What am I, chopped liver? Fortunately, no. Made of onions, mushrooms, and cashews, vegan mock chopped liver has replaced the classic Jewish pâté as a contemporary appetizer for special occasions.
This plant-based look-alike (though not taste-alike) is often served as a Passover appetizer with matzo or matzo crackers. You can serve it with raw vegetables, too.
A sister recipe: A similar, now-classic recipe is made with green beans or peas. In the Ashkenazi tradition, green beans and peas aren’t allowed foods during the Passover week. But if it’s not Passover, or you don’t strictly adhere to the chametz rules, feel free to replace the mushrooms with an equivalent amount of steamed fresh or frozen green beans.
Of course, you need not wait for a holiday, or to be Jewish, to make this delicious spread. It’s welcome all year round. This recipe makes about 2 cups.
Matzo brei is a kind of flat omelet that’s a classic breakfast during Passover week and beyond. This recipe will show you how to make a vegan matzo brei, without the customary eggs. It’s easiest to make this one serving at a time in a small skillet; for more servings, repeat the recipe as needed.
Basically, matzo brei consists of broken matzah that’s softened with hot water, then mixed with scrambled egg and fried. Not exactly your powerhouse breakfast — after all, matzah isn’t exactly a super food — it’s one of those Eastern European specialties that’s suffused with nostalgia. Here we replace the egg, easily and cleverly!
A trio of egg substitutes: I give you three choices for the egg substitute that will hold the matzo brei together. Two of the options—oats (which are hametz) and garbanzo (chickpea) flour (legumes are kitniyot) are ingredients that aren’t allowable foods during the Passover week for those who adhere strictly.
Sephardic tradition still allows legumes and some other kitniyot during Passover week. Some Ashkenazi traditions have started to allow kitniyot, too. If you’re fine with that, go ahead and try this with garbanzo flour.
Quinoa flakes, as a derivative of the relatively recently allowable food, quinoa, is the most Passover-friendly option. That’s my favorite “glue” for my Vegan Matzah Balls.
If you adhere to Passover food rules, you can always wait until after the holiday week to make matzo brei. Like most everyone else who celebrates, you’ll likely have plenty of leftover matzah to use up.
Make sure to explore the variations: Often, matzo brei is enjoyed just as is; straight from the pan, lightly salted. Incorporating a little bit of fruit into the batter (banana, apple, or pear) into the batter is a lovely touch; you can also make it savory with baby spinach or other baby greens and/or fresh herbs.
Buttery golden-brown toffee shatters on top of crisp matzah boards, smothered with a soft layer of dark chocolate. It’s an essential staple for Passover, but so addictive that you’ll want to make it all year long.
Completely nontraditional and aligned with entirely the wrong Jewish holiday, these are definitely not your Bubbie’s matzah balls. Bound together with roasted pumpkin puree, I prefer to think of them more as matzah dumplings, since they bear a denser, more toothsome texture than the fluffy pillows of Passover lore. The goal of this wintery interpretation was not to perfect the vegan matzah ball, but to create something with the same sort of comforting flavors, revamped with a more seasonal spin.
I grew up eating my mom’s chocolate pudding from a boxed mix. It was a bit lumpy and thick, with rubbery chocolate pudding skin (My mom gave me permission to tell this story), but it was warm and chocolate and homemade, and I liked it. On the East Coast, there was only one brand worth knowing: My-T-Fine, the premium pudding. It wasn’t exactly instant since the mix had to be cooked with dairy milk. Somewhere along the way Mom decided cooking pudding and washing the pot was not worth the effort.
We moved over to Jell-O brand—really instant pudding: put the mix in a bowl, add milk, and mix with a rotary egg beater. Still, if the bowl wasn’t deep enough (especially if I was doing the mixing) it spattered, and then there were still beaters to wash. And the finished pudding was cold!
That’s why I love this recipe so much: in the same time it took my mom to make sad chocolate pudding or less, you can make Almost-Instant Chocolate Pudding that is real chocolate pudding the way we always wanted it to be: warm, thick, and chocolaty. Plus this one is additive, dairy, and cholesterol-free.
Ethiopian gomen, or hamli, is a dish of softened collard greens that pairs beautifully with injera bread.
This simple cabbage recipe is a quick and healthy side that goes perfectly with rice, chapati bread, or even matzah!
This easy salad does double duty, serving for both International Mediterranean Diet Month and National Salad Month. It offers loads of vibrant flavors and, unlike many eggplant recipes, is easy on the oil. Enjoy with tabbouleh, hummus, and other Mediterranean marvels as part of a mezze—small plates that make up a meal.
Tembleque is a popular Puerto Rican dessert that is perfect to enjoy during Passover or Shavuot.
