On the first Friday the frozen pizza was a convenience, a concession to ourselves after the exhaustion of preparations. I'd just come home from a mid-week trip to a state park and Stuart was still on the schedule for the next week at the restaurant. We felt uneasy enough to cancel dinner plans in Durham. We were waiting for the email, the text: the university to call it, the restaurant to close, and in the meantime we prepared. We wandered in a daze through the picked over Trader Joe's aisles, impulse buying vacuum sealed bags of olives, boxed wine and too much acorn squash (we are still eating that acorn squash). At Harris Teeter, we grabbed two frozen pizzas, one pepperoni and one spinach and mushroom, one a consolation for cancelled plans, and the other a "just in case" we were stuck at home longer than we thought. That night, after unpacking the groceries, re-arranging the cabinets, and fielding calls from our families, we made the pepperoni, eating it sans even-one-single-vegetable, dipping square slices in ramekins of Cardini's Caesar dressing.
And so it's been every Friday since. On our bi-weekly trips to the store we always buy two frozen pizzas and every Friday we always share one together. Sometimes there's a salad or some roasted kale, sometimes just pizza and Cardini's (there's always Cardini's). During the week we've been fairly good about cooking, and, for the most part, having fun with it too: baking bread, dusting off the grill, getting in our veggies. But on Friday nights we give ourselves a break from the dishes, the puzzle of what's in the fridge, the time that cooking takes. It's a ritual, a marker in time, the threshold between the amorphous week and the weekend, a line we risk losing with Stuart out of work, and end of semester craziness.
If you're confused because this post was supposed to be about ramen, bear with me! Because after four, blissful weeks of frozen pizza Passover hit, throwing a wrench in one of our only plans. On Passover it is forbidden to eat leavened bread products. And while there is such a thing as tasty "matzo pizza," it wouldn't have been in the spirit. "Matzo pizza" might be Passover safe, but the labor that went into making it went against our new Friday night ethic. We searched the cabinets for something even easier and what we found was instant ramen and half a bag of kosher-for-Passover egg noodles.
Yes, that is american cheese. I'm not even going to defend the fact that we always put american cheese in our ramen and will instead kindly direct you to this Roy Choi video. We boiled water, added the flavor packet, the egg noodles, and small pats of butter, stirred in the cheese, topped it with a soft boiled egg (we prefer this to poaching it in the broth), Kimchi, and chives from our COVID-inspired herb planting. And it was...really, really good. It might be hard to beat ramen noodles, but the flavor of egg noodles, american cheese, and instant ramen flavoring together felt like a beautiful marriage of lifelong comfort tastes: chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese from childhood, the type of spice I learned to love in my New York years, Stuart's always-perfect-jammy eggs, and something we'd grown, however small, in the weirdness of the weeks before. And, there were very few dishes.
At the beginning of my first folklore class in January (what feels like a lifetime ago) we read a piece called "What the #$*! is Folklore" by MD Foster. Foster teases out folklore through a series of keywords, including, but not limited to unofficial, event, symbolic, aesthetic and playful and creative. It's those last two that have stuck with me most: the sense of something done "not purely for utilitarian purposes," something "made" that relies on our imagination to create something new. It's a framework that stuck with me later in the semester as we tackled selections from Vanessa Och's Inventing Jewish Ritual. Here, Och's explores her own journey as a "ritual innovator," drawing on a toolbox of text, objects and core understandings to explain interfaith mezuzahs, homemade haggadot and "Torah yoga:" acts that go beyond utility, that draw on imagination to create something new in context.
Of ritual broadly, Ochs lists many functions, including the marking of time, a sense of structure, and the ability to "carry us through changes and crises in life that might otherwise be unendurable." Frozen pizza might not "confirm a sacred presence in the world" (another bullet point on Ochs' list), but it certainly fulfills some of these other ritual requirements. And like the Zoom Seder we attended with extended family, our Passover ramen required creativity and play: some ritual innovation if you will. Perhaps it will grace our Passover table for years to come, becoming over time a moment to reflect and remember the year that we said "next year, in person."
Passover Ramen for 2
*I should note here that this recipe is far from "kosher." There's meat and there's cheese, there's probably something not "kosher for Passover" in that flavor packet. If it doesn't fit your dietary needs, take this simply as an invitation for innovation.
half bag of "kosher for Passover" egg noodles
Two packets of instant ramen (preferably "Teumsae" or something else very spicy)
Two eggs (soft boiled)
One tablespoon of butter, cut into small cubes
Two slices of american cheese
Kimchi
Fresh chives, chopped
Gochugaru, Aleppo pepper or crushed red pepper flakes.
1. Soft boil eggs by any desired method (I do them in the instant pot at high pressure for 4 minutes, Stuart steams them in a saucepan).
2. Fill a medium sauce pan with a quart of water. Open packets of instant ramen and set noodles aside. You can store these in any airtight container and use them for ramen salad when Passover is over.
3. Bring water to a boil, add one to two flavor packets (for this one we actually usually do one), both packets of dehydrated vegetables, and your butter cubes. Add half bag of egg noodles and cook until noodles are at desired consistency (8-10 minutes).
4. Remove saucepan from heat. Ladle noodles and broth into two large bowls. Top each with a slice of american cheese, pushing down with back of spoon to submerge slightly.
5. Cut each soft boiled egg in half and add two halves to each bowl. Add Kimchi, chopped chives and sprinkling of gochugaru, Aleppo pepper, or crushed red pepper flakes.
You can get creative with these toppings depending on your level of wanting-to-cook. We've had delicious success in the past with sauteed mushrooms, frozen corn and edamame, and bok choy (cooked in the broth).
Further Reading:
Books
Bronner, Simon J, ed. Revisioning Ritual: Jewish Traditions in Transition.
Ochs, Vanessa. Inventing Jewish Ritual.
Podcasts
Racist Sandwich ep. 78: "People Need Community (w/Candice Fortman). ** This episode has a really great story about a Detroit-based group called "Ladies Who Pizza." I'll let it speak for itself, but it did get me thinking about pizza's ritualistic role for all sorts of families.
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