Passover Feast

My parents spent Passover in Hawaii so I was left on my own to cook Passover dinner. I love cooking so it was fun to make a big meal. The menu included chicken soup with matzoh balls, sweet and sour meatballs, baked chicken schnitzel, rosemary roasted potatoes, steamed broccoli, and coffee cake for dessert! I don't mean to toot my own horn , but everything was delicious!

Matzoh ball soup is possibly my favourite of all soups. I don't know why I don't make matzoh balls during the year. The little light and fluffy balls are the best thing to come out of Passover! This year, I made a different meatball recipe. My mom's meatballs are amazing but after 26 years, I was ready for a change. A friend of mine gave me her Passover meatball recipe and they were fabulous! As for the potatoes, I love them roasted. They are the perfect accompaniment to a Passover feast but I wanted to add a little something extra... rosemary salt (which I made myself)! The baked chicken schnitzel was a super easy recipe which was great since there were so many elements to this meal! And the coffee cake... well, we'll save that for another post!

Matzoh Ball Soup

Ingredients
1 chicken carcass or whole chicken
3 carrots, chopped in small pieces
2 stalks celery, chopped in large chunks
1 parsnip, chopped
1 onion, cleaned and chopped in half
1 bunch dill
1/2 cup matzoh meal
2 eggs
2 tbsp canola oil
salt
soup noodles (optional)

Directions
- Clean chicken carcass with boiling water.
- Fill a large pot up with water and boil the chicken carcass.
- Skim the top.
- Once the water comes to a boil, add all the vegetables.
- Turn down to the lowest heat, cover and simmer for 1.5 hours.
- Strain everything from the chicken broth and add the carrots back to the soup.
- Mix the matzoh meal, egg, oil and salt until incorporated and put in the fridge for 15 minutes.
- Bring the soup back to a boil.
- Roll the matzoh meal mix into balls and drop into boiling soup and let cook for 20 minutes.
- While the matzo balls are cooking, boil a little pot of water for soup noodles. Follow directions on package until al dente and add to soup when matzoh balls are done cooking!
- Voila!

Passover Sweet and Sour Meatballs
Recipe from Sarah Benmergui

Ingredients
1 lb ground beef
1 egg
1/8 cup matzoh meal (you can replace with bread crumbs)
1/8 teas garlic powder
salt and pepper
8 oz (300 ml) Tomato sauce with mushrooms
4 oz (150 ml) Jam (plum/blackberry/grape/wildberry)
1 tbsp lemon juice

Directions
- Combine tomato sauce, jam and lemon juice in a pot on low to medium heat
- Mix other ingredients in a bowl by hand and form into 1 inch balls
- Drop meatballs into sauce, one by one as they are made.
- Cook on simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Shake the pot lightly after 10-15 minutes. Mix after 30 minutes.

Rosemary Roasted Potatoes

Ingredients
20 nugget potatoes
4-5 tbsp salt
1 tbsp rosemary
4 tbsp olive oil
pepper


Directions
- Bring a pot of water to a boil.
- Clean the potatoes with a brush under running water.
- Put the potatoes in the boiling water with 3-4 tbsp of salt. Cook the potatoes until they are tender.
- Preheat the oven to 450.
- Make the rosemary salt while the potatoes are cooking. Put 1 tbsp of rosemary and 1 tbsp of salt into a mortar and pestle. Pound the mixture until it becomes very fine.
- After you remove the potatoes from the water, cut them in half if they are too big. Lay them out on a baking sheet, sprinkle with rosemary salt (while they are hot), pepper and olive oil. Make sure everything is coated evenly and in one layer on the baking sheet.
- Roast the potatoes for 30 minutes.


Baked Chicken Schnitzel

Ingredients
chicken fillets
flour
eggs
breadcrumbs
Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper

Directions
-Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Place chicken fillets between two pieces of parchment paper. Gently pound the chicken with a meat mallet or rolling pin until it's about 5 mm thick and even all around.
- Put the flour in one bowl, the eggs in another and the breadcrumbs & Parmesan in another. Add salt and pepper to all three bowls.
- Dunk each piece of chicken first in the flour, then the egg mixture, then the breadcrumbs.
- Place the breaded chicken on a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Bake for 20 minutes, turning at 10 minutes. Check to make sure it's white all the way through.