The Last First Night of Passover in 2010 Part I

The Last First Night Of Passover Part I
2010 has already been full of memories and this week we added one more to the list. Passover.
For months Rachel and I had been planning on how we can have the best Passover ever, looking up recipes and figuring out logistics on where we can actually hold it to cook all of our food, figuring out who we should invite, and much more.
I asked my family about hosting the day’s events, and they were planning on being out of town as my sister was heading back to California. However, they still agreed that we can host it.
Rachel had met two University students a few weeks prior who were about to give up on having a Seder until they heard of our plans to host one. So the day before Passover I found Ethan and Hailey and brought them to Savaii with me. Elisa, since she only lives a few villages away was also ready to partake in the day’s events along with Nate who is working in Upolu.
Being in a country where American volunteers and students are the entire Jewish population, we knew that we were in for a special treat of a lot of work as everything had to be made from scratch, and recipe items would have to be switched to accommodate for what is actually on this island.
We started with making matzo which is made with flour and water. A mayonnaise jar was used to roll out the dough, and because no forks were to be found in my house, we used a butter knife to make the indents into the dough. (We wanted it to be legit, just like what you might find in the store.) Some of the matzo pieces had messages written in them with the knife, and they were all unique and amazing. They were cooked in our very hot oven, and when they came out they tasted to amazing. It makes me never want to use store bought matzo again. It also made out three matzos in the middle of the table unique as they were all different sizes and shapes.
We then made some kind of dessert, which everyone loved. I forget what it was called but it had pieces of matzo, raisons, apples and eggs. Everyone including our Samoan guests devoured that dish of food.
Haroses was also on the baking agenda and proved to be the most challenging. We bought tons of apples (although the week before we contemplated using vi…to make it a little more Samoan, but opening a vi is too much work!) Finding walnuts was one of the most difficult things to find in Samoa. After searching all of Apia and Salelologa, we finally settled for Planters version of mixed nuts, but at least it included walnuts. It was hysterical watching our amazing team of chefs take the can and separate it into the different nuts to figure out which ones were the best to use. Spices (except for salt and curry) and pretty much nonexistent in most shops, so when I forgot to get it in the few stores that sell it, I failed our Passover team in providing the cinnamon for both the haroses and apple sauce. Shopping for food items to make this was also a learning experience as I found out that honey is actually made in Samoa, although it is full of more liquid than honey that I have tasted in the States. I think the honey caused the haroses to be a little more liquidly than normal, but it still tasted good. As a final touch since we are in Samoa, we decided to add pineapple to give the food more of a Samoan taste.
We were planning on making oka for our dinner, and bought all of the ingredients for a delicious fish dish. (I went to the fish market at 6 am on Sunday to make sure I had the perfect fish.) However, with travel mishaps, and freezing and unfreezing the fish, it became bad, and left us with a delicious salad full of cabbage, cucumbers and tomatoes. We were all looking forward to learning how to make oka…but I think the lesson learned is get the fish in Savaii as the travels from Apia can be unpredictable.
One of my favorite Jewish dishes is latkes and the general consensus was to have apple sauce or sour cream with it. Sour cream would have had the same difficulties as our fish, and so I am glad that I forgot to pick it up from one of the two stores that might sell it. We did decide to make apple sauce and it tasted great.
While making the latkes…we decided to let no potato go ungraded, which meant we had a lot to make. What’s worse is we had a lot of onions to grate. Shortly after grating, we were all in tears trading off on the work of making this dish complete. (I also have two battle wounds from the grater.)
In the middle of cooking our magnificent feast, we realized that we forgot to pick up the lamb for the Seder plate. Elisa and I traveled to all of the stores in my village searching for mutton as it is the only lamb available, but none of them had it, so we walked to the next village. It is really great being close to each other as everyone in my village seems to know her, and vice versa. On the walk around everyone greeted us (along with saying “ska tupe”, which was pretty embarrassing since the children normally aren’t as greedy) and we even saw one little girl carrying around a bird. We finally got a piece of mutton (frozen of course) and off we went to cook it.
Most of us did not really like mutton and were only putting it on the Seder plate for symbolic purposes only, but it still needed to be cooked. Living here is unlike America, because although I may have a “Palagi kitchen”, there still isn’t a microwave to defrost meat in. So we fried it. Soon, it became defrosted in some areas enough to cut it so it could be cooked properly. And it was.
All six of us were as busy as can be cooking as we munched on pineapple to give us endurance to keep on going. We decided to make it more of a Samoan experience by listening to unforgettable Samoan classics that we would hear on the bus as we cooked. It was definitely a memorable cooking experience.