Joan Nathan's Passover Menu Follows Family TraditionsExBulletin

Joan Nathan has spent her life exploring cooking, trying new dishes and recipes throughout the year. But every spring, for the Passover Seder, she sticks to a menu that follows her own family's traditions. The holidays start this evening.

“I think Passover tells us who we are, and it tells us that this is my family sharing with other families. I get chills every year at Passover, because I realized that it started in ancient Israel. I mean, it’s in the Bible!”

Nathan has written a dozen cookbooks, documenting the evolution of food traditions as Jews wandered the world over the centuries. Now 80, her new book is her most personal work yet, delving into her own culinary history in a combination memoir and cookbook titled My life in recipes.

“I've been more nervous about this book than any book… It kind of comes into my life, you know?”

Nathan spoke with All things Considered in her Washington, D.C., kitchen one day in late March as she prepared a version of a dish she's been eating since childhood: chicken and matzo ball soup. And, like many Jewish mothers and grandmothers before her, that afternoon she wondered if the matzo balls would produce the result she wanted. Each family has its recipe, whether light, soft, hard, dense.

“So my mom’s, hers were al dente,” Nathan said. “And my mother-in-law's were very light. You know, she came straight from Poland.”

As with any immigration story, these family recipes evolved as people moved, fled wars, or sought a better life for their children. One example is a special combination that Nathan adds to his own matzo balls.

“I added ginger [and] nutmeg, which I knew was what my father's family would have used in Germany,” she explained. “Nutmeg with ginger was a very common condiment combination in the 19th and early 20th centuries. “

For Nathan, cooking matzo ball soup for Passover or any other Jewish holiday feels like home.

“It’s the smell,” she said. “You just know that smell. Like my mother's chest, I know; like challah, I know. I love those smells. She knows you're home, that there are people there who worry.”

While the soup simmers, Joan walks into the living room where there are boxes of letters and books. These are some of the artifacts she discovered from her family, including handwritten recipe books in German. One of her great-grandmothers is from 1927, written in purple ink and full of recipes for desserts like kuchen and butterscotch pudding. Nathan's new book is full of his letters, journal entries, and parts of these family artifacts.

This book is also a love story. Joan Nathan writes about her courtship and 45-year marriage to her late husband, Allan Gerson. He died just before the pandemic. She says writing the book was almost like a form of therapy.

“It was my savior. I was just writing. And I was including it in my life, you know? So it was a way of really integrating it into my life. And I think that was really helpful to me . It really gave me my strength.”

My life in recipes also includes anecdotes about Nathan's prolific career, his world travels, and stories of his collaborations with food luminaries, including Julia Child.

“Julia, I had her 90th birthday in there – she was sitting here on this couch. I had a party for her. She's someone who has gone on to live,” Nathan recalls.

“And she said to me, at 90, why should I stop if I'm doing what I love to do? And she made me understand a few things: Have younger people around you as you get older , be positive, don't I'm talking about being uncomfortable or anything. And also, write thank you notes to everyone.