Six dishes are finished! Three recipes and three mini-recipes follow. Here’s the first one.
Deviled eggs
10 hard-boiled eggs 2 large pickled cucumbers (I prefer in brine) 1 stalk green onion 2 tbsp Dijon mustard 1/2 tbsp good quality mayonnaise 2 tbsp chopped parsley 1 tsp black pepper
Carefully cut each egg in half. Try to make the cut so that each half is pretty stable with the yolk removed. This is tricky, but sometimes you can sort of see that the yolk isn’t in the middle of the egg.
Carefully separate yolks from whites, place whites on a tray and yolks in a mixing bowl. Chop cucumbers, green onion and parsley into TINY pieces. This is one piece of work where using a food processor won’t do – there’s no substitute for careful and thorough knifework. Add chopped veggies to the yolks, add mustard, mayo and green pepper, and mix well with a fork.
Place spoonfuls of the mix back into the whites, slightly nudging them into the yellow cavity in the egg. Refrigerate well.
We’re getting ready for the Passover Seder, here, and most of the heavy cookery is over. The menu includes some contributions from other members of the family (the fish and meat, obviously, weren’t prepared by me, and folks are bringing them with), but the stuff I’m making here is all fresh out of the Chubeza special holiday box we requested.
I decided to go with fresh and seasonal, which meant that some dishes are improvised. We only got the fresh box this afternoon, so had to make some adjustments to the original plan. Anyway, we’ve finished setting the table:
This beautiful table is mostly the work of my mom, who has a real talent for designing parties and events. She brought in the beautiful table and matched it with candles and napkins in silver and gold.
These beautiful napkin holders (each of them is different!) remind us of our happy years in Ecuador.
Our menu will not, perhaps, be meticulously kosher, but it’ll be springy in the sense that it’ll only showcase seasonal, fresh, organic vegetables. So tomorrow my family can expect to eat the following:
On the table seder plate matzos
Starters gefilte fish (grandma) deviled eggs cherry tomatoes stuffed with tofu “uncheese” pickled red peppers (mom) pickled eggplant (mom)
Soup grandma’s chicken broth kneydalach
Main Courses walnut roast (mom) mixed grain plate (mom) roasted potatoes with rosemary, onion and garlic baked carrots with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg roasted beets with kimmel quiche of greens green ful and fresh peas in lemon and zatar bean noodle stir-fry with celery and shiitake mushrooms green salad with avocado and red grapefruit cucumber, pepper and tomato salad with sprouts carrot-radish grated salad (dad)
Coffee/Tea fresh-ground coffee (from Colombia) chamomile tea nut cookies (mom) egg-foam cookies (gift from our neighbor) charoset from dates, walnuts, almonds and apples (Chad_ chocolate truffles (mom)