I've fallen a bit behind. Let's see: last Wednesday was the first night of Passover, and as I mentioned before, Rose and I made chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons. Those were yummy. I also made oven-roasted potatoes (like the ones I made before, but without the rosemary and garlic). They didn't work as well as before for two reasons: I cut the potatoes well in advance, and then some water leaked out, and they got sort of soggy. If they had been stored in a bag with paper towels or something, maybe that would have helped. Second, I used someone else's oven to bake them, not our nice convection oven, so roasting two pans at a time didn't work as well. They still came out okay, but not as good as the first time.

I also made matzoh for Rose, since of course she can't eat ordinary matzoh. The recipe: 1 cup of GF flour substitute, 1 egg, and the recipe says "4 tablespoons of water". Why they can't just say "1/4 cup of water", I don't know. Mix everything together, roll out (which is a bit tricky, since the dough is sticky), prick with a fork to make it look like matzoh, and bake for 18 minutes at 440 degrees (F). (Why 440 and not 450 or 425? Is it some kosher thing? It's a little irrelevant since the recommended GF flour has corn and rice in it, neither of which is considered appropriate for Passover, at least by some Jews.)

It tasted pretty much like regular matzoh: dry and tasteless. It's good with peanut butter and jelly (because if you're willing to eat corn and rice, you're probably willing to eat peanuts (not that I care, since I'm not Jewish, but other people in the family are)).

What with Passover and Easter and tax season and everything, we've been eating at other people's houses a lot, and when we weren't doing that, we were having leftovers. That was until last night. Last night, Dan, Julia, Miriam, and Ariana came over, and we had a vegetable cornucopia: green salad with vinaigrette (is wine vinegar kosher for Passover?), sautéed mushrooms, sautéed zucchini with a little curry powder, a bowl of snap peas, steamed broccoli, and carrot soufflé.

For the zucchini: I sliced them and then sprinkled on kosher salt and let them sit in the basket of the salad spinner. After about 20 minutes, some water had come out of them, and I rinsed them off and spun them in the spinner. Meanwhile, I melted a little butter with a little oil in a large skillet, and then added curry powder. Then I put in the zucchini, tossed to coat with the oil and curry powder, and put on the lid. The idea was to steam them and also maybe get a little browning on the ones at the bottom, and this worked pretty well. There also wasn't a puddle in the bottom of the skillet at the end, perhaps because of the salting trick. The verdict: pretty good, but the dish actually needed salt.

The carrot soufflé: carrot soufflé is a standard Passover dish in the family. The usual recipe (using cut & paste):

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3 cups sliced carrots

1 bay leaf

1 onion

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/2 tablespoon ginger

salt and pepper

5 eggs, separated

1 cup of sugar

1/2 cup matzo meal

1 cup ground walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a souffle dish

Boil carrots, bay leaf, and onion until carrots are soft, and then remove the bay leaf and puree the carrots and onions. Add the cinnamon, ginger, salt, and pepper. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, and add to the carrots. Beat the egg whites until stiff. Fold together the whites with the carrots, alternately with the matzo meal and ground walnuts. Bake in greased dish for 40 minutes, or until set.

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The "40 minutes" is actually nowhere near correct; "until set" really takes 1 hour 40 minutes, maybe.

I didn't make this version, though: I experimented, combining techniques from this recipe with the one for cheese soufflé from a few weeks ago: boil the carrots and onion and then whir in the food processor. In a saucepan, make a roux (with potato and tapioca starch, so it's kosher for Passover). Add some of the carrot-cooking water, and then mix with the pureed carrots. Mix with the egg yolks, tempering so as not to scramble the eggs. In another bowl, beat the egg whites and sugar to make a meringue; then fold the meringue into the carrot mixture. Bake. (Notice: there are no nuts in this version.)

I think there was too much liquid in it (what with the water and the liquid in the carrots), because after it had baked for a while, it collapsed. Even after baking for a good while, it was still wet in the bottom. It tasted okay, but it wasn't light and fluffy and pretty the way a soufflé is supposed to be. Oh well, failure is part of experimentation.