Your Passover Menu?

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

Asian inspired gefüllte fish - cilantro, spring onions, toasted sesame seeds.

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 kosher le pesach 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.

Just joined this group. In some ways, Pesach is very easy for my family. My son has celiac disease. He cannot have gluten. What contains gluten? Basically anything that contains chometz contains gluten. In other words, year around he cannot have chometz, but can have kitnios. The only thing he gives up for Pesach is kitnios.

Should we share 2008 Passover menus? (This group hasn't been really active for a while and it would be nice to talk about new menu finds ).

What a fun thread!

We do the same menu each year, and I'd be happy to share my menu for the day (with recipes to come later).

I'd also like to hear about how each family celebrates Passover.

I do the second seder each year and plan to host about 20 people this year in my teeny, tiny house. People literally walk in the door and have to sit down. :) We are three generations of three families. We make up a division of labor before the big day - thankfully!

Menu:

Seder:
Two kinds of charoseth (Sephardic, Ashkenazic)

Salad:
Fresh garden salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, etc,) with dressing
Chopped liver
Beet salad
Gefilte fish with Tulkoff's red horseradish
Hardboiled eggs (marinated in salt water)

Soup:
Matzo ball soup

Main Dish:
Roast turkey
Gravy
Vegetarian dish (changes from year to year - usually made with quinoa)
Tzimmes
Steamed spring vegetable (Broccoli or asparagus)
Matzo Stuffing

Dessert:
Chocolate Torte
Apple Cake
Compote
Homemade macaroons (one side has been dipped in chocolate)

Please, we have to get through Purim first, then I start Pesach (I do my first round of Pesach shopping the week after Purim--for this, I own an extra freezer?).

One thing we have found is that the only desserts I bother with are ice pops and chocolates. Cakes are either bad or only eaten by my, not by dh and the kids. The children love to help make rocky road chocolates for Pesach--we melt chocolate in a double boiler, mix in minimarshmallows and chopped almonds, spread on foil, and cool; then break into bite-sized pieces. Much cheaper and more fun than the expensive Barton's chocs.

Plus with Pesach starting motzei Shabbos this year, I need to have all the 3 days' cooking really done in advance (yes, I can cook on yom tov, but it's much easier to know it's done and I can sit at seders, go to shul, etc).

Keep the ideas coming, those who are ahead of me!

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Please, we have to get through Purim first

Right you are! So are you baking hamantaschen? If so, what flavors? I'm doing poppy seed, cherry and apricot this year.

The only ones we ever make are chocolate. We just use the Israeli chocolate spread for filling. My 12 year old made a big batch right after Rosh Chodesh Adar II and they were gone in 48 hours.

At this point I won't bother baking any as we'll get so many on Friday from everyone else. Our shalach manos we'll be giving are big cookie baskets (with little grape juice bottles too), so I've been baking and freezing batch after batch of cookies for the last 3 weeks.

Actually now I need to come up with a Purim seudah menu--our synagogue seudah was just cancelled so suddenly I need to make one at home this year when I wasn't planning on it. I guess I'll probably make deli roll, bourekas, and a salad with fruit and nuts, with dessert provided by all the neighbors' shalach manos gifts!

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...and I'm against chocolate hamataschen. I'll only make ones filled with fruit or nuts. If anyone wants ones with chocolate filling, they have to come, help me bake, and fill the hamantaschen themselves. :)

Chag sameach to all!

My passover menu ( in progress )
Chicken and Egg frittata
Chicken soup
Turkey Breast
Potato- Meat Pie
Figs in orange juice
Pear and leaf salad
Sweet potato salad
Spinach with pine nuts and raisins
Almond and walnut macaroons
Fruit Salad
Apple Cake
-still tinkering but have done about 2/3 of the shopping.