Beetroot Salad with Nuts

This is a salad that my mother makes at home in Sweden, and we all love it. She actually discovered it by mistake, because there were leftover beetroot and beans in the fridge. It's a really good and healthy salad with nuts, beans and carrots. It's perfect with a grilled steak in the summer, but also as a side dish for just about any occasion.

Ingredients

Salad
1/2 cup of assorted nuts (sunflower seeds, cashew cores, pumpkin seeds)
1/2 can of kidney beans
1 carrot, finely diced
3-5 rosted beetroots, finely diced
A handful of chopped parsley
Olive oil
Sea salt (for the nuts)

Dressing
3 tbs pumpkin seed oil (olive oil is also ok but not the same)
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
Sea salt
Black pepper, freshly ground
1 tsp garlic powder

1. Grill the beetroots in the oven for about 45 minutes (or until soft all the way trough) at 225°C.

2. Put some olive oil in a frying pan and fry the nut mix until it gets a nice golden color. Season with sea salt.

3. Take the nut mix from the pan, save the oil and fry the beans for a couple of minutes.

4. Place the diced carrot, beet roots and chopped parsley in a bowl. Add the fried beans and the nuts and mix.

5. Mix all the ingredients for the dressing and mix it with the salad.

Enjoy! 

© 2012 Jill Schweber and Channa Waje, all rights reserve 

Principe Alberto Cake

This is an amazing cake that Jill's aunt makes for every Pesach in Vancouver when the family meets for the holiday. Chocolate cakes without flour can and should be made all year around, they are not only for Pesach. This kind of cake is also perfect if you are looking for a gluten free cake to make for any occasion. We believe this is one of those cakes that everyone will love. It has an intense chocolate flavour, perfect texture and a creamy chocolate frosting (this is what I’m going to bring for our Seder dinner this year). We LOVE this cake and think you should try it, Pesach or not!   

Ingredients 
250 g of butter (soft)
300 g of sugar
7 eggs
150 grams of melted chocolate
1 tbs corn starch
3-4 squares of chocolate (shaved)

1. Heat the oven to 180°C.
 
2. Beat half the sugar and all of the butter and add the egg yolks one by one.
 
3. Beat the egg whites hard with the other half of the sugar (see pic).
 
4. Add the melted chocolate to the yolk mix and then fold in the egg white mix.

5. Prepare a rectangular tin with butter and matza meal. Put 3/4 of the batter in the tin and place it in the oven for 40 minutes. Add the corn starch to the other 1/4 and refrigerate.
 
6. Let the cake cool completely, and then pour the rest of the batter on top of the cake.
 
7. Decorate with shaved chocolate.
 
Enjoy! 

The egg white mix is ready when you can turn it uppside down!

Leikaj de Pesaj

For Pesach we don't eat chametz (anything that is leavened). So we don't eat anything good dessert wise. Instead of regular flour we substitute with matza meal, which to be quite honest doesn’t taste that good. There is of course ways to go around (like the amazing Principe Alberto Cake) but we are supposed to suffer a bit because of our ancestors that walked out of Egypt, and therefore we eat matza.
 
This is a good Pesach cake with cake meal (finely ground matza meal) and orange. This is a big batch, so if you have a lot of people coming over this is a perfect cake to make.   

Ingredients
11 eggs
1 cup cake meal
1/2 cup orange juice
Peel from one orange
1 1/4 cup of sugar
3 tbs vegetable oil (not olive oil)

Topping: icing sugar

1. Line a round pan with butter and matza meal.

2. Separate the yolks from the eggs whites. Beat the yolks with the sugar. Add the remaining ingredients (except for egg whites).
 
3. Beat the egg whites separately and then mix gently with the batter, so the air stays.

4. Place in oven for 50 minutes at 180°C. This is a big cake, so it can be put into a big round pan or two medium ones (we put a pan underneath because it sometimes leaks). If you use two medium ones, let them bake for 30 minutes instead of 50 minutes. 

Yummy!

Enjoy!