Food Editor's Note:

This is a delicious alternative to the traditional cranberry relish. It is sweet, but not too sweet, crunchy, but without nuts, and beautiful to present on a round glass serving dish. It is very popular in our family and even the children love it. You will need an 8 1/2-cup ring mold for this recipe, which makes about 16 good-size servings. Prepare this at least one day in advance, refrigerate, and unmold just before serving.

This is a recipe that a friend gave me a few years ago.  I add raisins to it and think it makes a great lunch or dairy dinner with a salad.  It is very rich and creamy.

Food Editor's Notes:  This is one of our 2006 Passover Recipe Contest winners!  You won't believe how light and fluffy (yet still rich and creamy) a Passover kugel can be!  This is basically a sweet cheese noodle kugel without the noodles.  The farfel helps to hold it together, but doesn't make it dense or heavy.  This is a sweet treat – it comes out of the oven a beautiful golden brown and puffed up high.  It's best served like this, right from the oven – perfect for a brunch or company supper - but it's also wonderful reheated for breakfast, lunch, or a special snack.

Here’s the story behind this recipe. I was asked to bring charoset to the nth annual potluck seder a bunch of my friends threw every year. Having never made charoset before, I dutifully searched through Jewish cookbooks and articles to make the perfect charoset. I decided I needed walnuts, apples, wine and honey.

The first error was that I didn't think I was chopping the walnuts fine enough and threw them into my food processor and started grinding away. As things began to turn to paste, I kept adding more apples to “chunk” it up and wine to get the right color, because I thought the apples looked too white against what was now the walnut paste. The wine turned everything this really interesting purplish color. At that point I figured the honey was totally out of the question.

Slightly embarrassed, but having used the entire pound of walnuts, I brought it to the potluck seder. The host took one look, cracked up, and someone ran out to the hardware store around the corner to buy a “Pesadich” trowel to serve the charoset. It actually worked quite nicely when we made Hillel sandwiches (and for leftovers). It soon became a tradition for me to bring the mortar type of charoset and someone else was assigned to bring a “traditional” charoset.

I should note that this is best served with Larry’s killer homemade horseradish rather than the stuff from a jar.

Food Editor's Notes:

This is one of my mother’s specialties. She has cut down on the fat by using mayonnaise or soup instead of added chicken fat, but it is still delicious. Do not process this too fine; there should be some small chunks left to provide texture. I freeze the livers from all my chickens year-round, so that my mother will have an ample supply for our Rosh Hashanah and Passover meals.

Food Editor's Notes:

This is an easy, elegant dish that is well-suited for a Passover seder or other special occasion. You can marinate the chicken in advance, pop it in the oven 45 minutes to an hour before you want to serve it, and make a dramatic entrance with an unusual, but delicious entrée. It can also be made in advance and reheated or served cold or at room temperature. Although the recipe calls for boneless chicken breasts, I like to use whole chickens cut in eighths. Remove the smaller pieces first or cook them in a separate pan for less time so they don’t dry out.