Passover Product Watch 2009: Frank's Mini Eclairs

Plus: A Gluten-Free Passover Cookbook













Days ago, the ShopRite at Morton Village in Plainview, Long Island, received what was probably its last delivery of Passover products—including the return of frozen Mini Eclairs from Frank's Gourmet Bakery! Even if you set aside the gluten-free pastry dough made from potato and tapioca starch, these little treats would still not be "classic" eclairs in the sense that the filling isn't made with dairy products. But Frank's version—thawed or frozen—is still good enough for gluten-free me. I'm glad to see them back.

But why, oh why, is it so hard to find the rest of the gluten-free product line from Frank's Gourmet Bakery?

In other news, Gluten Free Bay is excited over Tamar Ansh's kosher gluten-free cookbook Pesach~Anything's Possible!.

A Visit to Supersol

Kosher Outpost on the Upper West Side (and Elsewhere)

















Having already ventured into Brooklyn to find gluten-free Passover products at Pomegranate, I followed up on another lead from the New York City Celiac Disease Meetup Group (NYCCDMG) and paid a visit to the Supersol supermarket on the Upper West Side. (There are also Supersols in Flushing, Lawrence, and Scarsdale.)

It was a madhouse on Sunday afternoon, but I made my way up and down the narrow aisles and found a number of familiar products (including Frankel's frozen foods and baked goodies from Oberlander's and Shabtai) as well as some items that were new to me. From Noam Gourmet there were potato-y Passover Bagels as well as Passover Pizza Bagels, which I'd also seen at Pomegranate.

And I found yet another faux matzoh ball mix—this time under the Haddar label.
























Photo: David Marc Fischer

A Very Pomegranate Passover

A Seasonal Visit to a Kosher Supermarket in Brooklyn
























I learned about Pomegranate, a kosher supermarket in Brooklyn, thanks to a tip on a message board at the New York City Celiac Disease Meetup Group (NYCCDMG). When I read about the many gluten-free Passover (a.k.a. Pesach) foods available in its aisles, I just had to check it out for myself.

I took the Q train to Avenue M and then proceeded northwest to Pomegranate, which is at 1507 Coney Island Avenue just north of Avenue L. Sure enough, I found many gluten-free items as I prowled the Pesach aisles established at this time of year.

If you're accustomed to shopping in the same places and seeing the same products over and over again, there's something surreal about going into a supermarket that's well stocked with gluten-free Passover products. It's almost like being in a Bizarro universe where the shelves of gluten-free cereals look strangely familiar...yet different.


















I recognized many products and brands from my visits to the Shoprite at Morton Village in Plainview on Long Island: Klein's Hoo-Lachmu Passover Flats, Kedem's Passover Style Gefilte Fish, Frankel's blintzes and knishes, Shabtai Gourmet baked goods (including Chocolaty Coated Coconut Macaroons), and Oberlander's baked goods (including cupcakes), just to reel off a bunch of examples.

I happened upon three types of faux matzoh ball mixes—not just Lieber's Knaidel Mix and Gefen's Kneidel Mix but also the boldly named Paskesz Matzo Ball Mix (above). I call it "boldly named" because it doesn't contain matzo, which traditionally contains gluten—although Pomegranate does carry at least one brand of newfangled (and expensive) gluten-free oat matzo. (See Gluten-Free Bay about shopping for oat matzo; see I Am Gluten Free for some cooking ideas.

But there were also some foods that were new to me, including chow mein noodles from Paskesz (right) and many types of break crumbs and coatings. Paskaez also makes Ultra Crispy Potato Thins (that, oddly enough, remind me of shrimp chips but with potato instead of shrimp—so they might go well with fish such as salmon) as well as junk foods called Nibblers and Diddles (shown on display below).














If that isn't enough chazarai (junk food) for you, there's also gluten-free cotton candy-in-a-bag from Smunchies Inc. of Spring Valley.

For many people a visit to Pomegranate may offer an unusual glimpse of Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish and Chasidic cultures. It is open until at least 9pm most evenings, but don't even think of going on Friday evenings and Saturdays, when it is closed for Sabbath. (Call 718-951-7112 to confirm that the supermarket will be open when you want to go there.)

Passover 2009 starts on the evening of Wednesday, April 8, so go before then to see the most goods for sale. Discounts might or might not be available after the holiday.

Shelf photos by David Marc Fischer

Passover Product Watch 2009: Hoo-Lachmu Passover Flats

Hoo-Lachmu Passover Flats, from Israel, are frozen planks of perfect-for-Pesach potato bread that I enjoyed heating and eating last year. The box claims they're great for sandwiches, pizza, French toast, and even "Etc." I'm not sure about how they'd work for French toast, but I got a kick out of baking them and figuring out ways to use them. Sometimes they puffed up a bit, so I could slice them open like pita bread and stuff them with cheese and other sandwichy stuff. Other times they remained flat and dense, so I could just top them or create a sandwich by breaking them into halves.

I know what you're wondering: "What the heck is a 'Hoo-Lachmu'?" According to Steve Levin of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Its name is a play on the Aramaic phrase 'ha lachma anya' from the haggadah used during the seder, which says of matzo, 'this is the bread of affliction.'" Levin also writes of a rabbi joking that "Hoo-lachmu is part of Passover Technology Inc., a fictitious company dedicated to developing new Passover foods so that 'people don't whine as much because they don't have pizza.'"

Speaking of pizza, here's a take from a blog called The Presence, back in '06:

The Presence team tried them as pizza, and, we must admit, they are pretty good! Of course, with a whopping 254 calories per slice (only 74.7 from fat!), we'll probably be dead long before these make it all the way through our digestive tracts. Hoo Lachmu weighs in quite respectfully in all the other areas of "ingredients that will kill you quickly." But they sure are tasty, as far as Pesach food goes. So for this year, Hoo Lachmu wins both the coveted "Best New Pesach Food Attempting to Imitate a Chametz Product" award and the "Best Pesach Product Name Thought up by Three Chassids in Borough Park Five Minutes Before Yontif [the holiday]" award. Congratulations!

Look for this product and have fun figuring out how you'll like it best!

PASSOVER TIPS

With Passover 2008 starting on the evening of April 19, I thought I'd share some tips.

As my longtime readers might remember, for a "matzoh ball" mix I'm a fan of Lieber's Knaidel Mix (right), which is made from potatoes.

Among the gluten-free products that are suitable for Passover are treats from Shabtai Gourmet, which include old-fashioned bakery sweets such as rainbow cookies. Shabtai, which markets its products at supermarkets and health food stores as well as Amazon and FreshDirect, has been reaching out for years to gluten-free people in the greater metropolitan area and beyond, including this blogger and Mike Eberhart of Gluten Free Blog. So far I've found that, with Shabtai, preferences are surprisingly varied (for instance, Mike and I both like the Meltaway Crumbs, but he and my mom seem to like the layer cakes more than I do, and I once had a very decadent almond pasty marble cakey treat that I'm having trouble identifying at this point), so I think you could do worse than sampling various Shabtai products and judging for yourself. (It's great to have choices, isn't it?)

For the DIY crowd, Gluten-Free Bay offers many Passover recipes. And Ellen Allard at I Am Gluten Free offers her own recipes including one for a matzo substitute using a mix from Breads from Anna. Here is Ellen's accompanying video.



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