This thread made me excited that Passover is coming!
It might be fun to have a conversation about recipes, traditions and other issues surrounding Passover. Passover is my favorite holiday, religious or secular. I run the seder in my family using this haggadah called A Night of Questions. I like it as it lets you customize the seder to your audience by recommending which readings to include and which to leave out. So you can design one for multi-faith families, feminist families, ones with lots of little kids etc. We’ve also started including the Miriam’s cup.
Any favorite recipes? I have a great individual veggie kugel recipe, that I can add later when I get home, if folks are interested.
So, what are your traditions?
(PS don’t know if this is the right forum, but since it will include recipes and books/music, I thought it might be)
ITD, your haggadah link goes back to the individual thread.
This year, I’m looking for recipes that can be lightened up a bit. Thanks to my newfound knowledge that commercial flour is now hametz (thanks for nuthin’, Keeve! :p), most dessert is right out, so that’s taken care of. But I’m looking for dairy recipes that will work with low-fat or non-fat dairy.
Meringues are a good dessert. Bake off a meringue shell and top with fruit in a sugar syrup. Since the meringue is simply egg whites and sugar it’s fine. Meringues are also low fat and are parve (not dairy or meat), but could be dairy if you add sweetened yogurt to the fruit.
Here’s the Vegetable Kugel recipe:
3 tbl margarine
1 med onion, chopped
1 large stalk celery, chopped
3 lg carrots, grated
1/2 cup chopped pepper, red and green is nice
1 10 oz frozen spinach, drained
3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
pepper
2/3 matzo meal
Preheat oven to 375F. Grease/spray 12 cup muffin tin. Melt margarine and saute celery, onion, peppers and carrots until onion is translucent. Set aside. Put well-drained spinach in a bowl, add eggs, salt, pepper and nutmeg and mix thoroughly. Add sauteed veggies and matzo meal and mix well. Spoon into muffins cups and bake for 35-40 minutes. Cool 10-15 minutes before removing from tins. Makes 12.
Ahh, my first seder in years! I want to make this, honey coconut cake, but I’m not sure how it would taste. I’ve never baked matzo before. Any thoughts or ideas on how it might taste?
My in-laws always host the huge Passover dinner for the entire family (and any stray friends we can rope into it). I have tried to bring different items, but I think there might be a riot if one of the items isn’t the Caramel Cheesecake Flan that Wolfgang Puck baked on his Food Network Passover episode. It is absolutely yummy and IvoryTowerDenizen, it isn’t dense at all, so give it a try if you get a chance. I would suggest doing a test run just to practice with the caramel and flipping and whatnot. I also think one recipe would serve only about 6-8 people, so I always make 2 or three of these to make sure there is enough.
Until you posted this, I had never noticed that we never, ever eat dairy at Passover supper. We don’t keep a kosher home and never have. Somehow it is just Not the Done Thing, interesting how habits accrete like that.
As a result, I cannot name one Passover recipe with any form of dairy in it (other than something which might incidentally be cooked in butter).
I am in charge of desserts for my husband’s extended family on Passover, because the state of affairs over there was very sad before I married into the family (the absolute best dessert available was made from a Manischewitz boxed mix.) I generally make everything non-dairy, because the seders are both meat meals, but here are some ideas that come to mind:
-Flourless chocolate cake (I generally make this one, with margarine, and it always sells well)
-Mousse (I make a Spanish olive oil and chocolate mousse, but you could make a more classic dairy one.)
-Layered fruit and whipped cream in single-serve glasses
-Ice cream!
On re-reading the OP, I realize that none of these is low-fat. Do you particularly insist on it being a dairy dessert? The healthiest Passover desserts that I can think of are poached fruit (eg pears in wine), or the ground-almond-and-egg-white cookies that I know I’ve posted here before, but now can’t find. Neither involves dairy, or any dairy substitutes, and both are good enough that I make them year-round (the true test of a Passover dessert). I will re-type the cookie recipe if you like.
Jennmonkye, that looks delicious but I wouldn’t have the opportunity to make it for 6-8 people beforehand as a trial run. IvoryTower, I don’t mind denseness, but I’ve never had baked matzo so I was nervous. Always gone the poached fruit route in the past.
Generally, replace “flour” with “matzah meal” and give it a try.
Passover-specific recipes tend to be either festive meals or desserts. There’s nothing wrong IMO with making a matzah meal pie crust.
My parents’ tradition is that this is the only time of year we make sponge cake.
A few years ago I learned that some fruits are “fruit of the ground.” (I had a GQ thread about it.) So once Karpas is done, pass around the peppers, celery, carrots – and bananas, melons, and berries!
FWIW, the only berry that’s a ‘fruit of the ground’ is a strawberry. The categories are determined by whether the plant dies back to the ground after 1-2 years, or is more permanent, like a tree. Banana ‘trees’ actually only produce a single batch of fruits before dying, although I think the roots will resprout a new ‘tree.’
I wouldn’t recommend choosing a heavily flour-based recipe and replacing it with matzah cake meal (the one you want for baking, BTW, not regular matzah meal). It’ll turn into a brick. Either find recipes optimized for cake meal, or adapt something that uses only a little bit of flour. I’m weighing making Lemon Custard Cake with either cake meal or potato starch for Passover this year, as an experiment - it’s great year-round, and the regular recipe only calls for three tablespoons of flour. I also came across a recipe for Maida Heatter’s Queen Mother’s Cake today, and it sounds like it could be made for Passover easily, if you replace the bread crumbs with regular matza meal.
I’m very much in need of some new side dishes because I’m sick of all the old ones my family insists we have to have