Cheesecake!

The Joy of Cheesecake has this amazing Passover cheesecake, which, frankly is too good for just one time a year. Shavuos is coming up next month, aka the blintz and cheesecake holiday, so there's a good time to try this out. You could definitely do this with Splenda if you are splendarific, which I am not.

It's got some good protein going on!
Try it with the matzoh meal crust (which is a restaurant standard these days for cheesecakes). Graham cracker will work too, not during Pesach, obviously, but it's higher in sugar:

Matzoh Meal crust: 1 c Matzoh Meal, 4 T Butter, Melted, 3 T Sugar

Preheat oven to 350. Blend ingredients well in a bowl. Press mixture onto the bottom and partly up the sides of a greased 8" springform pan. Smooth crumbs to an even thickness. Bake for 10 minutes. Cool before filling.

Filling: 1 c cottage cheese (or ricotta if you don't want to sieve and drain), 1/2 lb cream cheese, 2/3 c sugar, 3 large eggs, separated, 1 t grated lemon rind, 1 T potato starch, 1 c sour cream

Oven should be cooled to 325 degrees.

Press the cottage cheese through a sieve. Drain. Beat together the cottage cheese, cream cheese, sugar and egg yolks. Stir in the lemon rind, potato starch and sour cream until just mixed. Beat the egg whites (in a separate bowl) until the form stiff peaks, then fold the whites into the cheese mixture.

Pour the mixture into the prepared crust and bake for 1 hour or until set. Allow to cool in the oven, with the door propped open, for 1 hour. Chill.

Exotic Fruit Salad - Easy

I was experimenting with a chopped fruit salad that would be sweet and tasty, but high in fiber. This is what I came up with:

12 oz mango slices or chunks - FROZEN (important!)
3 granny smith apples, cored and sliced, but unpeeled
1 can crushed pineapple in own juice, drained
1 lemon
1/2 cup chopped toasted almonds or pecans
cinnamon
(1/4 cup sweet wine, if desired)
(1 tbsp honey, if desired)

Core and slice the apples. Juice the lemon and toss the apple slices with the juice. Chop the apples coarsely in a food processor or a mezzaluna. Put back in the bowl with the lemon juice and toss. Chop the frozen mangoes in the food processor or with a mezzaluna. If they are not frozen, they will turn to mush! Mix with the apples and juice and toss. Add cinnamon to taste - about 1/2 - 1 tsp. Mix well. Add wine if desired. Mix again. Last, add honey and pineapple and nuts. Let stand at room temperature to meld and then refrigerate. Will keep a week in the fridge.

If you like, you can make this with fresh mint for a different taste. It is also good with coconut, which I like, but DH isn't keen about. I could also think to substitute coriander for cinnamon and chop cilantro and serve the salad as a type of chutney.

Two More Pesach Recipes

From various sources:

Brownies

"Finally...the brownie recipe, as adapted from the St. Louis Post Dispatch 3/28/1988
Preheat oven to 325. Grease a 9 x 13 baking pan.(foil works fine)

4 eggs, well beaten (egg beaters are ok)
2 cups granulated sugar
½ Cup cocoa powder
1 Cup canola oil ( I am going to try 1/2 apple sauce & 1/2 oil this year)
½ tsp. Salt
1 cup matzo cake meal (sift if you are not as lazy as I am)
1 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)
2 cups semisweet chocolate morsels

1. Beat eggs with sugar, cocoa, oil and salt.
2. Gradually add the matzo cake meal.
3. Stir in pecans* and chocolate morsels, and pour into the baking pan.
4. Bake 30-40 minutes. You want a toothpick to come out a little sticky.
(*my kids don’t like the nuts, so after I have poured the batter into the pan, I add the nuts to ½ the pan & gently stir a bit)
NOTE: recipe can be halved and baked in a 9 x 9 inch pan."

"Kugelettes"

"Potato Kugelettes

1 1/2 cups Idaho potatoes (I use Russets), grated and drained
3/8 cup onions, grated
3 eggs, well beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
freshly ground pepper, to taste
3 tablespoons rendered chicken fat (NO substitutions), plus fat to grease the muffin tins
matzo meal, for dusting muffin tin

1. Preheat oven to 375~

2. Combine all ingredients

3. Grease a 24 cup mini-muffin tin with chicken fat and dust with matzo meal. Place 1 T of filling per muffin cup and bake for 25 min. until golden.

Yield 24 kugelettes

This recipe is from Patty Unterman, a San Francisco restaurant reviewer and restaurant owner (Hayes St. Grill.)"

Passover Menu 5767

We've bagged the brisket this year and are going with the following menu:

Asian inspired gefüllte fish - cilantro, spring onions, toasted sesame seeds. 1lb of fish - total - yielded 12 large patties. I reduced the stock by 3/4s and let it jell.

Avgolemono - Greek egg/lemon chicken soup - You can find a good starting point in Jewish Holiday Cooking by Joan Nathan, although mine is more Turkish than Greek (shhh!)

Braised beef roast with carrots and pearl potatoes and home preserved peaches

Heart of palm and marinated artichoke salad

Apio made with 2 kinds of celery and artichokes - another starting point for this is Taste of Tradition

3 kinds of macaroons - almond/cocoa; chocolate coconut, white macaroons with pecans. The cocoa one is based on Mama Leah's Jewish Kitchen, but made KLP by making my own confectioners sugar with ultrafine sugar and potato starch.

Nut torte with coffee filling - weather permitting

3 kinds of charoses - Iraqi with coconut, figs, dates, apples, raisins; mango/apple (my version of Janos Wilder's from Joan Nathan's Jewish Cooking in America; and a Georgia version of standard Ashkenazi apple/pecan. And April is national pecan month in the US.