By means of introduction... You should know that I have a sense of humor about a lot of things, including and especially religion. If you don't, I recommend that you navigate to something else or just skip on down to the recipe section. I will also say that I don't like naming a celebratory holiday after the death of children, so I'll be referring to Passover as Pesach, which is generally accepted as meaning "He hovered over, guarding [the people of Israel]." Just like Israeli Nyan Cat flies across the sky.
Chag Pesach Sameach! And for my non-Heebs... Happy Passover! Or Easter, or gorgeous SoCal weekend. Whichever you chose to celebrate a few days ago is just fine with me :)
So... Pesach. Quick background: from sundown on Friday of last week to sundown the following Friday, the Jewish people celebrate and remember being freed from bondage in Egypt. We do this in several ways.
- No chametz, or leavened things. This generally includes anything risen, like Jesus... SNAP! But seriously, leavened delicacies like bread, cookies and pasta are considered off-limits. The fab five- wheat, rye, barley, oats and spelt- are all hasta la vista. Coincidentally, because of the barley bit, beer isn't OK either. As I was told at my first and most ghetto seder, we do this to commemorate our quick departure from Pharaoh. "Hos," said Moses*, "slap that dough on your back and get moving, 'cause we ain't got time for this ish to rise!" (*Probably not true.)
- The anti-chametz, AKA matzah, is IN! Not sure how I managed this for a second year in a row, but apparently my matzos are not Passover-approved:
- A seder, meaning "order," is held. This is a delicious feast in which Jews are commanded to consume four glasses of wine, as well as to fill one for the prophet Elijah. As I like to put it, "and one for my homie."
- The Seder Plate... a home for all the symbolic foods of Pesach which help tell the story. Here's the plate that I found on Pinterest and fell in love with:
Buuuuuut... at $259, that ain't happenin'. And to be honest, I wasn't planning on having an actual story-telling this year, just a friendly dinner, so I didn't even make a plate. Worst Jew ever. Although I did have most of the foods during the course of the meal, does that count? To make up for it, here's my plate from last year:
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| Pareve, but not for Passover? How is that even possible?!?! |
I've been a guest at two seders in my life. One was ghetto/amazing/lasted 20 minutes, the other was done Conservodox-style/started in the evening/lasted 3 hours (before the food was served). I'll let you guess which one I preferred and model my own seders after.
I was also genuinely surprised that my guests actually wanted me to go through some of the rigamaroll, light some candles, say some prayers and whatnot. I planned on just having a dinner with friends and was delighted that they asked me to share my completely fractured and generally incompetent view of Jewish practice with them. Side note: Please don't ever take anything I say about Judaism to ever be remotely correct... that's what Wikipedia, Judaism for Dummies and JewFaq are for. And rabbis... they're pretty good for that, too.
I must give Pinterest 100% credit for helping me find this recipe, and I hope the people who liked & repinned it found it to be as easy and delicious as I did! Check out the legit recipe from Oh! Nuts here. They take way better pictures than I do.
The necessary ingredients: large matzos, 1 stick of butter, 1 cup brown sugar, 2 cups chocolate chips, 1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used cashews)
Foil-line your plate and cover in cooking spray, then lay out your matzos.
Foil-line your plate and cover in cooking spray, then lay out your matzos.
Pour that hot, sticky goo over your matzos and spread it around. Do this quickly!
Place the pan in the oven at 350' until the toffee looks like-a-so. Mine took about 8 minutes, but keep an eye on it.
Dump your chocolate chips all over that sucker, and I wouldn't judge you for just eye-balling it and maybe ending up with more than you need. This is a celebratory holiday, after all. Let it sit for a moment, then spread the chocolate like you did the hot, sticky toffee goo. Top with nuts. Or not... your choice.
Stick in the freezer until that puppy is hard as a rock, then smash and enjoy!
Seriously, people who HATE matzah will love this. Even my non-Jewish guests were all up on it, like frogs falling out of the sky and onto the Egyptians. L'chaim!
My Twist on Charoset
Charoset is a symbolic Pesach food meant to resemble the mud/clay that the Israelites used to make bricks during their enslavement in Egypt. Traditionally, it is made with all manner of fruits (dates, figs, apples, raisins, etc.), nuts, cinnamon, honey, and soaked in a sweet red wine. News flash: I hate most of those foods, so I invented my own recipe.
Apple slices (both red and green) drizzled with caramel and sprinkled with cinnamon. Last year I did it as small apple chunks, which did pretty closely resemble a clay mud, but this year I wanted some fancier presentation. FYI, this is an excellent snack any time of year.
Truth time, I had every intention of making these spicy deviled eggs with a parsley garnish, but my timing was terrible and I couldn't make it happen. So this is what we went with:
Three parts of the Seder Plate here: the egg (fertility OR the destruction of the two temples, take your pick), the parsley (the spring vegetable, karpas, that we later dip into salt water to symbolize the tears of our ancestors) and the horseradish (bitter herb symbolizing the harshness of slavery).
If you, like me, don't know how to hard boil eggs, this will help.
Three parts of the Seder Plate here: the egg (fertility OR the destruction of the two temples, take your pick), the parsley (the spring vegetable, karpas, that we later dip into salt water to symbolize the tears of our ancestors) and the horseradish (bitter herb symbolizing the harshness of slavery).
If you, like me, don't know how to hard boil eggs, this will help.
So, at this point, my guests showed up, and I got really frazzled and didn't take many more pictures... food blogger fail. I absolutely will be making these again, so there will be follow-up posts done properly in the future!
Grilled Veggie Packs with Shrimp or Chicken Skewers
The actual making of this is easy... it's the prep work that might kill you. Observe: my father cleaning chicken and shrimp and Taylor chopping veggies. Tay pretty much stood in that spot for about 2 hours cutting everything up. Maybe something to do the day before...
What you need:
- Any kind of vegetable that you would want to throw on the grill. We had red potatoes, yellow squash, garlic cloves, bell pepper, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, zucchini, asparagus, corn on the cob... I really wish we had a picture of the veggie spread!
- FYI, things like cucumber or tomato are too liquid-rich and will not hold up well in the grill pack.
- Olive oil
- Salt/pepper/other spices that appeal to you
- Tin foil to package the veggies in
- Meat on skewers
- A dude (or lady) who is good at grilling - thanks Dad <3
Have each guest take a foil and compile their pack with whatever they like, drizzle a little olive oil, season, and toss on the grill for 20-ish minutes while the meat cooks.
Before:
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| Chili-lime chicken and plain shrimp. FYI, there's nothing kosher about that. Oy vey. |
After:
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| OM NOM NOM. |
Chocolate Souffle Cupcakes with Mint Cream
Here's the trick about Pesach desserts... most of the stand-bys are chametz! I actually love making desserts this time of year because I generally go outside my comfort zone and try something new. Case in point, last year we made this incredible pavlova from Smitten Kitchen. This year I turned to SK again and wound up with these incredible flights of fancy. Truly the pièce de résistance of the entire damn meal, which is really unfortunate because I completely gave up taking pictures at this point, and also scrapped the mint cream in the interest of time. Smitten Kitchen prefers that no one publish her photos outside her site, however also includes a Pin It widget with every post, so here it is embedded from Pinterest:
Rest assured that in the next week or two, I will remake these and properly blog about them in all their glory :)
And with that, I'm off to dream about the bagels and donuts and I almost ate today (true story... I was almost duped by Einstein Bros. The fiends!) Chag Pesach Sameach, and to all a good night!
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