Pesach Night 7: Cinnamon balls
These are a true passover classic.
They’re sweet, almondy, cinnamony and stogy. It’s a relatively simple 1:2:4 ratio by weight of egg white, caster sugar and ground almonds with half a tablespoon of cinnamon per egg white - or more if you love it. They are basically just a baked marzipan to be completely honest but they are very much a classic passover snack. 10/10 would recommend
Pesach Night 6: vegetable jungle curry
This is 🔥spicy🔥.
Jungle curry is a Thai curry which doesn't use coconut milk meaning there is no fat in the sauce to help temper the spice. As a result, it can pack quite the punch. Traditionally this would be a meaty curry but at home, we tend to have it as a vegetarian side dish as in the photo above. I added sweet potato, courgette and lychee. The potato thickens the sauce a little but it also provides a hit of carbs which helps bulk out a meal - no rice needed (although totally fair if you want rice as that will help make the spice less aggressive too). Normally we would eat this with salmon for our protein (cooked separately) but if you wanted, you could simmer chicken thighs or another meat of your choice. The main thing you'll need to think about is adjusting when you your meat/veggies in so they all end up cooked at the same time.
The recipe for this curry came from an old Waitrose magazine which was removed from the magazine and added to a folder we have at home with lots of odds and ends recipes from various places. And when I say old magazine, it's old enough that this particular recipes is not even on their website - but there are plenty of excellent recipes for jungle curry online, just make sure you find one that's nice and spicy!
Pesach Night 5: almond cake with orange syrup
This cake is ✨moist✨
This cake is also an annual event in my house because it's so unbelievably delicious. The recipe comes from Claudia Roden and it is normally overlooked because of her more famous orange and almond cake (which involves boiling and pureeing oranges and happens to be right next to this cake in the book) but I personally think this drizzle cake is much better.
It's super easy to make. You mix together all of the ingredients (ground almonds, egg yolks, sugar, orange zest, cinnamon) until they are homogenous. You whisk the egg whites and then fold them through, pour the batter into a tin and bake. Once the cake is cooked and cooled, you flood it with orange syrup until the cake is saturated. I'm not kidding by the way, every slice positively oozes syrup - no one could accuse this cake of being dry.
Pesach Night 4: beef and broccoli stir fry
This dish does very much depend on whether you eat kitniyot as it uses a tamari based sauce. Tamari is very similar to soy sauce but should doesn't contain any wheat so it can be used relatively interchangeably to make you normal stir fry k4p.
For the sauce for this stir fry, I also used a small amount of sugar, and a little drizzle of sesame oil. I tend to mix it in a bowl adding more of different ingredients until I get to my desired flavour profile. I also included grated ginger and garlic as well as crushed Szechuan peppercorns for this one but in general, I make it up as I go along.
To make the stir fry, I first thinly sliced the beef, tossed it in a little oil, and fried it on maximum heat until it started browning on the outside but was not fully cooked through. I then removed it from the pan before aggressively frying the onion until it was mostly soft, and started to blister. I added the broccoli and fried some more until that too began to brown around the edges. I added the beef back into the pan and then tossed it all with the sauce - about 60-80ml in total was enough across the three potions I made. If you don't have enough sauce, make up the rest of the liquid volume with the juice that will have come out of the beef while it rested.
I finished the dish with a sprinkle of Spring onions
Pesach Night 3: chocolate macaron
So coconut macaroons are a classic Pesach food, but I really cannot stand them but macaron has a kind of similar spelling so I'm going to pretend they're close enough.
These are a nice and simple macaron - chocolate shells and a chocolate ganache filling (and not that hard to make I promise)
Pesach Night 2: Thai Curry
Thai curry is inherently kosher for Pesach (assuming you don't use a paste with shrimp in it 🤣) - no tweaks needed! In the case of this one, I've added tofu instead of meat so it does contain kitniyot which not everyone will eat, but if you use just veg (or meat and veg), then it's good to go.
If you eat don't eat rice, you can use quinoa or add potato/sweet potato to the curry to help both thicken the sauce and also add some carbs to help fill you up.
This is absolutely a meal I would 10/10 recommend because people who say Pesach food is boring are wrong and I am making it my mission to prove this!
Pesach Night 1: matzah crack
This is, and I appreciate the significance of what I'm about to say, not only a delicious snack but would also be an excellent way of using up leftover matzah post-passover for when you inevitably buy too much.
The original recipe comes from Marcy Goldman and this year, I thought I would spice it up with some slivered pistachios (and certainly wasn't just itching for a chance to use them because 1. I love pistachios, and 2. They look phenomenal in photos)
I make no secret of my love for a bundt cake. The tin does all the hard work making the cake look beautiful and all you need to do is grease and flour it properly.
This cake is from @melathomeltd ‘s cookery book “bundt” which I treated myself to as a birthday present a couple of months ago. While perusing it, I saw the words “salted caramel and popcorn bundt” and was pretty much hooked from there. It was just a matter of time until I got around to baking this cake. Owing to the fact that the icing and popcorn fill the hole in the bundt, I knew I had to choose a pan with lots of space in the middle and conveniently I had got this particular pan (I believe the design is called “magnolia”) as part of another birthday present from the wonderful @rachcreeger as well as our colleague Marion. People know me so well 🤣🤣
I did end up accidentally using double the caramel needed in the cake because I didn’t fully read the recipe, however the cake still turned out well – if a little denser than intended. I’ll have to make it again at some point and do it correctly!
Tips I would suggest for anyone who tries it; make the caramel nice and dark as there’s a lot of sugar in this cake and you want to try and reduce the sweetness where possible. Also, make sure not to add the milk into the icing until you’ve added everything else and can check if the icing is too thick or not. I added it far to early and then had to add more butter and icing sugar to thicken the icing again.
While I’m not normally a salted popcorn fan, you absolutely need it to top this cake and cut through the sweetness. Frankly, the salted popcorn and the icing alone are a delicious pairing whether you’re making the cake or not!
It's Purim, again, and I am on my annual mission to remind people that poppy seeds are the best filling for hamentaschen and I will not be taking criticism at this current time 🙂
Obviously I was going to have pancakes today because I'll take any excuse to make them. These were filled with a super buttery caramel where the sugar was taken to a super dark amber to lower the sweetness.
They were also filled with the caramel, not just smothered with a. Small, unimpressive amount.
Channukah night 8: creme brûlée doughnuts
Filled with a thick creme patisserie and dipped in golden melted sugar, these were a true highlight of Channukah. They're possibly some of the best doughnuts I've ever made as the dark caramel wasn't too sweet and the crunch of the sugar paired beautifully with the custard filled interior.
I've just got back from a public candle lighting in my city. The rain was pelting down but we still had an excellent turnout, including our local MP and members of clergy from the cathedral and local Muslim community. The solidarity that was shown today was wonderful, and really quite moving.
Channukah Night 7: fried chicken (Pt. 3)
This is proper KFC - Korean fried chicken. The chicken is super crispy, double fried, and smothered in a sweet and spicy gotchujang sauce. We ate this with a spicy peanut cabbage salad which was simply lovely.
