The Holiday Kitchen: Passover Dinner with friends

Every year my best friend hosts a Passover Dinner as a way for us to celebrate Easter. It has become a beloved tradition and is filled with good friends and great food. Yesterday, I got to help her put together parts of the dinner. We then had a great time as we enjoyed the meal. 

My favorite part of the meal is the Matzah Ball Soup! It is an Ashkenazi Jewish soup dumplings made with a mixture of matzah meal, beaten eggs, water, and oil. The balls are mixed together and formed and cooked in a chicken soup and is a staple during Passover. 

This was found in a region of Central and Eastern Europe with extensive history and cultural significance in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Israel, and the Jewish diaspora. It is a simple recipe if you want to make it from scratch but there are also matzah ball mixes that you can use and this is how we tend to make our matzah ball soup. Matzah is made of unleavened flatbread. Matzah is integral in the Passover festival, where leavened bread is forbidden. This soup is also referred to as Jewish Penicillin. It is comfort food at its best and is great to eat when feeling under the weather. 

                        

Another favorite Passover dish is the Haroset. It is a sweet, dark colored relish made with apples and walnuts and is meant to recall mortar which the Israelites used when enslaved in Egypt. This dish originated in Israel. It's main ingredients are apples, chopped finely, walnuts, crushed, grape juice, honey, and cinnamon. 

The Haroset is part of the seder plate which is used during the seder ceremony. During the seder it is served with matzah crackers and with horseradish. Personally, I love the mix of the horseradish with the haroset. It gives it a lot of flavor but more importantly it is very symbolic of the Israelites life in Egypt and the sweeting of their burden of bitterness and suffering while in slavery. 

                            

The main dish in the Passover meal can be fish, chicken, or beef. Pork and shellfish are forbidden as well as rabbit and certain types of fish without fins or scales We always have brisket. My friend always make it and it is fantastic. She uses a recipe that features both Pomegranate juice and Thyme. The flavor is so good a little sweet and a little salty. The meat is slow roasted. This is not the exact recipe we used but it is a pomegranate brisket with all the same ingredients. 

The side dishes are really up to your own taste. There is a great dish called Tzimmes but I am the only one that likes it so we don't make this one much anymore. It has carrots, sweet potatoes, prunes, orange juice, grape juice, and brown sugar. 

You can use any kind of fruit, and any vegetable (except corn, peas, green beans, dried beans) for your side dishes. We make a couple potato based dishes. One is a mix of potatoes, red onion, carrots, and cabbage. The other is a mix of potatoes, red onion, red pepper flakes, and thyme if you have it. We tend to use red potatoes. You can add any other of the veggies you want unless mentioned in the exepts above. We don't have a recipe for this but you can season however you like.