Passover

[jpschust]

this just in- I'm sick of matzos.

[Scott Johnston]

Anyone have some pointers on Chopped Liver? The version I had on Monday was really light, almost fluffy, and really really good

[JuliettetheBrit]

this just in- I'm sick of matzos.

Wow, it took you that long

[KOK]

HAPPY PASSOVER!

This is the smile of the year!

Thanks,

K-P Kevin

[mishellem]

Hope this isn't too late; I make traditional charoset and add some cut up apricots. Basically: 4 red delicious apples, 2 Cups walnuts (ground), 1 T cinnamon, 1T Manishevitz sweet wine, 1/2 C chopped apricots.

[Anna Blume]

So, I'm supposed to supply either a potato kugel for seder this weekend or some local greens and a decent potato kugel recipe.

I'm going with the latter option since every potato kugel recipe I've read thus far sounds yucky. I much prefer Sephardic fare at Passover and I even I like noodle kugel.

I am praying someone here has a delicious alternative to the ones I've googled thus far.

Thanks!

[Al Dente]

So, I'm supposed to supply either a potato kugel for seder this weekend or some local greens and a decent potato kugel recipe.

I'm going with the latter option since every potato kugel recipe I've read thus far sounds yucky. I much prefer Sephardic fare at Passover and I even I like noodle kugel.

I am praying someone here has a delicious alternative to the ones I've googled thus far.

Thanks!

Look for a kugel recipe on the Hebrew search engine: Gugel

[dinwiddie]

Ya'll are putting me in the mood to try my own Passover this year. But we're not Jewish.

Is there a good guide to Passover on the Internet?

As a preacher's kid who married a nice Jewish girl, I've been going to Sader for the last 25 years. They are an absolute blast. Serious, yes, but joyful and fun and family too. Lucky for me, I'm only responsible for bringing the wine.

[KeithA]

This might be alittle late for Seder, but the bread of affliction is with us for 7 for days so it should still be timely. A tip to anyone making haroset who wants to make it non-alcoholic (i.e. no sweet Manschevitz wine), try pomegranate juice. In the past I used grape juice and it was missing that tanginess you get from thw wine, but the pom did the trick this year and also added a middle eastern/israeli connection too.

[Anna Blume]

My mother told me that she went to a vegetarian seder--a first for her. On the seder plate, instead of a shank bone, there was a sweet potato: "The Paschal Yam"...

I was the only non-Jew at the seder yesterday; everyone loved this joke, especially the vegetarian who kindly made the gefilte fish and the matzo ball soup w chicken.

FYI: Here's a Dr. Seuss-version of the Four Questions that the children recited. It's culinary in nature: Uncle Eli's Haggadah.

[Pete]

Bump.

Does anybody know where I can purchase shemurah flour? Northern Virginia-area preferred, but not mandatory. I am attempting to make my own matzoh this year.

[deangold]

If anyone wants to compare notes on Passover preparation:

So far-

8 quarts of date & raisin charoset

12 qts of Venetian Charoset {with housemade chestnut paste}

12 quarts of apple & walnut & honey Charoset with 2 liters of Maneschevitz

40 quarts of chicken stock on its second set f bones tonight. Sunday we will add the old soup birds

30 quarts of fish stock for my 200 gefilte fish balls. That was 25 pounds of white fish bones & heads and 25 pounds of pike bones & heads, 5 bunches celery, 10 carrots and 10 onions.

Just in case you want to make 200 gefilte fish balls, here is what you need:

12 quarts chopped onion to be sweated in 1 qt corn oil and 1 quart water

50 pounds of pike and whitefish which trimmed up come to about 42 pounds

200 carrot slices

the aforementioned fish stock

a lot of parsley

salt, sugar

Lots of hotel pans for the fishie balls.

Tomorrow's to do list:

Grind and roll 200 Gefilte fish balls

Convert 32 pounds of lamb {thats 22 quarts for a visual aid} into stracotto with 4 quarts each onion, shallot, carrots and celery

Make 12 chickens into chicken alla cacciatore with 12 pounds of trumpet and Nebrodini mushrooms mixed, 10 pounds of crimeni, a couple of big cans of tomatoes and about 4 quarts wine.

Prep another 24 pound mushrooms for the matzoh farfel

Prep 32 bunches rapini into stewed rapini for bitter greens

Roast 50 eggs

Drink 2 very large cocktails

[LizH]

Does anyone have a good tsimmis recipe? I assume I just boil the carrots and Sweet potatoes and then bake, but I appreciate any tried and true variations. Thanks!

[deangold]

Does anyone have a good tsimmis recipe? I assume I just boil the carrots and Sweet potatoes and then bake, but I appreciate any tried and true variations. Thanks!

Per quart of sweets & carrots:

1/2 cup apricots soaked in hot water for 5-10 minutes

1/4 cup golden raisins soaked

1/2 cup OJ

1/4 to 1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup walnuts of pecans

1 tsp hard spice mix {cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice etc, finely gorund}

Drain the dried fruit and mix with the nits, carrots and sweets. Toss with the spice mix. Put in baking pan. Pour over OJ. Sprinkle with the brown sugar. Bake at 350 till the sugar is bubbly. In the 70's when my mom started making this recipe, canned pineapple chunks were de rigerur.

[LizH]

Perfect, thanks! If I leave out the nuts do you think it will be ok? I don't remember nuts in this from my youth.

[zoramargolis]

Per quart of sweets & carrots:

1/2 cup apricots soaked in hot water for 5-10 minutes

1/4 cup golden raisins soaked

1/2 cup OJ

1/4 to 1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup walnuts of pecans

1 tsp hard spice mix {cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice etc, finely gorund}

Drain the dried fruit and mix with the nits, carrots and sweets. Toss with the spice mix. Put in baking pan. Pour over OJ. Sprinkle with the brown sugar. Bake at 350 till the sugar is bubbly. In the 70's when my mom started making this recipe, canned pineapple chunks were de rigerur.

What happened to the prunes?

edited to add: by us, tsimmis was only carrots, with butter, honey, raisins and prunes. Sweet potatoes? Who ate sweet potatoes in the old country?

[deangold]

Zora, I have learned never to argue religion, family recipes or sports not matter how right I am and how wrong the other person is!

[deangold]

Perfect, thanks! If I leave out the nuts do you think it will be ok? I don't remember nuts in this from my youth.

There are always a lot of nuts at my family celebrations.

[zoramargolis]

Zora, I have learned never to argue religion, family recipes or sports not matter how right I am and how wrong the other person is!

Simple formula: Litvaks are always right. Polaks, Rumanians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Galicians? Fargeddit.

edited to add: leleboo correctly reminded me that Lithuanians ARE Litvaks. But my family were Belarussan Litvaks, who considered themselves the elite of Litvaks. Does anyone wonder why I don't observe any of this cultural/religious stuff anymore? I can't abide tribalism, whatever form it takes.

[DaveO]

Got this Pesach story via one of my father's youngest cousins during the bar mitzvah of her youngest grandson.  My father and his cousins were part of a very large extended family living in the NY area.  Between his uncles and aunts I think he had around 50 first cousins and they were very close.  His parents had immigrated from Bialystock with many brothers and sisters and my grandfather and a brother and young uncle married 3 sisters.  Lots of connectivity.

My grandparents hosted seders for decades.  This story must be from the 1930's or so.   My dad and uncle were probably in their early 20's.  The cousins in question were the youngest of the 50 or so cousins, very little girls, possibly 4,5,6, or 7.  I've seen pictures of these events.  The men in suits, the women dressed up.   The seders went on for hours, the service from start to finish.  Very traditional and complete, all in Hebrew.

My dad and his brother would pass food under the table to their youngest cousins.  Whew.............good move.  I attended those seders at my grandparents, some 20 years later.  Incredibly long services.  Food was great.  Wonderful family celebrations....but the Passover story...........danged and interminably long....and by the time I was attending nobody was feeding the starving youngsters during the long story.

Possibly a decade or fifteen years after my seders at my grandparents that young cousin would go to my dad's business, then in NJ.  My dad and his partner/cousin were wholesalers and distributors of linens and dry goods.  That younger cousin was now a mother of very young kids and would come by shopping for items for their bed and bathrooms.  She'd bring her young kids, my second cousins.  At times I'd go into that business and be a stock boy or handle deliveries of merchandise.  Anyway I used to see my dad take her kids across the street to a diner and buy those kids milk shakes.  I guess he liked feeding those cousins and their kids.

Anyway as lengthy as those seders were they were wonderful family experiences.  Two years ago I was at the seder of the daughter of one of my cousins.  My cousin was leading the service.  His daughter pleaded and then ordered him to do a short version.   Far, far better for enjoying the dinner and food.

Great memories.

[Ilaine]

We are not Jewish but I wanted to host a seder as a family event because I look for reasons to get the kids over for a family gathering.  Actually one of my sons suggested it, after seeing Maxwell House haggadahs at Kroger, and for some reason becoming intrigued. One of my co-workers is Jewish and has collected many different haggadahs.  Two years ago I asked him to suggest a haggadah.  At the Seder table we sort of stuck to the Maxwell House haggadah but also looked at some of the ones my co-worker had loaned us.  It was kind of chaotic.

This year I started looking for haggadahs early, and discovered the 30 minute seder, for people with little kids, which was too short, but the same author also has the 60 minute seder, which was perfect for our needs.  Download and print out as many as you need.  I also discovered some seder cheat sheets, one page each, and passed those around.  It went well.  We'll do it again, for sure.

[PollyG]

We continue to use the at-the-time revolutionary Haggadah published by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in the 70's. (https://www.amazon.com/Passover-Haggadah-New-Union-Haggadah/dp/B000WG2H8A/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1522935306&sr=8-5&keywords=haggadah+central+conference) It has gone through multiple revisions, ridding itself of more and more sexist language with each edition.  I'm not sure exactly how long the service is, but it is beautifully timed so that my garlic crusted leg of lamb is finished about the time we serve the matzoh ball soup.  Our non-Jewish friends find it easy to follow.

Of particular relevance is a list of modern plagues which precedes the traditional 10 plagues.  The section reads:

Each drop of wine we pour is hope and prayer that people will cast out the plagues that threaten everyone everywhere they are found, beginning in our own hearts:

The making of war, the teaching of hate and violence, despoliation of the earth, perversion of justice and government, fomenting of vice and crime, neglect of human needs, oppression of nations and peoples, corruption of culture, subjugation of science, learning and human discourse, the erosion of freedoms.

Of course, the 11th plague is the horrible desserts of Passover, so to bring us back onto a food topic:

• The chocolate chip cookie recipe on Trader Joe's almond flour bag makes a pretty decent cookie.  It isn't pretty, but taste-wise it beats the pants off most other Passover cookies, including commercial ones. 
• The Queen Mother's Cake (Maida Heatter's meticulously detailed recipe) is made kosher for Passover by a substitution of matzo meal for breadcrumbs.  They are just used to dust the springform pan for this almond-chocolate torte, so they have very little impact on flavor.  This is the "I can't believe it's pesadik" cake I used to bring into my heavily Jewish workplace.  
• The almond-walnut cookies by Joan Nathan that the NYTimes featured this year were definitely Not Worth The Effort.  
• We found a use for sweet kosher wine!  I poached pears in it with cinnamon and orange juice, then reduced 5 cups of liquid into about half a cup to make a syrup to pour over the pears. 

[KeithA]

My Passover seder menu is coming together:

So far already made herbed gefilte fish from the Gefilte Manifesto cookbook but with 2 TBs of added matzo meal (they say they leave it out of this one for a lighter texture, but when I made it that way in the past, it kind of fell apart) and 1 quart each of golden beet horseradish and carrot citrus horseradish relish from same cookbook.

We also plan to make:

-matzo ball chicken soup

- hardboiled eggs, which in my wife's family tradition, you chop up some and serve with salt water in kind of a quasi-soup which get topped with crunchy farfel made by cooking farfel with eggs and salt and pepper. Each person get a small bowl of chopped eggs and each decides how soupy to make it by pouring on their own amount of salt water and how crunchy by choosing how much farfel to add.

- a braised chicken, recipe TBD for first night for the non-beef eaters, and brisket, likely traditional tomato, onion, carrot style, for second night.

- Charoset of course. We always make traditional Ashkenazi-style since that is our heritage (apples, walnuts, cinnamon, and wine/juice). I usually make another middle-eastern Mizrahi style too (dates, raisins, more spices, and walnuts or almonds that less chunky and more of a paste that you roll into balls). This year I may make 3-4 varieties like Ethiopian where you add spicy Berbere seasoning and maybe Persian with cardamon since I love that spice.

- Carrots - either tzimmes or roasted with spices. We still have 4 lbs or so from our CSA so they're on the menu

- Not sure maybe another green vegetable. We'll see what the CSA brings this week.

 - Dessert will be the always traditional - fruit slice gels, various passover chocolates and homemade coconut macaroons.

We use the family-passed down recipe for macaroons from my wife's grandmother. Who we always said made the best ones (especially compared to the dense, flavorless ones you get in a can). The first time we made them using a bag of Baker's brand sweetened coconut, we realized the recipe is the same as the one on the bag. So much for family secret recipes, but they do taste great.

[naxos]

Small Seder this year but beats the zoom Seder last year! We usually have 25-30 guests. having a bit of trouble scaling down.

Have made chicken soup, mixed matzo ball batter, made gefilte fish from WF cod and salmon..hate the extortionate price of the traditional lake fish which have questionable amounts of chemicals anyway- and it tastes if not the same better. I have used halibut or rockfish in the past .

Marinating chicken for Marbella- kids favorite 

matzo farfel to be made- mushrooms onions 

horseradish grated

asparagus to be steamed and marinated 

NYT toffee chocolate matzo for dessert

 

[KeithA]

On 3/27/2021 at 10:58 AM, naxos said:

Small Seder this year but beats the zoom Seder last year! We usually have 25-30 guests. having a bit of trouble scaling down.

Have made chicken soup, mixed matzo ball batter, made gefilte fish from WF cod and salmon..hate the extortionate price of the traditional lake fish which have questionable amounts of chemicals anyway- and it tastes if not the same better. I have used halibut or rockfish in the past .

Marinating chicken for Marbella- kids favorite 

matzo farfel to be made- mushrooms onions 

horseradish grated

asparagus to be steamed and marinated 

NYT toffee chocolate matzo for dessert

 

We ended up making Chicken Marbella too and using Halibut for the gefilte fish. Both turned out great. My brisket while cooked ok lacked some flavor (used Jewish Cooking in America - Joan Nathan's favorite brisket recipe). Need to try out some new recipes or go back to past winners like Smitten Kitchen's sweet and sour brisket.  I did end up making 3 types of charoset - all winners: Ashkenazi, Kurdish (4 types of nuts, bunch of spices, dates, raisins and more), and Moroccan-style rolled into balls. 

[KeithA]

On 3/29/2021 at 6:17 PM, KeithA said:

We ended up making Chicken Marbella too and using Halibut for the gefilte fish. Both turned out great. My brisket while cooked ok lacked some flavor (used Jewish Cooking in America - Joan Nathan's favorite brisket recipe). Need to try out some new recipes or go back to past winners like Smitten Kitchen's sweet and sour brisket.  I did end up making 3 types of charoset - all winners: Ashkenazi, Kurdish (4 types of nuts, bunch of spices, dates, raisins and more), and Moroccan-style rolled into balls. 

Seder menu this year is similar to past years with some twists:

Chicken Marbella - always a winner

Brisket - I modified a recipe from Jake Cohen's I Could Nosh for Jew-mami Brisket (as in umami) - I left out the mushrooms since I'm the only one in my house who likes them, skipped the red wine vinegar, doubled the soy sauce instead and made it yesterday a day a head. I liked the crushed tomatoes instead of diced, it really has a nice thick gravy vs. being too watery/evaporated.

Charoset this year - I continue to try new stuff. Ashkenazi - tried and true. I had a funny interaction with the very kind woman who runs the Kuhns Orchard Cleveland Park farmer's market stand when I explained what ashkenazi charoset was (apples, walnuts, cinnamon and a bit of sweet wine) and asked for her apple varietal recommendations. I think I really through her for a loop but she suggested a mix. We'll see if people notice the gold rush and crimson crisp as different. We were lucky to travel to Italy and Japan since last passover so I made charoset inspired by those trips. Italian one is a recipe from Portico, Roman-Jewish cookbook I got recently. It has Apple, banana, orange, dates, figs, almond, hazelnuts, and walnuts, sweet wine and cinnamon and is more of a spread than chunky. For Japan, I created my own recipe inspired by popular Japanese ingredients - Asian apple/pears (Nashi in Japanese), sesame seeds, dried cherries (cherry blossom reference even though they aren't actual cherry producing trees), crystalized ginger with Japanese plum wine. It is more floral that others, but I think I like it. Hopefully others will too.

Maror/bitter herbs/horseradish - I continued to use the great carrot citrus horseradish recipe from the Gefilte Manifesto which is now a family tradition after making it for many years. It comes out bright orange.

Gefilte fish - i again made my own using the Gefilte Manifesto quenelle recipe but with 2 TB of added matzo meal. I had hoped to use halibut again for the fish which has turned out great the past several years. However, 5 different grocery stores and no halibut. Whole foods had only a small amount at a high price. So this year it is 2/3 scarlet snapper and 1/3 flounder from Giant. It turned out a bit pinkish instead of the usual all white. Hopefully everyone enjoys.

Asparagus with hazelnut dukkah from Israeli Soul cookbook.

Green salad

Hardboiled eggs - chopped with salt water for a kind of chunky soup - my wife's family tradition.

Chicken soup with matzo balls

Matzo farfel - my wife's family recipe to make chunks of egg cooked farfel (matzo chunks) that act like a crouton. Good with soup or even as a snack by the handful when you would normally eat crackers or pretzels but can't during the holiday.

Charred zucchini with cherry tomatos and mint from the Israeli Soul cookbook.

Dessert is a variety of store bought stuff - fruit gel slices, chocolate lollipops, peppermint patties, but hopefully we'll find time to make homemade coconut macaroos and maybe these soft almond cookies we made last year which were great.

Homemade pickles