Today in my magic kitchen we are making a delicious salmon spread. This salmon spread is one of my favorite things to serve it as an appetizer at Passover. It’s a perfect substitute for gefilte fish for Seder dinner. In the video that accompanies this recipe, I show how to make cucumber rolls stuffed with the salmon spread. They look like little flowers; perfect for the spring holiday.

You will need to use a long English cucumber to really make it work well. But if you do not have the tools or the patience to serve it that way, you can opt to scoop out the seeds to make little cucumber boats stuffed with the spread. You can use a pastry bag or make your own from a Ziploc to fill the boats.

Today in the magic kitchen we are making a staple found in many Jewish holiday meals - Kugel!

Kugels come in many varieties. If you are of the Hebrew persuasion, you probably have had a couple of different kinds in your day. If you’re not a MOTT (member of the Tribe) you might be asking, “What is a Kugel?” By definition (in Jewish cooking) it’s a dish that can be described as a sweet or savory pudding of noodles or potatoes.

In today’s Jewish kitchens, we use a lot of different vegetables for the savory kugels. During Passover, we can’t eat noodles so we stick with vegetables, which tend to be more savory than sweet, except for the carrot. Carrot-based kugels can be made with cinnamon and maple syrup and are quite tasty as well. Carrots, zucchini, and cauliflower have become popular base ingredients for this Passover mainstay.

Do you remember the series of chicken soup for the soul books? I read a couple of them; they were sweet and cute little vignettes meant to make you feel like you’d had a bowl of chicken soup. Chicken soup is also known in some circles as Jewish penicillin. Every nice Jewish girl, and even every not-so-nice Jewish girl like me, has a recipe for chicken soup that they most likely got from their mother or grandmother. Like everything else she cooked, If there was a written recipe of my Momster’s soup, I have never seen it. And no matter who handed the recipe down in a family tree, even someone else’s family recipe, chicken soup and its Pesach sister, matzo ball soup is a staple of Jewish soul food. The ingredients marry in a way that makes anyone sick with any malady, from a cold to heartbreak, feel better after the first sip of broth.

Today in the magic kitchen enchiladas! The Spanish word 'enchilada' means 'to add chili pepper to' or literally 'to season or decorate with chili'. Translated, “enchilada” means soaked, rubbed, or dipped in chile sauce. I love the variety of what you can roll inside an enchilada and the different sauces you can smother your enchiladas in. You can add any kind of vegetable and/or protein, beans, cheese… whatever you like. There are green and red chili sauces, cheese sauces, and more. The enchilada is quite a versatile staple of the cuisine.

Find the full recipe in my Magic Kitchen blog on our website:
https://mamamichesmagickitchen.com/the-magic-kitchen/yaya-enchiladas

This recipe is not Mexican street food. This is Tex-Mex; the Mexican food most Americans my age grew up eating. Hard corn taco shells, store-bought taco seasoning, ground beef, shredded lettuce, tomatoes, shredded cheddar, Monterey Jack cheese, salsa, sour cream, and guacamole. It is one of my favorite comfort foods.

The ultimate comfort food. It is an entire meal in one tray of yummy goodness. All the food groups are represented and necessary to make one feel fabulously full and satisfied. It’s actually also quite easy to make and assemble. There are shortcuts you can make without skimping on flavor. And there are so many variations in ingredients that you can use. You can substitute traditional lasagna noodles with sliced zucchini, or squash, or any number of traditional noodle substitutions A creamy white vegetable lasagna or a chicken Alfredo lasagna are a couple of different options we can explain another time, in another video, but in this video, the old school lasagna that most of us know and love is the star.