Quesadillas

This is a new dish for us, inspired by Wendy Smith, who once brought both vegan and cheese quesadillas and we loved them.  Of course "vegan quesadilla" is goofy, like vegetarian meatballs, since quesadilla means cheese sandwich.
The recipe is, like many of mine, just a technique.  Getting the fixings in place is the recipe.  The process of making them is kind of awkward, you just get more coordinated at it with practice.
whole wheat tortillas  (3 or 4 for two people)
grated cheddar cheese (or white Mexican cheese)
chopped onion
other vegetables you like, mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach [peppers]
sliced olives, optional
vegie refried beans  (one can is too much for us, so I freeze what is unused, like half a can) OR my new favorite alternative, a boiled sweet potato, mashed.
sour cream
salsa
guacamole
olive oil for frying

Start with 2 frying pans that each fit one flat tortilla.  Saute the onion +  other vegetables you are including until soft. Move to another dish and add the beans or sweet potato.

In the fry pan, spread some oil over medium to high heat and place a tortilla flat.  Once it browns and inflates, turn down the burner.  Spread 1/3 of the filling on the tortilla.  Sprinkle very generously with cheese, and place another tortilla on top. When the bottom is browned, gently flip. Repeat the same process with a 2nd fry pan.
Slip the finished quesadilla onto a plate/platter. When it cools a bit, I slice it in sixths with a pizza wheel.

Obviously you can change the ingredients if some people don't like something, like - say - green peppers.

Set out all the accompaniments - sour cream, salsa, guacamole.  In a restaurant, they use the sour cream to make attractive designs.

Pete Schwager's Pear Pies

I've not tasted these, but when I headed out to Salt Lake City for Aunt Ruth's funeral, Judy Rose and I were at Pete's several times.  There were still pears on his tree in the backyard, and he reported he had baked 24 pear pies earlier in the month.
These have no sugar added, so they are basically baked fruit in a pastry shell.  He pies pie dough and rolls it out and puts it in aluminum tins (which I presume he has collected from store-bought pies over the years) but you could also just use ready-made pie shells.

pie crusts (quantity depends on how many pears.  Presume you could use other fruits, like apples)
tapioca to coat the pie crust
peeled, pared, sliced ripe pears
cinnamon
raisins and/or craisins for color

Roll out dough, line pans.  Sprinkle a layer of tapioca on the crust, to absorb liquid.
Fill the crust with sliced fruit
Sprinkle with cinnamon and raisins and/or craisins to add texture and color

Bake open face for about a half hour at 350°

Yellow Split Pea Soup

I found this online, trying to figure out how to cook yellow split 
Not hard, quick, beautiful, very filling and delicious.

Egyptian Yellow Lentil Soup (adapted from Dinner With Julie)
Yield: 4 – 6 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 – 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 Tbsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper (optional)
• 2 cups yellow lentils, rinsed and picked over - this is a 16 oz bag (1 lb)
• 6-7 cups stock
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 tomato, diced
• optional: one c. shredded cabbage
• 3 – 4 sprigs fresh parsley, roughly chopped
• salt and pepper, to taste

Method:

1. In a large pot heat 1 Tbsp olive oil over medium heat, then sauté 1 onion, diced until translucent and starting to caramelize, about 10 minutes.
2. Add 2 – 3 cloves garlic, minced, 1/2 Tbsp ground cumin, 1/2 tsp turmeric, and 1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper, if using. Sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds to 1 minute.
3. Add 2 cups yellow lentils, rinsed and picked over, 6 cups stock, 1 carrot, diced, and 1 tomato, diced, and bring to a boil, then lower heat, and let simmer until the lentils are cooked and nearly falling apart, about 20 – 30 minutes.
4. Stir in 3 – 4 sprigs fresh parsley, roughly chopped.
5. If desired, using a blender or immersion blender, puree the soup to desired consistency. I like it to retain some of the chopped vegetables.
6. Add salt and pepper, to taste. 

Jane Brody's Unstuffed Cabbage

I don't know if this is in her cookbooks - I found it in a magazine.  It is perfect for sukkot, since it is a one dish meal, basically.  Add challah, salad, dessert - good to go.
I can't find any ground turkey this year so I may make it with ready-to-go veggie meatballs.  This is perfect for cooks, like moi, who don't like to spend a lot of time making stuffed cabbage.
A nice accompaniment is a bowl of boiled red bliss potatoes.  Or you could peel baking potatoes, chop them in eights or so, and cook them in the stew.

Ingredients

• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 lbs cabbage, sliced
• 1 (8 ounce) cans tomato sauce
• 1 (28 ounce) cans chopped tomatoes, with juice
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup lemon juice

• 1 lb ground beef

• 1/2 cup white rice, raw

• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

  
  

  or substitute 2 pkg vegetarian meatballs

• salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup raisins (optional)

Directions

1. In a large, heavy pot combine the first 7 ingredients; bring to boil.
2. Meanwhile make meatballs with beef, rice, Worcestershire sauce and add to pot; reduce heat to low and simmer for 2 hours.
3. If desired, add raisins and cook an additional 15 minutes.

Mini Vegetable Kugels

These are from a cookbook Susie Marcus once gave us.  They are very cute, which I think adds to their appeal, as does the fact they each have a nice crust.  The pans need to be VERY WELL OILED or they don't come out.  [or use silicon bake pans.] You could use other vegetables.  Now that chestnuts are around, Kosher for Passover, they are a nice addition.
Like all recipes calling for frozen spinach, thaw it in advance.

6 T. margarine
1 c. chopped onion
½ c. chopped celery
1½ c. grated raw carrot
10 oz. frozen spinach (thawed)
2 eggs, beaten
1½ t salt
dash pepper
½ c. matzah meal - if you're out of matzah meal, just take matzah and run it through the food processor.  Texture is fine for this purpose.  (if it's not passover, probably plain old WW flour)

Saute onion, celery, and carrot in margarine in a large frying pan.
Add thawed spinach.
Add eggs, salt, pepper and matzah meal.
Spoon into a well-greased muffin tin, yielding 12 muffins.  Or skip that altogether and just put it in a WELL GREASED flat pan.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Cool a few minutes before removing them.

Kamishbread - Dorothy Goodman's recipe

Kamishbread, so called (I'm sure the Yiddish is Kamishbrot - Joan Nathan says it is the Ukrainian Jews' name for mandelbrot. It was a Fargo specialty served for onegs and other social events.  Elsewhere it is called Mandelbrot, which means almond bread.  It is a heavy biscotti, twice-baked. When I baked these ahead of Tasha's new baby Felix in Des Moines, I realized I didn't have my nice old recipe from Dorothy Goodman on the blog. It's a keeper!

Dorothy and Fritzie were dear friends. Fargo Jewish women were bakers - the local bakeries were very uninspiring.

[Another food writer/historian says Kamishbrot is the simpler variety, mandelbrot has more additions.]

½ c. oil
1 c. sugar
3 eggs
1 heaping t baking powder
1 t. vanilla or grated orange rind
3 c. flour [I always use half whole wheat for most everything I bake]
½ c. chopped or ground almonds or chopped walnuts
1/2 t. salt (or more to taste)

optional: 4 oz. mini chocolate chips

Cream oil, sugar and eggs in a large bowl

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.

Add flavoring and nuts, and optional mini-chips.

Chill for about an hour.

Preheat oven to 350.

Divide dough into thirds, making long rolls about 2" wide.  Leave space between rolls, since they will spread. these don't rise much, just enough to look like biscotti.

Bake on greased cookie sheet(s) for about 30 minutes until lightly browned.  

Remove and cool a few minutes and cut into 1" horizontal pieces.

Roll both cut sides in a cinnamon/sugar mixture - you don't need much, it goes a long way.

Bake a second time in a 375 oven until crisp - 5 to 10 minutes.

Limoncello Sauce

We had this at Joyce Norden's, where she served it with fruit sauce, a recipe from the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Gartner.  I thought it would be great over gingerbread brownies, and I was right.

But, also great with fruit salad.  The recipe says to add the limoncello to the fruit salad, but I added it to the yogurt sauce.

~7 ounces plain Greek yogurt
1/3 c. lemon curd
1 T. honey or agave
1/4 t. vanilla
1 to 2 T. limoncello

Mix all the ingredients.

Great with a fruit salad, and over gingerbread or brownies, or even better, gingerbread brownies.  You can have all 3, sauce + fruit + cake.

It was lovely over just plain blueberries.

It is rare that I ask for a recipe, so this is really good.  And easy.

Cinnamon Almond Macaroons

I clipped this recipe out of a very strange catalog which arrived a few weeks before Passover, loaded with electric appliances for Easter and Passover.  Some of the items were for very frum folks, so I looked at the address and the company is based in Lakewood, NJ.

I baked these and wow!  They were great.  Avruhm said they were the best macaroons he'd ever had, though the recipe doesn't call them macaroons.

The oddest thing about this 4 ingredient recipe is that when you add the confectioners sugar to the eggs, it takes FOREVER to get to the peak stage, like 5-10 minutes.  But it did eventually.  These spread a lot, so next time I will make them smaller, like a teaspoon each.

½ lb. ground almonds
1 c. confectioners sugar (not usually available during Passover, though)
2 egg whites
½ T. cinnamon

Beat egg whites until frothy, gradually add confectioners sugar, and beat until firm peaks form.

Preheat oven to 350. Line sheet pans with parchment paper.

With wet palms, take a small ball of dough.  Place them about 2" apart.

Bake for 12-14 minutes or until they look dry.  Cool completely before removing from the paper.

Would be nice with fresh fruit salad, or berries.

You Call This a Recipe Chicken Pasta

Clipped it out of a magazine decades ago.

I made this pretty frequently when you guys were kids because of its flexibility.  If someone didn't want the tomato sauce, I put aside the cooked chicken.  If someone didn't want to eat chicken, I could  heat the tomato sauce first,  put that portion aside, and then add the chicken.  Not like anyone in our house was a picky eater or anything, of course.

Basically the ingredients are a bottle of parve spaghetti sauce, or if you have time and inclination, any marinara sauce you'd like to make, a few tablespoons of flour, seasoned to your liking, and a pound or so of boned chicken, cut in small chunks.  Put the flour in a small bowl.  Heat oil in a large skillet.  Toss the chicken chunks in the flour and drop them in the skillet.  Cook until lightly browned.  Add the spaghetti sauce.  Like I said, you call this a recipe?

It is actually very good!