Each spring, kosher food manufacturers face a familiar and long-standing problem: developing foods for the Passover table that are free of leavened grains, which are prohibited during the eight-day holiday, while satisfying a craving for such “forbidden fruits.”
This year, as in the past, Kayco, a leading kosher food and beverage distributor, has bundled products from companies like Manischewitz, Kedem, and Gefen into a single website for easy shopping.
One novel aspect of many of this year’s crop of products is an increased focus on health. Manischewitz will be featuring several gluten-free products, including wafers and chocolate-covered matzo, which comes in four flavors — mint, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate. The company will reprise its line of Pringle-style potato chips, available salted, unsalted, and rippled, and will be selling a better-for-you update to its traditional horseradish.
To satisfy your sweet tooth during the holiday, Heaven & Earth will be offering high-end kosher-for-Passover chocolate bars, many with the added benefit of having no sugar added. Among these are the company’s milk chocolate bar, with or without hazelnuts, and a decadent dark chocolate bar with 70% cocoa solids. Heaven & Earth has also come out with a new line of taffy ropes in such exotic flavors as watermelon, fruit punch, blue raspberry toffee, tropical coconut pineapple, and chocolate mint.
There’s no rule that says you can’t give an Italian flavor to your meals during Passover. This year, Tuscanini, a company based in Italy, is featuring a full line of kosher-for-Passover products, among them freshly squeezed lemon juice made from 100% Sicilian lemons and a host of tomato-based products, including peeled, diced, and crushed tomatoes, as well as whole cherry tomatoes, all imported from Puglia. For a blast of heat, select Tuscanini jarred Calabrian peppers in oil. Finally, there are premium cooking wines made of Rosso Toscano and white Muscat grapes to take your cooking to the next level.
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