Photo-free Pesach
I cooked too much to take pictures, what can I say?!
Okay so I love Passover, Noah and I have gone all in on Passover for years. This year, however, maybe we did… too much? We had back to back seders and um, maybe that was a mistake. They were on Friday and Saturday night and I am still tired. That said, today I get to eat leftover brisket and charoset for lunch, so some things are pretty good.
Anyway, I didn’t take a bunch of pictures, so instead I’m just going to share what we made for Passover this year, including a literally perfect vegan chocolate pudding. If you’re hosting a seder of your own for the last night of Passover, here are some recipes I recommend. I especially am obsessed with this pudding, seriously. Make the pudding!
We decided to fully embrace kitnyot this year, which was a great choice. We’ve incorporated more Sephardic traditions in our seder, so this really ties in. One thing we did this year that I highly recommend: hitting your friends with scallions at Passover.
Alas, this year we removed a few of my favorite parts of our Haggadah, including a short discourse on Tamar, my favorite of the Four Daughters (well we took out the Four Daughters completely, because that section is really odd, and also Tamar slept with her father in law). I miss Tamar, and if you want to hear my thoughts on her, feel free to email me, I am always ready to talk Tamar.
Here’s (some of) our menu:
Bejweled Rice, made vegan. I used vegan butter, and soaked the dried cherries and sultanas in orange vinegar, but I think a white wine vinegar would also be tasty for that. I used vegan butter instead of dairy butter, and I used extra carrots. People loved this recipe, it was really good.
Now vegan… chocolate pudding. I loved this recipe back when I was a milk consumer. I made it vegan two ways, both I liked, but one had chametz. I used: 2 cup of oat milk and a 1 cup of coconut milk, OR if you want it chamtez free use: concentrated almond milk and coconut milk in the same ratio.
To make concentrated coconut milk, just pour it into a large pan and cook on low (just steaming) for quite a while. I think I cooked it for almost an hour. Make sure to stir it, scraping the bottom, frequently but not obsessively. If you use concentrated almond milk in the recipe be sure to strain the pudding, as you can get a few lumps. Either way, this pudding has a terrific texture and flavor, I use 60% chocolate, and it’s delicious.
Vegan mashed potatoes: I follow this recipe as is. It can get pretty stiff when it’s cold, because of the lack of milk, but the flavor is great.
Pickled salad. I followed this recipe pretty closely? Although I didn’t use, uh, any cabbage, so I scaled down the salt and stuff accordingly.
Chocolate toffee matzoh. I made this with vegan butter. It was great. People asked me for the recipe, so here it is!
This is just what I made, Noah’s recipes are ~~very secret~~ and also he’s not a contributing editor to my dumb newsletter.
What I’m reading
I’ve never been to Buca di Beppo but I love this story. As someone who uh, loves and cherishes tacky things, this story made me happy. The entire special feature on Bon Appetit about red sauce is terrific.
This long profile of Ruth Wilson Gilmore. I feel like it was buzzy the day it got published but got passed over (…) for the Muller Report Madness. Dr. Gilmore is an abolitionist and geographer. A pairing I hadn’t thought much about. I think this is a wonderful profile, I really recommend it.
Okay love you chag sameach! Also, we spent so much money hosting Passover that we’re going to be eating beans for a while so send me your favorite bean recipes pls.