Saturday, March 29, 10:00 A.M.
Members $45, guests $55

Why on this night do our baked goods taste like sawdust? Are those macaroons from a can? Is that a sponge cake or a sponge? If you can have matzo, why can't you have Carr's water crackers? If anyone has ever added these questions to the four prescribed in the Haggadah during your Passover seder, then you need to come to this workshop. The Beard Foundation's very own director of publications, Mitchell Davis, has penned a primer on Jewish cooking called The Mensch Chef (Clarkson Potter). And the Mensch himself will be on hand for this workshop to show you how to bake light and delicious unleavened Passover treats.

As Food & Wine editor Jane Sigal noted, "Davis has solved the problem of what to bring to the Passover seder." Who wouldn't want to take along light-as-air meringues, chewy coconut macaroons, and a delicate orange-almond cake to impress their in-laws? Make your own matzos? Your mother will kvell. As WNYC's Dish host Ed Levine said, "If my mother had had a copy of The Mensch Chef, we would have eaten a lot better at my house." Davis's Jewish cooking isn't exactly kosher, but it's certainly delicious (and he can show you how to make it all abide by the laws of kashrut if you so desire).

Davis graduated from the famed Hotel School at Cornell University, cooked for a year in France, then a year in Italy, and settled into the job of executive editor of Art Culinaire magazine upon his return to the United States. That's where we found him. He's been with the Foundation since 1993. In addition to writing cookbooks—the last was a joint venture with Foundation Angel Michael Ginor called Foie Gras…A Passion (Wiley), and Davis wrote Cook Something (Macmillan) before that—he regularly writes about food and travel for magazines such as GQ and Time Out NY. Davis is a doctoral candidate in New York University's Department of Food Studies. Oy, he's a doctor, even. He's also a contributor to the new Scribner's Encyclopedia of Food and Culture and the forthcoming Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food. But none of that really matters, does it, as long as he calls home once in a while?