Can you believe Passover is eight ENTIRE days? More like eight and a half (insert Fellini joke here) when you take into account the day of the first seder.

Well, if you’ve run out of yummy treats and have matzo coming out your ears, here are three unusual holiday recipes. All of them are delicious. All of them have the potential to be pareve. And none of them have matzo.

Our first recipe is gluten-free pancakes (you may have seen them online before), which don’t sound like they should resemble pancakes at all, given the fact that the main ingredient is banana.  But it’s actually not bad, and it’s also OK regardless of if you eat kitniyot on Pesach:

Recipe #1: Perfect Passover Pancakes:

Ingredients:

• 2 bananas
• 1/2 cup of almond butter (or peanut butter, if you like/are able)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• drizzle of honey

Directions:

Shmush everything together (if the bananas are ripe enough, a fork and elbow grease should do it).  Bananas first, then eggs, then almond butter, then extras.

Fry ’em up like you would pancakes!  Keep ’em small, and be patient as they cook.

Recipe #2: Hannah’s Chanukah, But Notka

This latke springtime treat comes to us from Hannah Simpson. She honestly wonders why more people don’t do this.

Ingredients:

• 1-2 onions, grated
• Potatoes, grated (3 times as many as onions, and they should all be of comparable size)
• 1 chute of diced scallion per potato
• 1 egg per 3 potatoes
• Salt, to taste
• Extra virgin olive oil, for cooking

Directions:

Mix all ingredients in a large pot. Take golf-ball sized scoops placed into EVOO, squished down repeatedly, flipped once or twice, and served burnt. Let fresh latkes cool over paper towel. Serve with sour cream, or apple sauce to keep it pareve.

Recipe #3: Black Salt Avocado Pickles

This hardboiled egg alternative for vegans comes to us from Ashley Goldstein. It’s quick and very easy:

Ingredients:

• 1 ripe avocado
• 1/2 tsp black salt
• 3 tbsp vinegar
• Water to cover

Directions:

Slice avocado and place into a sealable (ideally glass) container. Add the rest of the ingredients and allow to pickle for at least an hour.

And there you have it, kids.  Now go forth, enjoy, and power through your Passover.  We believe in you.

Image by Jewcy via photos from Pixabay and Wikimedia

The post Not Your Bubbe’s Recipe: The Passover Food Triumvirate appeared first on Jewcy.

Passover often falls when the weather just starts to turn nice, but the sound of the forbidden ice cream truck going past may be enough to make a grown man weep. But! Here is a recipe for how to make your own delicious frozen treat, that’s even dairy free, so you can serve it after a meat holiday meal.

The recipe comes to Jewcy from Aliza Goldstein and her dad Jeff. Its ease of making is miraculous, but Aliza endorses it thus:

“The real miracle is that no one has ever gotten salmonella from this.”

The Goldstein clan got this treat from a 1970s synagogue sisterhood recipe book, by a Bess Goldstein (no relation to Jeff, Aliza and co.). The cookbook notes: “A very nice dessert for Sedar [sic] night. Delicious over sponge cake.”

The modern Goldsteins are skeptical about the sponge cake part, given the holiday. But Aliza describes the ice cream as “life-changing.” So à la mode or by itself, give this a try!

• 2 egg whites
• 1 pinch salt
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 cups strawberries

In large tupperware, beat egg white until foamy and add salt. Continue beating as you slowly add sugar. When it stands in peaks, add sliced or partly crushed strawberries and lemon juice. Continue to beat for 15 minutes until mixture holds peaks. Cover, store in freezer and serve frozen.

Enjoy!

Image via Pexels.

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Who’s up for some Jewish-queer intersectionality? And how about if that intersection is the form of a Chanukah treat? That’s right, you can make latkes all colors of the rainbow, without getting too far away from traditional potato pancakes, and no, there’s no food coloring involved.

These are really easy, really pretty, and really flavorful. The base recipe (regardless of color) is:

Ingredients:

• (1) egg
• (1/4) onion
• (1) grated vegetable

Instructions:

Mix all in a bowl and form into patties before frying ’em up nice and crispy.

There’s no one way to get the color palette you want, but here are some tips on how to get started:

• Red: Beets
• Orange: Carrots, Sweet Potatoes, orange cauliflower
• Yellow: Potatoes, parsnip, jicima, sunchoke
• Green: Zucchini, broccoli, or if you really want to use kale, go ahead, but mix it with potato for structure
• Blue: If you’re a rainbow completist, my best suggestion is blue potatoes
• Purple: Purple carrot, purple cauliflower

And then tada! A stack of rainbowy, pridey potato pancakes! Allies are also welcome to enjoy!

Now, while they all taste delicious, some flavors mesh together better than others. I tasted the rainbow, if you will, the first time I made these and the beets and carrots didn’t really taste so great together. But taste is subjective, so maybe you like the combination. Feel free to experiment. Don’t be limited by certain latkes identities; it’s the 21st century.

Anyway, go forth and enjoy! And feel free to share your results with us on Twitter!

Image by Rachel Jacobs

The post Rainbow Pride Latkes appeared first on Jewcy.

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published with a secret family recipe that the author regrets sharing. We have replaced it with a similar one from Food.com. For the author’s version, you’ll have to join his family for Chanukah.

If you hear the phrase, “koeksisters for Chanukah,” you’re probably thinking one of two things: Either it’s “What the heck is a koeksister?,” or, it’s “Koeksisters aren’t a Chanukah food!”

In regards to the former, a koeksister (pronounced cook-sister) is a delicious baked good of South African origin. In regards to the latter, they totally can be. South Africa is the home to a large Jewish community, and what says Chanukah more than a fried treat? As Elissa Goldstein wrote for Tablet in 2014:

The idea originated with… South African-born geneticist Adele Schneider, who was looking for something fun for her three kids to do on the holiday that wasn’t centered around giving gifts, which isn’t a Hanukkah tradition in most Jewish communities outside the U.S. So about 20 years ago the koeksister-making tradition was born.

Goldstein also described the finished product as “a sublime cookie: warm, soft, and buttery on on the inside; crisp and sweet on the outside.” If you’re drooling, you’re in luck; you can make them yourself:

Ingredients:

Syrup:

• 1 cup water
• 2.5 cups sugar
• 2.5 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 Tsp. vanilla extract

Dough:

• 1.5 cups flour
• 4.5 Tsp. Baking powder
• ¼ Tsp. salt
• 1.5 Tbsp. Butter
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 5/8 cup milk (or vanilla-flavored soy milk)
• 3 cups Vegetable oil for frying

Instructions:

• Boil water and sugar together in a pot, stirring until sugar is completely dissolved. Boil for 7 more minutes.
• Remove the pot from heat and add lemon juice and vanilla extract. Move pot to the fridge.
• Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl. Rub in butter, and add milk.
• Roll the dough out to a thickness of roughly a quarter inch. Cut the dough into thin (roughly 1/2 inch) strips. Braid them just like you would a challah!
• Remove the syrup from the fridge.
• Heat the oil in a pot until fairly hot. Put about 3 koeksisters (or what can fit) at a time in the oil and fry them on both sides until they get a golden-brown color. As you remove the koeksisters for the oil, place them directly into the syrup from the fridge. It is important to keep the syrup cool, so between soakings, return the syrup to the fridge to maintain its coolness.
• Wait for the excess syrup to drip off and the koeksisters to cool.

And there you have it! Go forth and enjoy a new Chanukah treat, so you can finally stop debating latkes vs. jelly doughnuts.

Image via Tablet, originally from Flickr

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Want to indulge in a meaty Jewish staple, but, well, without the meat? Have a vegetarian or vegan friend coming to your Rosh HaShanah meal? Fear not! You can have this tasty brisket-substitute with no animal products.

This recipe is adopted from the Meet the Shannons food blog.

You will need:

3 Small Leeks, sliced
6-8 Red Potatoes, quartered
1 Cup Baby Carrots
2 Packages Gardein Beef-less Tips (defrosted)
1/4 Cup Olive Oil, plus an extra 2 tablespoons to brush over your “beef”
1/4 Cup Kosher Red Wine (Manischewitz or similar)
1/4 Cup Soy Sauce
1 Can Tomato Paste (6oz)
1/2 Cup Strong Brewed Black Coffee
3 Tablespoons Light Brown Sugar
2 Tablespoons Vegan Worcestershire Sauce (optional)
Kosher Salt and Black Pepper (to taste)

Directions:

1. In your slow cooker, mix leeks, potatoes, carrots, 1/4 cup olive oil, red wine, and soy sauce and cook on high for 2 hours.
2. In a small bowl, mix coffee, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, and brown sugar with a whisk until sugar has dissolved.
3. Brush the defrosted gardein with 2 Tablespoons of olive oil. Put the gardein in your slow cooker on top of the vegetables (don’t mix them in).
4. Pour the coffee sauce over the top and cook for another hour.
5. Pre-heat oven to 400.
6. With a ladle, move your gardein and vegetables from your slow cooker into a glass baking dish. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until the top begins to brown. Turn your oven down to 200 and cook for another 20 to 30 minutes.
7. Remove from the oven once your sauce has reduced to saucy gravy. Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Go forth, and enjoy!

Molly Moses is a music therapist practicing in Central Florida, working primarily with children with special needs. She enjoys cooking and discovering new vegetarian recipes, especially for the holidays, and sharing them with family and friends.

Image via Wikimedia

The post Not Your Bubbe’s Recipe: Beef-less Brisket with Vegetables appeared first on Jewcy.

It’s game time: Kiddush has been made, hamotzi has been sung out loud, and challah has been handed out. Time to dig in.

Looking around, you spot the usual suspects in which to dip your blessed bread. There’s some hummus, maybe some egg salad, and there, hovering at the edge of your vision, is what looks like a pile of cement. It’s gray, it’s mushy, and it’s its ingredients are unidentifiable. Yep, it’s baba ghanoush.

Back in the day, bubbes all over the Middle East made baba ghanoush out of ripe roasted eggplants, fresh lemon juice, and some homemade tahini. Without a mass production line as a middleman, they got something creamy and delicious. I’m sure that when they ate it in Lebanon, where this recipe originates, passion and devotion were the hidden ingredients, and not unpronounceable preservatives. Yet, that’s not how we often find it now. I don’t know about you, but mine always come in a plastic container, blended with unpalatable ingredients listed on the label.

Classic baba ghanoush might have the same shape as flubber but doesn’t have quite as much life in it. Israelis don’t mince words and they label the endless selection of mass produced baba ghanoush “chatzilim bemoynez” (eggplants in mayonnaise). The Sabra version was adapted from Israel’s neighbors but often mayonnaise is substituted for tahini. You know how we feel about mayonnaise, it’s like substituting flavor for something that prevents the spread’s other ingredients from shining. Surprisingly, the Arabic translation of baba ghanoush is something like “spoiled father,” presumably because anyone who eats it is immediately spoiled by the unique flavors of the dish. I guess somewhere this got lost in translation.

That’s where this deconstructed baba ghanoush recipe comes in. Instead of mixing everything together, creating the consistency of something that can be consumed with a straw, this salad has chunks of roasted eggplants, fresh lemon, and whole sesame seeds. Instead of eating mush, enjoy something chewy and satisfying. You don’t need challah to make this baba ghanoush digestible; it’s great on its own. It stays true to its roots by being fresh and bold, but stays far away from anything you can find in the supermarket. The only plastic container you’ll find this salad in, is one in the back corner of your fridge, so your family won’t get their hands on your delicious leftovers; and that’s only if there are any left.

Not Your Bubbe’s Baba Ghanoush

Serves 5

Ingredients:

1 large eggplant, cut into cubes with peel intact
12 pearl onions, halved
9 garlic cloves, chopped finely
2 tablespoons of fresh coriander, diced
2 teaspoon cumin
1\4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1\3 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons preserved lemons
Salt and pepper to taste
1\4 cup of sesame seeds

Directions:

1. Mix together all your ingredients, except for the sesame seeds, in a large Tupperware. Make sure to combine them well so that the ingredients fuse properly.

2. Let your salad ingredients marinate for at least two hours and preferably overnight. The more time they sit the more depth the salad’s flavors will have.

3. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

4. Roast your sesame seeds for a couple of minutes until they turn brown, but be careful not to burn them.

5. While your sesame seeds are roasting, drain your salad, and put its marinade in a bowl. You can later toss your salad with its marinade to give it a bit of a touch up before serving.

6. Place your salad ingredients on a roasting pan and roast them for about 15 minutes. They are ready when your eggplant is soft and slightly burnt; but not mushy.

7. Toss your vegetables and seeds with some of the marinade according to taste and serve.

Also try:

Not Your Bubbe’s Mandel Bread

Not Your Bubbe’s Cranberry Crunch

Not Your Bubbe’s Cole Slaw

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