Cooking for Passover

Matzo Ball Soup - aka Jewish penicillin

Ooh, I do love cooking especially for the Jewish holidays. Passover is wrapping up now, but I had a great time preparing for the holiday. I won't give a historical account of the holiday (if you want a bit of an education click here), but basically you can't eat leavened bread. No bagels. No cereal. No pasta. Bascially think about what you can eat everyday and eliminate half of that. Little things you might not even think have flour products do. It's really surprising.
So, a few weeks ago I took a Passover cooking class at The Chopping Block in Lincoln Square. The menu was really inventive and included some new dishes that I'll be adding to my cooking roster including curried matzo ball soup, sephardic haroset (traditionally chopped apples, nuts and cinnamon) and a bitter herb quinoa pilaf. My brother-in-law is also a great cook and took on some of the cooking duties for our Passover Seder (the traditional holiday meal) and we had quite the feast! I made my grandmother's traditional matzo ball soup (she said it was very good so that's a compliment!), a braised brisket with paprika and raisins (it smelled wonderful but somehow I managed to cook it a bit too much on the outside?) and a Martha Stewart walnut cherry torte (this looked AND tasted impressive).
It was a truly wonderful meal and I had a happy belly and delicious food memories to boot!