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This year you’ll love cooking for Passover.
The recipes featured below were excerpted from Tamar Ansh’s Pesach cookbook that is completely non-Gebrochts and gluten-free, PESACH- Anything's Possible!
With Passover upon us, I wanted to get your creative juices flowing with some really tasty and outstanding Passover recipes. Save these – they are also really great for year-round gluten-free ideas. Here are two main meal recipes along with several dessert ideas. Enjoy your Passover!
Let's get started with a new twist on chicken soup…
Cream of Chicken Soup
Serves 6 - 8
Using a large soup pot, dice the onion and garlic and sauté it in a small amount of oil (not olive oil). After it has turned light brown, add in the chicken bones and let them brown a bit too. Chunk the celery and carrots and add them in. Add in the salt and pepper. Add in water to cover plus another at least 4 cups of water. Place the zucchini and the potato cubes into a net bag (for easier removal later on) and add this to the soup as well. Your pot should be mostly full this way, but not at the very top; this prevents it from boiling over and creating a mess on the stovetop. Bring the soup to a boil; once it is boiling, turn down the flame and let it simmer for two hours.
After the two hours of simmering time, carefully remove the net bag from the soup. Empty its contents into another medium sized pot. Turn off the first pot of soup and set it aside for now. Remove a few of the carrot chunks to a small plate. Cut them into tiny cubes and put them into the fridge for later use.
Spoon out 4-5 ladlefuls of soup into the pot with the boiled zucchini and potatoes. Take out 2 or three of the chicken wings from the original pot of soup; remove the chicken meat from them and add them into the second pot of soup that you are now pureeing. Using a hand blender, puree all this together until it is smooth. Keep adding in more of the original chicken broth to it until you have a thick consistency of soup that is neither a paste nor too thin. Put this new pot of soup on a small flame to simmer while you finish the last step.
Cut the one piece of schnitzel into tiny cubes. This is best done when the schnitzel is still partially frozen. Heat up a frying pan with a small amount of oil and brown the schnitzel pieces on both sides until they are cooked through, about five to eight minutes or so. They will brown and cook quickly since they are so small. Set this aside.
Spoon the soup into each bowl. Add a small amount of chicken 'chunks' to each bowl, a few of the cubed carrots that you reserved, and a sprig of fresh parsley for color and flavor. Serve immediately.
Some of the really nice points about this recipe, aside from its delicious taste and appearance, are that now you can freeze the remainder of the clear chicken soup to use for Shabbos or for the last day of the holiday.
Here’s our family’s most popular holiday meat dish – I use this one every year without fail…
Pepper Short Ribs
Serves 6
Sauté the green pepper with a bit of the olive oil in a covered pot until they are soft, about 15 minutes. Remove the peppers from the pot and place them in a covered container. Refrigerate until later use.
In a large pot, add more olive oil and begin to sauté the meat until it is browned slightly on one side; turn the meat pieces over and sauté them on the other side as well. Remove them to a plate while you sauté the onions.
Once the onions are sautéed, add the meat pieces back in. Add in the water and the wine. Cover the pot, turn the flame down to simmer and allow it to cook gently for 8 hours or so, checking and basing it occasionally. I cannot begin to describe how wonderful your home will smell while this dish is simmering on the stovetop. The aroma it emits is out of this world.
In a small bowl, mix together the potato starch, a bit more water, the sugar, and a bit more wine if the juices in the pot have diminished greatly. Remove the meat pieces from the pot and into the reserved juices that are still hot add this mixture and stir. It should begin to thicken. Add the meat back in as well as the reserved cooked green peppers. Simmer it all together for another half hour or so. If the sauce becomes too thick, add some more wine.
This dish serves great alone or alongside boiled and cubed potatoes.
And of course, what would Pesach be without delicious desserts? These are a yearly staple by me…
Famous Brownies
Makes one 9x13 tray
Chocolate Glaze:
Preheat the oven to 350°F / 180 °C.
Place all the ingredients, except for the nuts and coconut, into a large bowl. Mix together until smooth. Add in the nuts and optional coconut.
Pour this out into a 9x13 pan that has been lined with parchment baking paper. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the brownies' center comes out mostly clean, and the top is light brown and crispy. Do not overbake as then it will become too dry. Remove from oven immediately and allow it to cool completely.
In a separate small bowl, mix together the glaze ingredients with a spoon, until smooth. Spread over the cooled brownies. Allow it to set for a few minutes and then slice.
Freezes wonderfully, even glazed. If you freeze it when already glazed, slice them first. When defrosting, uncover the brownies while frozen so the glaze will not defrost all over the foil you covered them with.
This next show-stopper dessert has been a specialty of my mother’s since I am a little girl. It’s a real eye-catcher and relatively simple to do. You’ll soon see why we use this one all year long, not ‘only’ for Pesach…
World Famous Chocolate Cake Mousse Rolls
Makes two large rolls
Beat egg whites. Set aside. Beat the yolks in a separate bowl with the sugar until thickened. Add in the potato starch and cocoa and mix the yolks again; add in the vanilla. Fold in the beaten egg whites that you set aside from before.
Take out two kitchen towels, run them under water, and squeeze them out as much as possible. Lay them out on the counter in preparation for the cake rolls. Grease and line two jelly roll pans with wax paper, or parchment paper, and grease the paper also. Bake at 375°F / 190°C for 15 minutes. Check with toothpick in middle of cake to see that it is done. Remove the cakes from the oven and immediately flip them out, cake side down, onto the waiting towels. Peel off wax paper carefully, and roll up the cakes in the towel jelly roll style. Let cool for 30 minutes in this position.
After the cakes have cooled off completely, carefully open them up and fill them with the mousse filling listed below.
These are the steps for filling the rolls:
Prepare a large sheet of foil, one per roll. Place a large piece of saran wrap on the foil. Unroll the cake rolls directly onto this. Fill, roll up with the help of the saran wrap, and cover gently. Freeze flat, immediately, until hard.
Later you may frost the rolls with the following:
Option one: Glaze/frosting from Chocolate Brownie recipe listed above.
Option two: Melt 100 grams hard chocolate together with 2 tablespoons of oil. Spread over rolls, slice when set and serve.
Grated chocolate bits, ground nuts, coconut, powdered sugar can be sprinkled on top of the frosted rolls according to your taste while the melted chocolate or glaze is still wet.
Delicious!
And here’s the recipe for the actual mousse part of these rolls:
Mommy's Famous Chocolate Mousse
Melt chocolate in double boiler, then add the coffee that was placed in the hot water. Stir together. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until very stiff. In another separate bowl, beat the yolks until thick, while adding the sugar to the yolks gradually during the beating process. Add chocolate mixture and the vanilla to yolks. Fold both mixtures together. Refrigerate to firm it up.
Enjoy your Pesach!
All the best,
Tamar Ansh
Click here for a free Passover E-Cookbook, from Pesach - Anything's Possible! and click on the button for the free download located underneath the image of the book’s cover.
Click here to order Pesach - Anything's Possible! available now in Jewish bookstores everywhere.
