it a few hours later to make sure there is enough lemon and salt. Always err on the side of more lemon.
Ask Etti how many lemons.
(To be continued…)