three bowls

Posting recipe results before you have actually tasted the recipe results is a little...counterintuitive.  But in case you, too, are attending or hosting a Passover Seder and need a dessert, I can at least tell you this much about this Gourmet magazine recipe (available on Epicurious) for Passover Lemon Cheesecake made with matzo cake meal and almond crust:

1) Other than the matzo cake meal, which I had to hit a couple of stores before I found it, the ingredients are common to most grocery stores.

2) It's quite easy to prepare, and the work itself is quick, although there are cooling and softening times you need to allow for.

3) The pre-cooked crust and filling were very tasty from my bowl-licking.  I did add a little more lemon zest and just a smidge of lemon extract (not in recipe) to the filling to boost the lemony flavor.

I am bringing this to my friend Sarah's Passover Seder today.  She has invited over 23 people to her home for the event, and she, like me, likes to make pretty elaborate meals anyway.  So she was forced to outsource some things, and I was able to pry this dessert away from her.  I think she gave this assignment to me mainly because she knew I could put it in my cake transporter, a possession I wish I had more occasions to use. 

I would probably need to have kids or a religion to have more opportunities to be toting cakes around, neither of which I'm planning to add to my life any time soon.

I'll be heading over early to help her with the cooking.  I hadn't really thought much about the evening beyond it being an enjoyable social event, but suddenly I am really excited for it.  This probably sounds stupid, but as a kid I LOVED watching The Ten Commandments every Easter.  Watching Charleton Heston and Edward G. Robinson gnaw on scenery probably doesn't exactly seem like any kind of connection to an actual faith, but there was something about the Old Testament world - even the Hollywooded-up version - that I found endlessly more fascinating than any of the New Testament stuff.

As a kid, I also spent a lot of time during several summers at the Jewish Community Center in Phoenix (which I just mentioned and who would think I'd have two occasions to mention that in like three days?).  I'm not Jewish, nor was the little acting summer camp I went to for a few years religiously-affliated, but they could rent or get space at the JCC so that's where it was. 

I remember getting Bazooka gum at the JCC gift shop, and they had the comics in Hebrew, which was kind of thrilling.  But I think the thing that also made me feel the most spark of interest in or affection for this world of Old Testament Jewishness was the life-size statue of Moses that was in the large open rec room type of area where all the senior citizens seemed to hang out. 

It was, I think, some kind of art project or something, and it was made of what I believe were shellacked strips of fiberous material. In my head, though, the strips became egg noodles. 

Again, I don't think they actually were egg noodles, but in my young mind, it was a statue of a religious figure that was made out of some kind of homey food product. 

Even though I fancy myself as a writer, it's really beyond me to put into words the sort of affectionate feeling this weird statue instilled in me for anything to do with Moses.  So needless to say, suddenly remembering that this isn't just an evening with friends and a chance to try a new recipe but is, in fact, a completely Moses-related holiday was like a extra bonus.