New Recipes For A Traditional Seder

 Passover will be coming up soon and with it a new kind of Seder. Families will be gathering but it won't be like the large groups of years past. There still will be traditions but updated ones. It's time to update the age old dishes as well.

Susan Spungen , chef,cookbook author, food stylist and food consultant (she was vital to such moves as Julie & Julia, It's Complicated and Eat,Pray, Love , wrote about five new recipes to add to the Passover table in yesterday's New York Times Food section. These are dishes for a new type of holy day  and Seder meal. Some dishes like haroset , matzoh ball soup and gefilte fish cannot be changed. Others though, can be tweaked.For the main meal, think  about serving chicken with apricots and olives. It's festive to be made for birthdays too. The chicken can be marinated for anywhere from two hours to overnight with a blend of different spices.Ground sumac (the same used in za'atar) gives the tang as well as a pinkness to the meat. Apricots and olives are also added to the marinade for a combination of sweetness and saltiness along with dried thyme. Fresh squeezed lemon and oranges juices give it more fruitiness as well. Or course there has to be matzoh at the table, but try a matzoh frittata instead of a matzoh brei. This is combining the traditional egg and matzoh with caramelized onions, button mushrooms and rosemary.The mushrooms and onions are cooked first and then added to the egg and matzoh mixture.

Chef Spungen also offers a yummy whole roasted cauliflower with pistachio pesto. The pesto is a mix of pistachios and cilantro along with flat leaf parsley leaves for the traditional  green  pesto color and texture.Lemon zest is added for tartness and color The cauliflower itself is roasted with two small yellow onions and olive oil. The pesto is spooned on top of it along with additional zest and parsley. Many home chefs serve tsimmes or the traditional Ashkenazi stew of carrots, prunes and raisins. Chef Spungen offers something slightly different with no prep work and very little time. Hers is sweet potatoes with a tsimmes glaze. The sweet potatoes are first cut and halved lengthwise and then rubbed with olive oil . After they're  roasted in a 400 degree Farenheit oven for thirty to forty minutes. The glaze is a blend of either the juice of navel or Cara Cara oranges along honey cinnamon and ginger. Cut prunes, vital in the original tsimmes recipe, are also added. The glaze is first boiled them simmered until it becomes thick and syrupy. It's then poured over the sweet potatoes. Orange zest is put on top for decoration and to counteract the sweetness

Again ,Passover will be different this year. Have dishes celebrating the difference. Try these recipes for a spin on the traditional  flavors and tastes.

Comforting And Festive Food

 In years past December meant rush. A rush at the office to get things done and out by year's end. A rush for holiday parties<A rush for shopping. Cooking and even baking was literally put on a back burner. Not this year. We have time to cook leisurely comfort foods  - foods that we can actually sit down and enjoy.

Susan Spungen, a cook and food stylist wrote an article about this in Wednesday's New York Times Food section. She gives three relatively easy and long cooking recipes. One is a spice rubbed braised brisket with a really interesting mix of spices and the addition of finely ground coffee.There is a blend of coriander, garlic powder, and cinnamon for the rub and then the brisket is marinated in pomegranate juice, dry red wine and chicken stock or water.Cipollini onions are cooked with it. The whole process takes close to an hour.It's served with lemon juice, pomegranate seeds and parsley with stems. Ms. Spungen suggests serving it with mashed potatoes but roasted ones would work nicely . Another dinner, lunch breakfast or brunch dish is caramelized sheet pan French toast.As with any French toast it is a lush mix of egg , whole cream and bread. There's also sugar, cardamon and vanilla to give it more flavor. The bread is soaked in the egg mixture for more than eight hours in the fridge. The sugar coated slices are cooked in a 345 degree F oven for fourteen to eighteen minutes on a buttered sheet or skillet. The French toast is served with homemade berry compote and maple syrup. This takes about eighteen minutes to bake.

A perfect holiday dessert is ginger chocolate cake with clementine confit.The slow cooking comes from the clementines where they're soaked in a simple syrup and then into the 275 degree F oven for two to three hours. The result is a complex, chewy  and fancy fruit, right in line with holiday fruits of years past. The cake itself is a heady mix of fresh and ground ginger and Dutch cocoa along with a stick and half of butter and bittersweet chocolate.It's given airiness by whipping six egg yolks and whites separately. Creme fraiche give some tang. As with any holiday cake it gets a good shot of Cognac or a ginger liqueur such as King's Ginger Liqueur or Domaine de Canton. The cake is baked for forty to forty-five minutes in a 350 degree F oven. Used a well buttered springform pan for this. Ms. Spungen also suggests subbing in sour creme for the creme fraiche. The clementines and creme fraiche are spooned on top of the cake but you can also use freshly whipped cream too.

This holiday season you have time to cook and bake. These recipes are perfect for passing the time while providing delicious flavors. They're a great way to unwind in the kitchen.