Joan Nathan's Passover menu follows family traditions

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After decades creating and publishing recipes, cookbook author Joan Nathan has released what she said is likely her final book, a cookbook and memoir called "My Life in Recipes." Michael Zamora/NPR hide caption

After decades creating and publishing recipes, cookbook author Joan Nathan has released what she said is likely her final book, a cookbook and memoir called "My Life in Recipes."

Joan Nathan has spent her life exploring in the kitchen, trying new dishes and recipes all year. But every spring, for the Passover Seder, she sticks with a menu that follows her own family's traditions. The holiday starts tonight.

"I think Passover tells us who we are, and it tells us, 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!"

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Joan Nathan chops up fresh herbs for her soup and rolls matzo balls in her kitchen in Washington, D.C. Michael Zamora/NPR hide caption

Joan Nathan chops up fresh herbs for her soup and rolls matzo balls in her kitchen in Washington, D.C.

Nathan has written a dozen cookbooks, documenting how food traditions evolved as Jews wandered all over the world through the centuries. Now in her 80s, her new book is her most personal work yet, excavating her own culinary history in a combination memoir and cookbook called My Life in Recipes.

"I've been more nervous about this book than any book... It's sort of going into my life, you know?"

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Cookbook author Joan Nathan looks through old family recipe books. Michael Zamora/NPR hide caption

Cookbook author Joan Nathan looks through old family recipe books.

Nathan spoke with All Things Considered in her Washington, D.C. kitchen on a late March day, while she prepped a version of a dish she's been eating since childhood: chicken matzo ball soup. And, like many Jewish mothers and grandmothers before her, that afternoon, she fretted over whether the matzo balls would turn out the way she wanted them to. Every family has their own recipe, whether they're light, fluffy, hard, dense.

"So my mother's, hers were al dente," Nathan said. "And my mother-in-law's were very light. You know, she was straight from Poland."

As with every immigration story, these family recipes evolved as people relocated, fleeing wars or seeking a better life for their kids. One example is a special combination Nathan adds to her own matzo balls.

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Nathan prepares matzo ball soup in her kitchen. Michael Zamora/NPR hide caption

Nathan prepares matzo ball soup in her kitchen.