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Nigella’s Butternut Squash with Pecans and Blue Cheese

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Nigella Lawson’s Jewish identity is pretty interesting. Taking part in the third series of the BBC family-history documentary series, Who Do You Think You Are?, Lawson sought to uncover some of her family’s ancestry. She traced her ancestors to Ashkenazi Jews who originate from eastern Europe and Germany. Though both of her parents are Jewish, she was not raised in the tradition. And like most British people, she has a love of Christmas (culturally only, as Lawson is an atheist). To her credit though, Lawson has said that she has developed a distinctly “Jewish character”.

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Either way, we love her recipes and even though this recipe was listed as a great Christmas or Thanksgiving dish, we think it makes an even better Passover dish. Chametz free and totally easy, Nigella’s Butternut Squash with Pecans and Blue Cheese will put you into a food coma that will make you recline even more at the seder table than you are supposed to! Thank you, Food Network.

4-pounds 8-ounces butternut squash
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 stalks fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup crumbled Roquefort or other blue cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Halve the squash, leaving the skin on, and scoop out the seeds, then cut into 1-inch cubes; you don’t need to be precise just keep the pieces uniformly small. Having trouble with this part? Just click here for a video how-to.

Put into a roasting pan with the oil and strip about 4 stalks thyme of their leaves, sprinkling over the butternut squash. If you can’t get any fresh thyme, sprinkle over dried (but honestly, fresh is best).

Roast in the oven for about 30 to 45 minutes or until tender.

Once out of the oven, remove the squash to a bowl and scatter over the pecans and crumble over the cheese tossing everything together gently with salt and pepper to taste.

Exodus Pomegranate Lemonade

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Today we bring you the Exodus Pomegranate Lemonade, the perfect drink that’s kosher for Passover and a great drink for this warm weather. The recipe comes to us from the NewKosher Cookbook, available on all your favorite i-formats as well as ModernTribe.com.

Exodus Pomegranate Lemonade

“And upon the skirts of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the skirts thereof; and bells of gold between them round about: a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the skirts of the robe round about” (Exodus 28:33-4)

1 1/12 ounces lemon/citron potato vodka

lemonade

pomegranate juice

lemon slice (for garnish)

Pour lemon/citron vodka over highball glass with ice. Fill with lemonade and a splash of pomegranate juice on top. Serve with a lemon slice. Make sure the juices do not have high fructose corn syrup and that your potato vodka is kosher for Passover!

Vegetarian B’Stella (Moroccan Phyllo Egg Pie)

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My first experience with b’stella (often spelled bastilla or called pastilla) was a Moroccan restaurant in Atlanta called Casbah. I loved the mix of cornish hen, egg, almonds, and the sweet/savory spices that Northern Africa is so known for.

The problem came with kashrut: how was I going to eat this dish that mixes chicken and dairy? As someone who doesn’t eat margarine, and frankly doesn’t eat a ton of meat, I knew I needed a vegetarian option.

The answer came with the Feed Your Vegetarian blog, which offers a great solution: replace chicken with mushrooms! I felt, however, that portobello mushrooms and the overall cooking technique just didn’t quite match the true flavor I remembered at Casbah. So I experimented, watched a few YouTube videos and found a few tricks to make the bastella taste even better!

Vegetarian B’Stella

3 tablespoons olive oil
12 ounces mixed mushrooms, sliced (I used 3.2 ounces of dried mushrooms, rehydrated turns to 12 ounces)
1 large onion, diced
1 teaspoons Dr. Oz triple threat spice mix
pinch of saffron
1 teaspoons ground cinnamon
small handfull chopped parsley
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
2 tablespoon orange blossom water
1 1/2 cup vegetable broth
4 eggs
salt and pepper to taste
2/3 cups almond meal (or ground almonds)
1/4 cup melted butter (for brushing)
1 8-ounce pack of phyllo dough (defrosted in the microwave for twenty to thirty seconds)
confectioner’s sugar (for garnish)
ground cinnamon (for garnish)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a pan over medium flame, rehydrate mushrooms in vegetable stock (you will have delicious stock left over). After mushrooms rehydrate, allow to cool. Squeeze liquid from about half of the mushrooms and retain the liquid in the other half. Place these mushrooms in a food processor.

Fry onions in olive oil with spiced. Cook until onions are just softened. Add lemon juice, orange blossom water, 1/2 cup of reserved stock and chopped parsley.

Allow this to simmer for a few minutes. Then add eggs and scramble in the liquid, stirring constantly. Continue to cook until most (but not all!) the liquid is cooked off.  Salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

Toast the almond meal in a frying pan, stirring frequently, until lightly browned. Let cool. Pulse eggs, toasted meal and mushroom in food processor until combined but still rough. You don’t want it to be paste!

Brush melted butter in the bottom of a deep, round baking dish. Working very carefully, line folded phyllo in the dish and brush with butter.

Place about half of mushroom/egg mixture in the center of the phyllo. Add another layer of dough over the filling and brush with butter. Add another layer of dough, butter, and seal the sides to complete enclose. Brush the seams with more butter. You should now have a nice, round “package”.

Bake for 25 minutes or until the pastry is golden and crisp.

Wait until the pastry has cooled down (about five minutes). Dust with a good amount of confectioner’s sugar and cinnamon.

If you have trouble with folding the phyllo, use this technique in the video below…

Mushroom-Chard Bread Kugel (Dairy)

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You can use any mushrooms you like in this dish. I like to use a mix of criminis and shiitakes, mostly because those are the two kinds my local co-op carries reliably, but also because it makes the dish much more interesting. This sits squarely in the realm of comfort food, and is even good eaten cold for breakfast. Serves 6-8

8 oz mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

1 medium red onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 bunch chard, chopped

8 eggs

4 c milk

1 loaf day-old challah, roughly torn (approx 8 cups)

4 oz sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

Butter as needed

Salt and pepper to taste

Saute the mushrooms and onion until the mushrooms are browned and the onions are transparent. Add garlic and cook a minute or two longer. Steam the chopped chard, then squeeze out all the liquid and add to the mushroom mixture. Toss with the challah, then turn into a buttered 9×13 baking dish.

Whisk the eggs, milk, salt, and pepper together until foamy, then pour into the baking dish. Top with cheese, then bake, covered with foil, at 375 for 60 minutes. Remove foil and bake 15 minutes longer. When a toothpick comes out clean, the kugel is done. Enjoy with a big salad and a bowl of tomato soup on a chilly day.

Almond Hamantaschen

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I’ve tried making Hamantaschen, the famous Purim cookies, many times and failed. This recipe is different. The key to good Hamantaschen is the almond meal, which we got from Trader Joe’s. If you can find it at Trader Joe’s, then stock up, because in our experience, it is seldom on the shelf. It lasts a while, so no worries about buying too much and having it go bad.
Of course, there are a ton of different fillings you can use. In this batch, we did Nutella, raspberry and blackberry. Almond paste, apricot and of course the traditional poppyseed are all terrific.
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup almond meal (can be found at Trader Joe’s in the nuts section, or grind down raw almonds)
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
4 ounces (1 stick) softened butter (use margarine for a pareve version)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon almond extract
Cooking spray to grease cookie sheet
Filling of your choice (we used Nutella and different jams)
  • Preheat the oven to 375F.
  • Sift together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, and almond meal)
  • In a separate bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, softened butter, vanilla, and almond extract
  • Thoroughly combine the two mixes, until you have a soft dough formed
  • Break the dough into several managable size balls. (Tip: If the dough is too soft to work with, wrap the dough balls in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15 mins.)
  • On a well-floured board, using a floured rolling pin, roll out the dough to a 1⁄8-inch thickness. Have your filling, cookie cutter, and greased cookie sheet nearby
  • Use a cookie cutter (or small glass) to create circles about 4 inches in diameter
  • Place about 1 teaspoon of the filling in the center of the circle (make sure not to use too much, or your hamantaschen will explode)
  • Fold in sides, and press dough to seal, creating two sides of a triangle. Then fold the bottom of the circle up to form the third side, leaving a little of the filling visible in the center
  • Place on the greased cookie sheet
  • Cutting circles leaves a lot of marginal dough, you’ll have to gather scraps in a ball and roll them out again
  • Bake for 12-14 minutes or until the cookies are a light golden brown
  • Let hamantaschen cool before you remove them from the baking pan with a spatula

An important Purim tradition is to give mishloach manot, Purim gift baskets of food, to friends and family. Make sure to add these great treats to your holiday gifts! Happy Purim!

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