Passover
269 recipes found

Citrusy Brisket With Spring Lettuces
This is a bright, zesty take on braised brisket, in which the meat is cooked with lemon and orange juice, along with plenty of onions and dry white wine. It makes for a lighter-tasting sauce than the standard rich, brown gravy, with a tangy, citrus flavor. For serving, the tender slices of meat are topped with a crisp herb salad, adding even more freshness to the plate. Serve it with mashed or roasted potatoes to soak up all the caramelized, oniony juices.

Braised Brisket With Plums, Star Anise and Port
For this recipe, I added plums to the onions in the sauce for brightness, and port for sweetness. Star anise and bay leaf add depth, but you could leave them out without anyone missing them, or substitute a cinnamon stick and orange zest. And if you don’t want to use port, regular red wine spiked with a few tablespoons of honey or brown sugar is a nice substitute. If you can, track down a second cut, or deckle, brisket for this dish. For lovers of fatty meat, this is brisket nirvana. It’s juicy, it’s succulent, it falls apart under the fork with barely a nudge. It’s also as tasty as short ribs but less expensive, which is what you want when you’re cooking for a large family dinner. You can’t find the second cut in many supermarkets, but butchers have it if you ask.

Corned Beef
Molly O'Neill brought this recipe to The Times in 2000. It calls for brining the meat for 8 to 12 days, but you can cheat. Even a few days will yield tender results.

Rainbow Potato Roast
Each different type of potato here has its own distinctive flavor and texture as well as color. Some will roast more quickly than others but it doesn’t matter to me if certain pieces in the mix become very soft. My favorite mix here consists of sweet potato, purple potatoes, fingerlings, Yukon golds and red bliss.

Joyce Goldstein's Pickled Salmon

Matzo Brei with Caramelized Apples
This recipe is adapted from the restaurant Jane in downtown New York. There, the chef Glenn Harris offers a matzo brei that is an expanded version of his mother's. Mr. Harris's mother, in Brooklyn, made sweet matzo brei with honey or jelly, or matzo meal pancakes the size of silver dollars sprinkled with sugar. His version is much more elaborate, with cubes of caramelized apples, a vanilla-honey sauce and mascarpone.

Poppy-Seed Torte

Braised Flanken With Pomegranate
I’d always thought that flanken was specific to boiled beef or soup. But a little research divulged that the brawny cut is hugely popular in braises (and pot-roasting is arguably the same as braising), especially in Germany, Austria and Hungary. It also shines in Asian cuisines, particularly Korean, in which it’s seared and served rare. Arthur Schwartz, in his book “Jewish Home Cooking” (Ten Speed Press, 2008), extols the virtues of flanken. He points out that it’s from the same part of the animal as short ribs, cut across rather than along the bones. But while short ribs have achieved culinary stardom and high prices, flanken remains cheap and obscure. And just as tasty.

Georgian Chicken in Pomegranate and Tamarind Sauce
This dish, adapted from "The Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking," brings an unusual sweet flavor to the Rosh Hashana table. Tamarind paste and pomegranate seeds are readily available at larger supermarkets, and always online.

Prune and Almond Braised Short Ribs
When the chef Tony Maws’s grandparents died, he decided to start having Passover Seder at his restaurant, Craigie on Main in Cambridge, Mass. This short rib recipe, brought to The Times in 2011, was among the dishes he served, both to his family (on the first night) and his diners (on the second and third nights). It’s a Sephardic take on his grandmother’s tsimmes and brisket, prepared a day in advance and refrigerated to let the flavors meld and the fat float to the top to be skimmed. Serve it as part of a Seder, or for just about any special occasion. It is sure to impress.

Caribbean Kugel

Chicken With Bitter Herb Pesto
The goal was compatibility with Israeli white and red wines and also with a Passover Seder menu. It was a simple one, achieved with dark meat chicken, which goes with either choice and can stand up to slow cooking. I made a pesto with escarole. Among Ashkenazi Jews the bitter herb, or maror, on the ceremonial Seder plate is usually horseradish. But for Sephardic Jews, it is usually a green vegetable like escarole, which Ashkenazi Jews may sometimes include. I spread the pesto on the boned thighs, then enclosed the filling. Matzo meal encouraged a golden crust. The chicken needs no tending during the Seder service. It's a good idea to pray for leftovers, because the chicken, sliced into rounds, is delicious for lunch.

Moroccan Moufleta
For Moroccan Jews — and increasingly Israeli and other Jews of all stripes and ancestral origin — the end of the Passover holiday is not complete without a Mimouna feast. And at its center is moufleta, a flat cake that you fry in a pan and assemble into a stack. (If that seems too tricky, we provide a method here for making them individually.) The dough is fairly simple, as are the traditional toppings, soft butter and honey. But if you prefer homemade or Nutella, no one but the staunchest traditionalists is likely to complain.

Baked Coconut Balls
During the traditional Mimouna celebration at the end of Passover, many Israeli Jews lay out an elaborate table with sweets. Because dietary rules during the holiday ban flour from the house (including frozen cookies that contain it), the treats are usually flourless. Here, ground coconut turns the texture of these cookies into a soft and pleasantly cloudlike.

Poached Apricots With Kaymak

Turkish Spinach with Tomatoes and Rice
Not every tradition allows rice during Passover; in this fragrant dish there’s just enough of it to add substance to the vegetables. Some Sephardic Jews have traditionally allowed rice during Passover, whereas many Ashkenazi Jews do not. There isn’t much of it in this Turkish spinach dish, adapted from a recipe in Clifford A. Wright’s “A Mediterranean Feast,” just enough to add substance to the vegetables.

Spinach Salad With Mushrooms and Hibiscus Flower Vinaigrette

Moroccan Fava Bean and Vegetable Soup
When I am planning a Passover menu I look to the Sephardic traditions of the Mediterranean. The Sephardim were the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula; they had a rich culture and lived in harmony with Christians and Muslims until the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions at the end of the 15th century, when all non-Christians were expelled from Spain and Portugal. The Sephardim were welcomed in Turkey, and many went to Greece, North Africa and the Middle East as well. Throughout the Mediterranean, springtime is the season for spinach and other greens, artichokes and fava beans, and these vegetables make delicious appearances at Passover meals. This dish is inspired by the fresh fava bean soup that Rivka Levy-Mellul, author of “La Cuisine Juive Marocaine,” remembers as the first course of her childhood Seders in Morocco. The authentic dish is a substantial soup made with quite a lot of meat, but I’ve made a vegetarian version. I expected the fava beans to color this soup a pale green, but the other vegetables — the carrots, leeks, turnips and onion — and especially the turmeric contribute just as much, and the color of the soup is more of a burnt orange.

Egg Lemon Soup with Matzos
Rather than making matzo balls for this comforting soup, I crumble matzos into the broth -- no schmaltz required. In Greece the chicken that is later served as part of the main course for Passover is simmered in water with aromatic vegetables to create the broth. You can make a very tasty vegetarian version using garlic broth (my favorite) or vegetable broth. I like to add steamed Swiss chard when I stir in the egg-lemon mixture, but you could add another green spring vegetable, like fresh peas, spinach or asparagus. Steam them first until tender and add to the soup just before serving.

Beef Roast With Melted Tomatoes and Onions
“I would rather be the kosher Rachael Ray than the kosher Martha Stewart,” Susie Fishbein told our colleague Julia Moskin in 2008, after the release of one of Mrs. Fishbein’s popular “Kosher by Design” cookbooks. “My books speak to harried everyday cooks like me.” This fabulous roast of beef with melted tomatoes and onions serves as an excellent example of her appeal – and the leftovers make incredible sandwiches the next day.

Larry Bain's Adaptation Of His Grandmother's Haroseth

Persian Haroseth (Hallaq)

Yemenite Haroseth
