Read "Burning Passover's 'garbage of the soul'" at CNN Belief

More Passover on Eatocracy
L'chaim! Israeli wines for Passover
Passover horseradish – rooted in tradition
A taste of Passover recipes from around the globe
Modernize your seder plate

President Barack Obama marked the start of Passover Monday night with a Seder at the White House. It's a yearly tradition for the president that began on the campaign trail in 2008.

"This has been a very, very powerful event for the president," Deputy White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday, adding that Obama planned to use the Seder plate given to him by Sara Netanyahu last week during his trip to Israel.
FULL POST

5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Tradition!

The week-long Passover holiday kicks off at sundown tonight with the ritual Seder meal. The centerpiece of the feast is the Seder plate, brimming with symbolic foods that commemorate the exodus of Israelites from slavery in Egypt. The plate includes:

• bitter herbs, typically freshly grated horseradish

• a lamb shankbone

• a roasted, hard-boiled egg

• a vegetable, usually parsley, dipped in salt water

• charoset/haroset, a sweet mixture of apples, nuts, wine and spices

• a bitter vegetable, like romaine lettuce

Founder Nick Wiseman and chef Barry Koslow of DGS Delicatessen in Washington, D.C., have a few tips to help freshen up the traditional Passover Seder menu without upsetting your bubbe too much.

Five Ways to Modernize Your Seder: Barry Koslow
FULL POST

Plenty of traditional foods pack an emotional whallop, but few of them back it up with a sensory punch as strong as horseradish's. The pungent root is a key part of a Passover Seder plate (along with salt water-dipped vegetables, a shank bone, a hard boiled egg, a sweet paste of apples and nuts called charoset, and a bitter vegetable - often lettuce) and symbolizes the harsh lives of the Israelites before they were delivered from slavery in Egypt.
FULL POST

Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

If there’s one kind of wine in the whole world of wine that’s misunderstood, it’s probably kosher wine. The basic misnomer is that it is somehow different - that the process of making kosher wine differs in some radical way from the process of making regular, un-kosher wine. This idea, mostly, isn’t true.

The short version is this: Grapes are kosher, and there’s nothing about the nature of the winemaking process that makes them not so. What matters is more the who than the how.
FULL POST

All over the world, people gather to celebrate Passover - the holiday that commemorates the Jewish people's escape from slavery in Egypt. For seven or eight days (depending on where you live), families and friends come together for festive seder meals packed with ritual foods and a few dietary restrictions (for instance, no leavened grains).

And while many traditions remain the same the world over, favorite regional recipes can bring communities closer together. Here, families from Israel, Estonia and India share a few of their favorites, courtesy of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, to make your celebration a little larger in spirit.
FULL POST

More St. Patrick's Day:
How chefs get lucky
On St. Patrick's Day, it's easy drinking green
Why you should be drinking Irish whiskey on St. Patrick’s Day
Irish beers for St. Patrick's Day
Even more Irish Whiskey, per a partly Irish fellow
An Irish chef's picks for St. Paddy's fun

Alessandra Bulow (@abulow on Twitter) is Food & Wine's associate digital editor.

If foraging for shamrocks and downing marshmallow-filled cereal endorsed by a cartoon leprechaun hasn’t brought you the luck of the Irish by now, then it may be time to rethink your strategy on St. Patrick’s Day. From traditional dishes like noodles that symbolize longevity to a simple ham sandwich, superstitious chefs share their picks for good fortune.
FULL POST

Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Consider the Shamrock Shake. It’s green, it’s creamy, you can get it during the month of March, and since McDonald’s introduced the thing in 1970, they’ve sold more than 60 million of them - the equivalent of 39 gallons of Shamrock Shake for every single person currently alive in Ireland. That’s a whole lot of shake goin’ on.

But of course there are other things you can drink for St. Patrick’s Day. Green beer, well, yeah. I think we can safely move on from that addled inspiration. Ditto the giant foam leprechaun hats. So how about a green cocktail, then?
FULL POST

While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

Wine rules! Appropriately enough, February 18 is both Presidents' Day and National Drink Wine Day.

It might be coincidence that Presidents' Day and National Wine Day coincide, but our nation’s leaders would probably find it fitting. That’s because since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, American presidents have enjoyed drinking wine. So much so that our Founding Fathers celebrated the event with glasses of Madeira.

Not every president enjoyed wine, some preferred spirits and some like Lincoln didn’t drink much at all.
FULL POST