Hosting your first Passover seder? Heather put together a menu, shopping list and timeline so you know exactly what to buy and when to prepare everything. Holiday meals have never been easier!
Your Comprehensive Seder Prep Checklist
About the Author
Heather Bien works in digital content and copywriting by day and lifestyle and travel blogging by night. While she’d never had a latke before meeting her fiancé, Adam, and she’s still working on cooking shakshuka with perfectly runny eggs, she’s fully embracing Jewish culture and food one recipe at a time. You can find her on social media @hmbien and online at www.heatherbien.com.
Black-and-White Hamantashen
My first foray into baking hamantashen was with a Nutella-filled recipe. You can’t go wrong with that, right? Well, yes, yes you can. We cut the dough too thick, couldn’t fold them correctly into triangles and ended up with what I would call dough clouds rather than cookies. Delicious, but not quite right. So, this…
Hamantashen Get the Black and White Treatment
For Heather’s second attempt at hamantashen, she decided to go a chocolatey route, but with a special twist inspired by that other beloved traditional Jewish treat: black and white cookies.
Mexican Shakshuka
For this take on shakshuka, I decided to do a culinary mashup of the Israeli recipe with classic Mexican flavors. With my recent conversion to Judaism and my Mexican heritage, this seemed like a fitting tribute to my past and present. The ingredients in shakshuka easily merge with Mexican seasonings—the base of the recipe remains…
Shaking Up the Shakshuka
For shakshuka, it all starts with tomatoes, onions and peppers—much like a lot of Mexican food. Inspired by her own Mexican background, Heather decided to mix up her shakshuka.
Putting the Pumpkin in the Pudding
Heather puts a spin on the comfort food of her Southern childhood, adding in the flavor of fall (pumpkin) and using the rich bread that represents her new Jewish present (challah).
Pumpkin Challah Bread Pudding
When it comes to nostalgic comfort foods, bread pudding is always a crowd pleaser. While you can make it year round, bread pudding is one of those traditional dishes that seems most at home once a chill in the air has begun to set in. So, how does one improve upon bread pudding for fall?…
Unlock Your Bagel and Lox
Inspired by a Restaurant Week menu, Heather decided to mix up a Jewish favorite—literally. The result is a Yom Kippur break-fast game changer: a cream-cheese-and-salmon dip served with bagel chips.
Everything-Bagel-and-Lox Dip with Bagel Chips
A few months ago, I was at a Restaurant Week dinner at one of those hip places that is known for taking those classic old-fashioned dishes that make up our culinary memories, deconstructing them and turning them completely upside down and inside out. On the menu was an appetizer that did just that: a deconstructed…
Cooking My First Passover Seder
Growing up Catholic in the South, Heather didn’t have much exposure to Passover. But as someone who loves to cook, hosting the seder with her fiancé was a natural choice.
